Gadgetory

today history is being made by a majority of this commission as we vote for a fast fair and open Internet so today was a big day we saw title 2 as the new Authority for an open Internet municipal broadband cannot be banned by local legislators and the FCC has really great taste in funk music today was pretty incredible we got to watch the FCC debate its new rules for the open Internet and I cleaned out my entire email inbox during the two lengthy and very detailed tie rates given by the Republican members yeah they knew they had no chance here it was already decided and so they really took their time in explaining why they did not like net neutrality but I was fine because the rest of the Commission gave much briefer speeches kind of outlining the reasons that we've heard over the past you know year about how important and neutrality is to protecting economic opportunities and diversity of voices in the internet yeah it felt to me like the breakup talk you know if you know it's coming but you want to make sure you hide your say they really just needed to get it off their chest and then Tom wheeler could not stop banging that gavel ya know there was a lot of excitement when he finally said the eyes have it and now the rules were in place the you know the room broke into applause which probably doesn't happen all that often at FCC meetings yeah it was a funky start and a really great finish I thought the rules of the professor this month are now official they're going to go in place establishes really important that neutrality rules a lot of what advocates have been pushing for we've got internet providers and not allowed to block websites or apps or services and I'll have to throttle any of those either and there's no paid fast lanes the boogieman of you know this internet where the ISPs are controlling what you see or what arrives at your home is it better to access as easier access as faster access is now off the table we didn't have that to a huge extent right now but there were signs of companies doing this stuff and this is going to prevent any of that from happening in a major way and the Federal Communications Commission now has the tools it needs to prevent companies from doing those things when or should they try to do this right so the Democrats talked about this in terms of the Internet has been this great economic engine we invented it it's like a point of pride and we're going to protect it and the Republicans basically said the opposite yeah the Republican said this is government overreach etc etc new taxes yeah this is gonna go awful for the internet no business members right you can pretty much guess what they said and the reality is the FCC has done its part now the ISPs are probably going to get them back in court they'll file some lawsuits just like we saw before with Comcast and AT&T and Congress is also going to start working on its own sort of update to the Telecommunications Act kind of put themselves into play yes so those are the expectations the FCC definitely is going to have you know a big court issue ahead of it itself once wonder fight or another you know challenges these rules there are a lot of different issues that they have to bring up and some of their arguments seem better than others we'll definitely have to wait and see how those pan out to me the chances look pretty good for the Communications Commission but you know I'm also not a legal expert right so disclaimer neither of us is a lawyer so there's been a lot of posturing from Congress that this is actually Obama's plan not the FCC's plan that he kind of big-footed them by going out in public and saying how he thought that they should vote and so now they would like to insert themselves into this process if they feel the FCC has been compromised Congress will step up to the plate and write some new more modern telecommunications laws that will govern how you know broadband providers can and can't act right and the problem potentially is that a Republican legislation might give the FCC less ability to actually do its job and enforce you know rules that promote an open broadband network but again we still have to see how that plays out now there are rules in place or that there are going to be rules in place you know the issue may be less of a hot topic right I mean another thing that happened today which was kind of a subset of the big picture was municipal broadband so the FCC decided that small cities and towns that would like to build their own fiber can and this has been an issue in some states you know local government has basically passed laws restricting them from competing with private enterprise and so I believe that for now this only takes effect in the two cities or the two municipalities that had petitioned the FCC to you know preempt the state laws are preventing them but this is a big deal and this is gonna really start to help with the issue of competition and you know that is the other big battle with the internet right now there's no competition among wired internet providers and wireless internet providers are not exactly an alternative that's diradical e more expensive in most cases right it's incredible because we've seen these small towns and places providing gigabit service to their citizens and that is at the very high end of what's being offered in the supposedly you know competitive broadband space right and so now we see the FCC saying you know season towns should be able to do this this is going to help broadband deployment this is going to help people get better access there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to do this right I mean the crazy thing to me about the whole discussion around what the FCC is doing is we were trying to ward off this boogeyman that people could start blocking or throttling services but that hasn't really been happening it's not a widespread problem it's a potential problem and now the shoe is kind of on the other foot the FCC has weighed in with its new rules and Republicans are saying the sky is falling there'll be new taxes and businesses will shut down so we're gonna wait and see if that boogieman yeah it's absolutely true and I mean it seems like a slightly absurd proposal that's suddenly some new Commissioner is going to come into the FCC and go totally crazy and just absolutely ruin you know internet providers he has that power she has that power it is true they may well be able to you know but again that is you know the new spook that everybody is agreeing about okay so six months from now we'll check back in will we have to pay Internet taxes where do I pay my internet taxes is the internet dead in the water exactly six months from now the new rules are gonna be in place and probably everything's going to be exactly the same right except there's going to be a court challenge okay status quo thanks government