The economy is only hot for people in the stock market or are high up the corporate ladder. The majority is getting left behind yet again so we can shovel ever increasing amounts of money at the rich.
This is a perfect example of how the silicon valley echo chamber can have implications in DC. We all want cheap, fast, and open internet. Instead of the right people advising the current administration I feel like the polarization politics recently in the US is contributing to these advisors being picked. For example if the elites in silicon valley presented themselves publicly as more moderate and impartial they would have more say in the current admin. Its a bad idea to alienate yourself from half of the country no matter which side you are on.
It happens when either major party is in control, but you're right: the Democrats lean toward more active regulation to shape outcomes in ways that often don't benefit dominant players, while the GOP aims to erase regulation, often bluntly, and leave outcomes to the markets. As a practical matter, "markets" means "dominant players in the market". The GOP view on regulatory agencies is that they should look more like chambers of commerce, and as such, they end up stocked with representatives of those dominant players.
That doesn't counter it, they believe it is in their economic interest to give the rich large tax cuts because they believe it will result in more jobs, it's the same reason that they oppose net neutrality, environmental regulations and banking regulations: they believe it is in their economic interest.
That's the thing that scares me the most about the current administration. They seem to think that the only players in the economy are businesses, especially big ones. Workers don't count, the environment doesn't count, science that doesn't benefit business doesn't count. I think that's the area where they will do the most long term damage.
I don't think it's a case of non-businesses not being listened to, more so the there are not enough representatives outside of the business stakeholders at the table putting themselves forward for representation.
There is no malice in this, although it's very easy to perceive it as so. It's purely a side product of democracy - our representatives cannot possibly (or feasibly be expected to) represent the professional or personal interests of each and every working person within their constituency without those interests being put forward ahead of time and chased - hence why the questions go out to those that are 'known to know' for advice. It's human nature - if you know someone who has experience in a domain you're unaware of, you go to them for advice. If the representative doesn't know you have this expertise, they're not going to come to you for advice.
We all take for granted that our representatives in government look out for us, however when these initiatives are raised by them, and input is requested, the questions asked are very rarely put to laymen or individuals or groups with a cursory or passing interest. They're usually put to those working in the related industry or those who have a stake in the arena, as this is where the expertise is perceived to live, and will generate the quickest consensus on the issue.
It's all down to exposure - if you are invested in an issue, find a way to get involved (reach out to you representative etc.) and have a voice in the discussions, rather than waiting idly by and demonstrating against the result.
I think with this administration it's more extreme than before. It seems only millionaires, business people or lobbyists are allowed to the table. Scientists and other experts are being treated in a hostile way.
If we're defining expertise in such a way that it can only be gained through work experience at the corporations you'll later be in charge of regulating then that's a problem with what we consider expertise to be.
I think that education can only result from prior experiences, rather than projections.
If the experience influencing education has come from those who have been 'through the ringer' at the companies pushing the technology forward, education will always be one step behind corporate influence. Catch-22 unfortunately.
The paradigm I think has shifted (for better or worse) from taking the letter from academia to taking it from those who have advanced these technologies within public perception (with or without fuelling from media influence)
I would rather have my public agencies run by someone who maybe has no direct experience with the domain but has shown skill in public decision-making and an ability to learn new fields than run only by people who have worked in that domain. Which is to say if it's a catch-22 it's one that's completely self-imposed (or is being used as a scapegoat for regulatory capture.)
The article opens with one city-official with relevant credentials who was discarded, but also says:
> Sixty-four city and state officials were nominated for the panel, but the agency initially chose only two: Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, and Kelleigh Cole from the Utah Governor’s Office, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a Freedom of Information Act request. Pai later appointed another city official, Andy Huckaba, a member of the Lenexa, Kansas, city council.
3 (initially 2) out of 30 panel positions are people that aren't currently working for the telecom industry.
>But the FCC didn’t choose Carter — or almost any of the other city or state government officials who applied. Sixty-four city and state officials were nominated for the panel, but the agency initially chose only two: Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, and Kelleigh Cole from the Utah Governor’s Office, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a Freedom of Information Act request. Pai later appointed another city official, Andy Huckaba, a member of the Lenexa, Kansas, city council.
"if you are invested in an issue, find a way to get involved (reach out to you representative etc.) and have a voice in the discussions, rather than waiting idly by and demonstrating against the result."
The data seems to show that simply isn't true. It isn't malice, but only representing the interests of those who finance your campaign and ensure you have a job for the next election, which is entirely not the point of our federal government.
In my experience, the number of times a phone call of mine explaining an obscure policy flipped someone's view, whether a regulator, legislator or, in one case, mayor, is quite numerous. I'm not a prolific donor. I just called. I am almost always the only person who is not either (a) in the industry being considered or (b) retired who bothered to reach out. Same thing for town halls, canvassing, et cetera.
We do have a problem where popular views aren't effectively translating into policy. But I haven't seen that graph adjusted for civic involvement.
That might apply to the FCC, but in the EPA the scientific advisers at the table putting themselves forward for representation have mostly all been shown the door.
> there are not enough representatives outside of the business stakeholders at the table putting themselves forward for representation
I read a political science study of how lobbying really works. My memory of it is hazy so these details may be off, but they concluded that on the order of 80% of lobbyists, lobbying, and money are for/by big business. The claim of 'special interests', which for some reason includes environmentalists but not big business, having so much influence is wrong; they are badly outgunned by their opponents.
(The book is nowhere near me or I'd share its name.)
> [...] the questions asked are very rarely put to laymen or individuals or groups with a cursory or passing interest.
And that is completely wrong. You can call for polls, you can look for experts on education institutions, you can look for unions, you can bring some one from the EFF. There is a lot of options if you will.
> There is no malice in this, although it's very easy to perceive it as so.
Their decisions have been proven harmful to the citizens at the same time that benefits economically the elites, that's the very definition of malice in government. That's one of the reasons people emigrated from Europe to America, to fly from a corrupt system of nobility and serfdom.
> It's all down to exposure - if you are invested in an issue, find a way to get involved (reach out to you representative etc.) and have a voice in the discussions, rather than waiting idly by and demonstrating against the result.
I thought that it was about fairness and to represent all citizens, but if it boils down to "exposure" then money can buy that. When did it become 1 dollar 1 vote? And why should we accept it willingly?
Your argument is "this is how it is, so it is good". Status quo is not immutable and has not morality by itself.
The problem is a general one with government agencies hiring folks other than career civil servants.
How do you find people who are highly knowledgeable about he telecom industry but who haven't on the payroll of a telecom company and don't hope to be?
Ah yes, the "yeah one person has done many things that are bad, but this other person is just as bad because I am able to cherrypick a bad thing they did". As someone with no horse in the political game, this line of debate is very bad.
Many people were worried when Wheeler was appointed, but Obama told us not to worry. Later his statement would prove justified when Wheeler turned out to be a strong advocate for consumer protection at the FCC.
I've been involved in standardisation within my industry for some time, and it's interesting to see how many people representing vendors are able to sway proceedings away from that which is technically neutral (and non-proprietary), to that which is financially beneficial to one or more implementers of the standardisation procedure's results.
I see the same thing in play here - the airwaves are being treated like tracts of land, and those who currently own the larger tracts don't want anyone using the smaller plots of no-man's land on their borders, in case there are accidental (or otherwise) trespasses onto 'owned territory', so to speak.
I'm not advocating one way or another (if you own something, it's yours, clean and fair), but it's interesting to see how an invisible physical space is being monetized so aggressively.
The difficult thing is finding people who are highly knowledgeable about the telecom industry who are not in the employ of the telecom industry and don't hope to be.
Nothing really. The agency is acting as intended, namely as a regulatory body serving the interests of the major industry players at the expense of minor operators and customers.
The best solution is to simply eliminate the agency.
And since the only ostensibly pro-consumer voice with any power (the FCC) is acting in the interest of major industry players right now, we should give the major industry players complete control forever, even if a pro-consumer administration takes power sometime in the future?
Tom Wheeler was a former telecom executive [1]. His perspective as a telecom entrepreneur informed his tenure at the FCC. Not saying this is fine, but it's not an automatic red flag. Just a reminder to remain vigilant.
Regulatory Capture/Agency Capture is a real problem. On the one hand, it's often the case that people with deep ties to a regulated industry are the ones who understand it best. On the other hand, they're the people most likely to financially benefit from poor regulatory practices.
The question is: what problems does this advisory panel need to help solve? The prevailing view on HN seems to be that the system is broken top-down. That's just factually untrue. The U.S. just moved into the top 10 in Akamai's testing in terms of average broadband speeds: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... (Figure 6). It ranks 8 in connections above 15 mbps (Figure 10). As much as it pains anti-deregulation folks to admit, the status quo under the 1996 Telecom Act has worked pretty well.
Instead, the problem in broadband right now is state and local governments. Why does Silicon Valley have such limited broadband options while Austin, Atlanta, even exurban Maryland have multiple fiber options? The answer is that the same NIMBY local governments that stand in the way of transit development and new housing development also stand in the way of broadband deployment. See, e.g. San Francisco's opposition to fiber deployment: https://sf.curbed.com/2011/4/25/10470790/at-t-you-want-to-pu....
Obviously, the FCC needs to prevent abuse. I think it could do a lot more in terms of preempting state/local laws against municipal broadband, or things like the West Virginia law that makes pole attachments harder. But for better or worse, U.S. policy at almost all levels is to have broadband infrastructure built with private rather than public capital. As long as that's true, pushing for increased antagonism from the regulator might feel good, but it's probably going to hurt, not help.
I think the speed element is too narrow. The bandwidth caps you see in the US are very very rare in the rest of the developed world. It's also extremely expensive compared to more competitive markets and it's almost all down to regulatory capture.
What city in Germany could I compare to Chicago to find rates that were significantly cheaper in Europe? From what I've seen in a few minutes of clicking, they seem broadly comparable.
So, I don't know, but if we're down to quibbling amount the amount of money taxes represent, I think the argument that Europe has drastically better Internet access than the US is over, isn't it?
The caps make a huge, huge difference. That's why mobile LTE plans are sold almost completely in terms of the cap.
Consider a 100 mbps cable connection with a classic comcast 250 GiB cap. Now obviously home internet is designed and sold to be bursty. But if you do the math, this is only 6 hours of max-speed traffic, for an entire month. Or look at it from the other extreme, no bursting - it's less than 1 mbps spread over an entire month.
Frankly, 100 mbps is overkill, I'd be happy with a solid symmetric 40 mbps. The reason the numbers are so high is people who aren't network engineers think "hmm my internet is still not enough somehow, I should get more" but the rated speed is not the problem. In fact I recently switched from 200mbps/20mpbs cable to 100mbps/100mpbs fios, for the significantly faster and more consistent upload speed. I don't miss the extra 100mbps download speed at all.
Summary: speed matters less the higher you go. The caps matter more.
I'm sure that's true, but what is the actual cap comparison between (say) Xfinity and Virgin Media? Virgin is definitely capped --- or at least, they definitely say it is.
RCN Chicago is $50 for 330 mbps, compared to $45 for Virginia media 100 mbps (both 12-month prices). RCN has no data cap, while Virgin has an extremely complicated traffic management policy (for uploads only): https://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-manage....
Moreover, the FCC actually has little to do with broadband deployment, whether or not it is "captured." It's the local governments that are in charge of almost all the relevant roadblocks to deployment: franchising, pole attachments, etc.
You can get Gb internet for $100 per month, and you think this is normal in the United States?
Speculum comunications charges $95/mo. for a (theoretical) 20/1Mb connection and they're the only game in town. This is normal for most of the country.
The point isn't that it's normal, it's that at least in that range of the market (which covers about a quarter of US households and growing rapidly) the price is competitive. If you have another data point for comparison you're welcome to post it.
$76 for 1Gbps/1Gbps (house plan, apartment plans are usually cheaper because of scale)
The difference is that fiber is widely available in Sweden. You can usually pay ~$2000 to have it installed in your house in major cities, if it's not already, and subsidized ~$500 in rural towns. Most houses built in the last 10-15 years already has it installed. And it's installed in most apartment complexes longer than that.
That's a good monthly rate, but $2,000 USD for installation is eyewatering. I'm paying Centurylink $85 for 1Gbps / 1Gbps here in Portland, OR and they preemptively ran fiber all the way down my block before they had any subscribers (they went door-to-door for weeks after that trying sign everyone up). They also didn't charge me anything for installation.
Way to divert attention from the regulatory capture highlighted in the article. When a monopolist says that consumers are doing SOOOO great under their regime the standard response should always be "then you have nothing to fear from some competition".
The article isn't talking about competition. The article is talking about why the FCC didn't appoint more state and local regulators to the advisory board. These people hate competition. They are the whole reason we used to have exclusive cable franchises until Congress made that practice illegal in 1994. And they continue to destroy competition through things like build out requirements.
The average broadband speeds seem to have an odd distribution (which would be the most useful for comparision). As the US doesn't break the to 10 for 4 or 10 Mbps connections in Fig 8 & 9 repspectively of that same report. Nor does it break the top 10 in the average peak speed in fig 7. Is there a connection speed equivalent of gini coefficient? If that were calculated, it might seem we have a connection speed inequality might mirror the US income inequality.
I agree, ignoring the serious problem that is a tiny number of private monopolies owning all of our communication infrastructure (boy, 1996 me hopes those oligarchs don't choose to compromise the privacy or rights of their customers, since we have no other viable options....) the current state of affairs is really not too bad in that a whole bunch of people can get reasonably fast service at reasonable prices.
As far as I know concerns people have with the telecommunications act of 1996 are very serious but they concern primarily media/press consolidation, and allowing for vertical integration, since it provides dangerous incentives for companies to violate net neutrality. And of course people have problems in general with massive consolidation of private power over critical communication infrastructure (see previous paragraph) but I didn't realize there was any worry that it would make things much worse when it comes to "what kind of service can the consumer buy" efficiency related issues.
This is the legacy of the progressive movement--namely that experts, with domain specific knowledge, should be put in charge of running bureaucracy and creating regulations.
93 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadThe official GOP stance is that industry can police itself, right?
Seems pretty simple.
I don't know how intentional this is, but I suspect they want to be able to drum up support next election far more than they want change.
There is no malice in this, although it's very easy to perceive it as so. It's purely a side product of democracy - our representatives cannot possibly (or feasibly be expected to) represent the professional or personal interests of each and every working person within their constituency without those interests being put forward ahead of time and chased - hence why the questions go out to those that are 'known to know' for advice. It's human nature - if you know someone who has experience in a domain you're unaware of, you go to them for advice. If the representative doesn't know you have this expertise, they're not going to come to you for advice.
We all take for granted that our representatives in government look out for us, however when these initiatives are raised by them, and input is requested, the questions asked are very rarely put to laymen or individuals or groups with a cursory or passing interest. They're usually put to those working in the related industry or those who have a stake in the arena, as this is where the expertise is perceived to live, and will generate the quickest consensus on the issue.
It's all down to exposure - if you are invested in an issue, find a way to get involved (reach out to you representative etc.) and have a voice in the discussions, rather than waiting idly by and demonstrating against the result.
If the experience influencing education has come from those who have been 'through the ringer' at the companies pushing the technology forward, education will always be one step behind corporate influence. Catch-22 unfortunately.
The paradigm I think has shifted (for better or worse) from taking the letter from academia to taking it from those who have advanced these technologies within public perception (with or without fuelling from media influence)
> Sixty-four city and state officials were nominated for the panel, but the agency initially chose only two: Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, and Kelleigh Cole from the Utah Governor’s Office, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a Freedom of Information Act request. Pai later appointed another city official, Andy Huckaba, a member of the Lenexa, Kansas, city council.
3 (initially 2) out of 30 panel positions are people that aren't currently working for the telecom industry.
>But the FCC didn’t choose Carter — or almost any of the other city or state government officials who applied. Sixty-four city and state officials were nominated for the panel, but the agency initially chose only two: Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, and Kelleigh Cole from the Utah Governor’s Office, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a Freedom of Information Act request. Pai later appointed another city official, Andy Huckaba, a member of the Lenexa, Kansas, city council.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
The data seems to show that simply isn't true. It isn't malice, but only representing the interests of those who finance your campaign and ensure you have a job for the next election, which is entirely not the point of our federal government.
Link to these data?
In my experience, the number of times a phone call of mine explaining an obscure policy flipped someone's view, whether a regulator, legislator or, in one case, mayor, is quite numerous. I'm not a prolific donor. I just called. I am almost always the only person who is not either (a) in the industry being considered or (b) retired who bothered to reach out. Same thing for town halls, canvassing, et cetera.
We do have a problem where popular views aren't effectively translating into policy. But I haven't seen that graph adjusted for civic involvement.
It is like a doctor killing all his patients: And now, no one is sick anymore.
I read a political science study of how lobbying really works. My memory of it is hazy so these details may be off, but they concluded that on the order of 80% of lobbyists, lobbying, and money are for/by big business. The claim of 'special interests', which for some reason includes environmentalists but not big business, having so much influence is wrong; they are badly outgunned by their opponents.
(The book is nowhere near me or I'd share its name.)
And that is completely wrong. You can call for polls, you can look for experts on education institutions, you can look for unions, you can bring some one from the EFF. There is a lot of options if you will.
> There is no malice in this, although it's very easy to perceive it as so.
Their decisions have been proven harmful to the citizens at the same time that benefits economically the elites, that's the very definition of malice in government. That's one of the reasons people emigrated from Europe to America, to fly from a corrupt system of nobility and serfdom.
> It's all down to exposure - if you are invested in an issue, find a way to get involved (reach out to you representative etc.) and have a voice in the discussions, rather than waiting idly by and demonstrating against the result.
I thought that it was about fairness and to represent all citizens, but if it boils down to "exposure" then money can buy that. When did it become 1 dollar 1 vote? And why should we accept it willingly?
Your argument is "this is how it is, so it is good". Status quo is not immutable and has not morality by itself.
Wheeler was pretty consistently pro-consumer. Pai has shown the complete opposite in each decision.
Here's a parallell: https://theintercept.com/2017/06/04/paris-accord-trump-lobby...
What matters is the effect of what you're doing.
How do you find people who are highly knowledgeable about he telecom industry but who haven't on the payroll of a telecom company and don't hope to be?
I see the same thing in play here - the airwaves are being treated like tracts of land, and those who currently own the larger tracts don't want anyone using the smaller plots of no-man's land on their borders, in case there are accidental (or otherwise) trespasses onto 'owned territory', so to speak.
I'm not advocating one way or another (if you own something, it's yours, clean and fair), but it's interesting to see how an invisible physical space is being monetized so aggressively.
Now the tougher question, what can we do about it?
The best solution is to simply eliminate the agency.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler
Instead, the problem in broadband right now is state and local governments. Why does Silicon Valley have such limited broadband options while Austin, Atlanta, even exurban Maryland have multiple fiber options? The answer is that the same NIMBY local governments that stand in the way of transit development and new housing development also stand in the way of broadband deployment. See, e.g. San Francisco's opposition to fiber deployment: https://sf.curbed.com/2011/4/25/10470790/at-t-you-want-to-pu....
Obviously, the FCC needs to prevent abuse. I think it could do a lot more in terms of preempting state/local laws against municipal broadband, or things like the West Virginia law that makes pole attachments harder. But for better or worse, U.S. policy at almost all levels is to have broadband infrastructure built with private rather than public capital. As long as that's true, pushing for increased antagonism from the regulator might feel good, but it's probably going to hurt, not help.
Virgin Media is £45 for 100mbit DOCSIS.
I have hyperoptic in my apartment, which is about £55/month for uncapped 1gig up/down.
Keep in mind European prices include all taxes in their prices.
Consider a 100 mbps cable connection with a classic comcast 250 GiB cap. Now obviously home internet is designed and sold to be bursty. But if you do the math, this is only 6 hours of max-speed traffic, for an entire month. Or look at it from the other extreme, no bursting - it's less than 1 mbps spread over an entire month.
Frankly, 100 mbps is overkill, I'd be happy with a solid symmetric 40 mbps. The reason the numbers are so high is people who aren't network engineers think "hmm my internet is still not enough somehow, I should get more" but the rated speed is not the problem. In fact I recently switched from 200mbps/20mpbs cable to 100mbps/100mpbs fios, for the significantly faster and more consistent upload speed. I don't miss the extra 100mbps download speed at all.
Summary: speed matters less the higher you go. The caps matter more.
VM in the UK has caps only on the upstream between 6pm-11pm, where it slows your upstream down by 50% if you upload a lot in that time slot.
Hardly comparable?
Moreover, the FCC actually has little to do with broadband deployment, whether or not it is "captured." It's the local governments that are in charge of almost all the relevant roadblocks to deployment: franchising, pole attachments, etc.
Speculum comunications charges $95/mo. for a (theoretical) 20/1Mb connection and they're the only game in town. This is normal for most of the country.
https://www.bahnhof.se/stockholm/familjebostader-svenska-bos...
$76 for 1Gbps/1Gbps (house plan, apartment plans are usually cheaper because of scale)
The difference is that fiber is widely available in Sweden. You can usually pay ~$2000 to have it installed in your house in major cities, if it's not already, and subsidized ~$500 in rural towns. Most houses built in the last 10-15 years already has it installed. And it's installed in most apartment complexes longer than that.
And then you have a choice of 5+ ISPs.
I got it installed in my dads old house, but even before that you could get 100/100 through cable for ~$45.
As far as I know concerns people have with the telecommunications act of 1996 are very serious but they concern primarily media/press consolidation, and allowing for vertical integration, since it provides dangerous incentives for companies to violate net neutrality. And of course people have problems in general with massive consolidation of private power over critical communication infrastructure (see previous paragraph) but I didn't realize there was any worry that it would make things much worse when it comes to "what kind of service can the consumer buy" efficiency related issues.
The purpose of a regulatory committee is to be the creature of a specific industry.
Kolko gives a history of the regulatory movement and it's role in "The Triumph of the New Conservatism".
It is a must-read foranyone dealing with a regulatory body.