The Fed are already regulating the ISP, and have been for a long time.

avoiding common carrier status doesn't eliminate their regulation.

In fact, the court case that ended the last net neutrality rules explcitly stated that the FCC did have the right to regulate this space.

so the feds are going to be involved in any case, the question is just under what rules.

Since people can make good cases for either set of rules, my thinking is to let the ISPs individually decide what set of rules they want to be under

Common Carrier (fair dealings with all, no content/application discrimination, but also no liability for what goes over their network)

non-common carrier (commercially reasonable dealings, able to control what goes over their network, but since they control it, they are now liable for it)

David Lang
On Jul 23, 2014, at 8:05 AM, Matt Simmons <[email protected]> wrote:

> > Force a common-carrier status and you've crazy-glued the non-competitive 
> > model into place even tighter. 
> 
> I'm dense, so I'm not seeing the connection. Can you explain, please? 

Once you've got the Federal Government regulating them, the local franchise 
authorities lose a lot of their negotiating power with the various broadband 
carriers. Common carrier status will come with a lot of regulatory overhead for 
the carriers, but it will also come with a lot of -- Federal -- regulatory 
protectionism.

Today, if you wanted to affect change on your cable company you really only 
have to wait until your local town board is up to renew the franchise agreement 
with, say, Time Warner or Comcast, and negotiate from a hard-line position that 
you're going to insist on competitive access to outside plant. It's not "easy" 
but it's "do-able". If the FCC steps in, the Comcasts of the world will almost 
certainly wave in the general direction of the protections afforded to them by 
the new regulatory structure and tell the municipalities "Go away kid, yer 
botherin' me..."

D


Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail

_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
 http://lopsa.org/
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
 http://lopsa.org/

Reply via email to