Re:Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules
by AnthonyMouse on Monday February 06, 2017 @11:45PM
(#13587104)
The view in the Forbes article is misinformed:
> In the final months of the Wheeler FCC, the Commission rushed through orders re-regulating rates for enterprise data services, subjecting ISPs (and only ISPs) to a highly-restrictive privacy regime that upends the model of ad-supported free content, and flirted with banning free and sponsored mobile data services that consumers actually want.
The reason the rules apply to only ISPs is that only ISPs are a natural monopoly. If you don't like gmail scanning your email there are sixty free alternatives that don't.
ISPs have nothing to do with "ad supported free content", nor should they.
And consumers "want" free everything, but that's not how "sponsored mobile data services" work. Instead they allow the ISP to charge high data fees while exempting their own offerings to disadvantage or ransom the competition. And if high data fees and destroying competition are the cost of "free", no consumer who actually understands that wants it.
> In the final months of the Wheeler FCC, the Commission rushed through orders re-regulating rates for enterprise data services, subjecting ISPs (and only ISPs) to a highly-restrictive privacy regime that upends the model of ad-supported free content, and flirted with banning free and sponsored mobile data services that consumers actually want.
The reason the rules apply to only ISPs is that only ISPs are a natural monopoly. If you don't like gmail scanning your email there are sixty free alternatives that don't.
ISPs have nothing to do with "ad supported free content", nor should they.
And consumers "want" free everything, but that's not how "sponsored mobile data services" work. Instead they allow the ISP to charge high data fees while exempting their own offerings to disadvantage or ransom the competition. And if high data fees and destroying competition are the cost of "free", no consumer who actually understands that wants it.