FCC Expected to Pass Net Neutrality Rules Today, Drawing Line Between Wired and Wireless Web

This regulation change just means that wired ISPs will start offering only a wireless moden option at your physical drop. They'll tout this as an additional service and maybe even charge you more. So, if the only way to access their service is wirelessly, even though they are wired all the way up to the in-home modem, they get to use the wireless rules.

This decision is a BIG FAIL for consumers and a BIG FAIL for innovation on the web.

Incidentally, the government should have MORE right to require open access on wireless than on wired. The government controls access to available wireless bandwidth suposedly (in a democracy) for the benefit of the people. The wired drops should only fall under government regulation to the extent that they have access due to public right-of-way easments.

I say: Let any provider charge for web access based on customer access speed or total data use, but only with ABSOLUTE NEUTRALITY over which content they are accessing. All heavy net users would presumably pick a maximum speed or unlimited data access plan.

The proposed new rules are just a way for big companies (like Google, Verizon, ...) to limit competition, squeeze more $$ out of consumers and limit consumer choice.

Very VERY bad decision.

Maybe this is just the first step. The wireless providers are next I'm sure. It was likely much easier to pass a law that didn't involve the competition-vested wireless carriers. The wired ISP's are the guinea pigs.

I'm afraid net neutrality is just a trojan horse, a side door to step in to start regulating the net and it's contents. The same FCC people pushing for net neutrality want to regulate content like requiring links on your blog to opposing opinion. To be enforced only when they want against whoever they want like the wrongly named fairness doctrine. There are many world wide who want to control the information their population recieves. It's often the same side that has people screaming in the streets against the very same thing, but as long as it follows one political doctrine it's ok.

The biggest argument aside from being a doorway to control is that net neutrality is a solution looking for a problem.
Isn't it a strange coincidence and stupid move on comcast's that during the lame duck session of congress, with a new congress weeks away that would block net neutrality that they would start down throttling netflix now. If they had waited a few months they would have been ok. coincidentally comcast is waiting for regulatory approval from the same FCC for their acquisition of NBC.

Not to mention wikileaks happening now. Coincidence in the release timing, coincidence that a socialist anarchist private was given clearance for top secret diplomatic papers. Causing people to scream for control of the nets contents. Too many coincidences usually spells conspiracy. Yeah I said it. conspiracy. And it felt good to just say what's on many people's minds. Conspiracy, it's not just for the tin foil hat crowd anymore.

complaining that they aren't being fair is bull crap when it's us, the consumer, that make the demand for Internet, smartphones, and computers. make the demand, then don't accept anything less, SOMEONE will capitalise on that!

SpaceSamurai, a wireless DSL gateway or cable modem is not a mobile device. Wireless here != WLAN. A stationary 4G hotspot, like Clear's, *would* be outside of the designated neutral territory, but a DSL or cable gateway with WiFi wouldn't be, unless the FCC are playing some very silly games with equivocation.

(Of course the *providers* would love to equivocate, but they're not technically the ones writing the legislation. = )

Blocking individual apps is the bit that blows my mind. I had no idea that was even on the table.

Having the rules changed at a level that fundamentally changes the nature of the service(s) purchased means that should people decide to boycott, or just stop using (paying for) their arbitrarily altered service, the ISP's won't even be able to enforce their contracts. The day my access is altered by one byte I'm gonna join the inevitable class action suit for breach of contract. No matter what anyone wants to claim, it is not legal to change the nature of my purchase after the sale without re-negotiation of my service contract. On the day the suit is heard, the obvious opening salvo is that almost no one even receives the quality of services that we have been paying for up till now, so that major worldwide bunch of refunds gets dealt with first. Then the fact that my machine, or yours, is now expected to move information that we don't even get to legally look at? And we are expected to pay for this illegal activity? It would be no different than saying that you, or me, has to stop down at the local concrete company to pick up a trunkload of mud which we have to pay for and then deliver for them on our way to work because they laid the sidewalk in front of your house that you also paid for. AND that we have to deliver it within the guidelines they lay down.

Facts are that the shine on the internet is really wearing off now anyway, and I spent less on crap I had no control over before, and the things I did choose to buy just plain worked better than they do now. If America boycotted this BS for a year they'd be paying us to start using it again.

@SpaceSamurai

"Incidentally, the government should have MORE right to require open access on wireless than on wired. The government controls access to available wireless bandwidth suposedly (in a democracy) for the benefit of the people. The wired drops should only fall under government regulation to the extent that they have access due to public right-of-way easments."

"A government big enough to give you everything you want,
is strong enough to take everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson

Hey @Dirk, I think what @SpaceSamurai is saying that that service providers will stop delivering signals via cables and instead "beam" your internet service to your home - at which point your existing infrastructure (wired or wifi) takes over. That way, ALL of their services might be considered under the wireless portion of the agreement.

Nice play by the ISP's. They are essentially giving you what you want now and investing on having the power later when internet goes mostly wireless. By then you will have long forgotten about this, and probably won't even notice that your access to the web is bias.

You know... essentially, the internet is the trade of information. Now along with every other valuable resource on the planet in the past, when you try to control the trade of it exclusively, some people are going to be kindof upset. I've been down to the states several times. From my experience no one knows anything about the world other than their neighborhood and their job unless they are an acedemic. You guys seriously don't need to have your information even more filtered than it already is. You laugh at chinese google lol but the fact is, the USA is worse.

I do not see wireless internet being the future. It will expand a bit but doubtlessly will stay well below wired net use. Wireless has little advantage over wired beyond mobility, which for most users honestly isn't that big a deal when you realize most laptops are simply used on a desk in place of a desktop with little mobility during that time.

In essence, wireless net is just simply the realm of smartphones, which are not the realm of serious net use.

I'll be concerned when wireless has caught up to wired. Wireless still feels fragile. Would you rather download a 1 gig PDF or powerpoint presentation to your smartphone or to your pc over cable broadband?

Or for those of you who go outside occasionally, there's the whole trying to download something or make a call in a mall, or at an NBA game, or some other high concentration of people that chokes the wireless bandwidth to near nothingness. Not that this isn't a problem with hardline, but unless you just keep stacking pc's onto a T1 and you're all playing FPS's it's usually a non issue. I can understand paying different tiers of service on wireless for the next several years, but the device or app bit is disturbing.