Just before that
Just last week, a lawyer for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association urged the commission not to fiddle with the standard broadband requirements because outspoken proponents for the change (in this case, Netflix and Public Knowledge) are overestimating what makes sense to provide to consumers.
MAKE SENSE TO PROVIDE TO CONSUMERS?
To whom?
Besides, what are they worred about? They cap us at 250 Gbytes per month, with $10 per 50 Gbytes thereafter.
Frankly, 250 Gbytes in 30 days is quite a lot of data, but you could easily exceed 4 times that if you downloaded 24/7 at 6 Mbit service.
...and that would cost us over $300!
If you leave your cable box on, it's streaming at least 1.5 Mbit/sec even if your television isn't on. That's at least 180 Mbytes over their Internet cap!
All they have to do us open their spokesperson's mouth and utter one inane sentence to really tick me off!
They were granted regional monopoly status back in the analog signal days when it almost made sense to bond content to the wiring to each premisis. At this point there is no telephone. There is no cable television. They're gone. They were replaced by data transport.
Now, it's true that happened to television recently, but at this point the only difference between cable television, telephone and the Internet is a bit of software and protocols. They're all routable network transport.
Data is the 21st century utility. It doesn't matter what the service or content is, it's still just data. There is zero justification for their regional monopoly beyond the wire to the building. After that, there should be no monopoly. We should be able to stream content from any provider we choose, completely independent from the wiring to the building.
They leveraged the antiquated regional monopoly into monopolistic control over content and service provision, and have the GAUL to suggest THEY should be in charge of deciding what makes sense in the delivery?
The FCC may not have the authority, but wherever the authority is appropriate, be it congress or wherever, it should be declared that a complete separation of content and service provision from the wiring to each premisis must be implemented. It should become illegal for a company that owns the wires to each building, and thus has the regional monopoly grant, to also provide content or service beyond the provision of raw data.
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