US return of the #netneutrality zombie - for Johannes Bauer's year as FCC Chief Economist!

FCC details plan to restore the net neutrality rules repealed by Ajit Pai

Democrats finally have 3-2 majority needed to regulate ISPs as common carriers.

Jon Brodkin - 9/27/2023, 4:47 AM

 Rosenworcel's proposed rules will mostly mirror those approved under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, senior FCC officials said in a call with reporters today. The proposal would classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, providing the legal authority to impose net neutrality rules and other regulations.

Broadband providers are likely to argue that rules aren't necessary because they've behaved themselves in the five years since the previous net neutrality order was repealed in 2018. To counter that argument, FCC officials today pointed out that ISPs are required to follow net neutrality rules in individual states even though the federal government doesn't have uniform rules for the whole country.

Then-Chairman Ajit Pai's attempt to preempt all state net neutrality rules was rejected in court. California enforces net neutrality rules that mirror what the FCC adopted in 2015 and beat industry attempts to get the state law overturned.

FCC officials said today that nearly a dozen states enforce net neutrality through state laws, government contracting policies, or executive orders. 

Return of the Net Neutrality Zombie - podcast

 Breaking a 49 month blog fast to post a link to this enjoyable (for me!) chat with Caroline de Cock from October 2022, just before Tiemo Wolken raised the issue in the European Parliament - now the podcast is published, just as Thierry Breton goes back to his oligopoly mobile roots to argue against net neutrality. Sigh...

Internet traffic is growing MORE SLOWLY THAN EVER! Telegeography, the authority on international traffic, states "COVID bump aside, the pace of growth has been slowing".

So this is more evidence-free policy consultation, or policy-based evidence making as I described it to the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, at the end of a project on this distortion of reality to fit politics.

For future updates, Twitter search 'marsden #netneutrality'

It's been a long and interesting decade of tweeting about the subject, but from now on, hit this link

Quartz - Tirole on how to regulate platforms

But at the platform level, competition confronts the existence of large returns to scale and/or network externalities, leading to natural monopoly situations and a winner-take-all scenario. Network externalities can be direct: I am on Facebook or Twitter because you also are; I will use Uber or Lyft if many drivers do so. Network externalities can also be indirect: We may not care directly about the presence of other users on the platform, but that presence leads to improved services, as in the case of many apps or delivery services. For example, I want to use Google’s search engine or Waze if you also use them, as the quality of predictions improves with the number of users.

Natural monopoly situations lead to widespread market power, and a concomitant willingness to lose money for a long time to “buy” the prospect of a future monopoly position—think of Amazon or Uber.

https://qz.com/1310266/nobel-winning-economist-jean-tirole-on-how-to-regulate-tech-monopolies/ 

Petty's Grievances: The 5G Hopes & Fears of Vodafone UK's CTO | Light Reading

Petty's Grievances: The 5G Hopes & Fears of Vodafone UK's CTO | Light Reading: "What now looks certain is that Vodafone -- along with many other European operators -- will use 5G first as a bigger pipe in areas where mobile data is gushing like an oil blowout. That has driven Vodafone toward the "non-standalone" variant of 5G, which combines the 5G New Radio (NR) standardized in late 2017 with an existing 4G network, to support mobile broadband services in urban hotspots. This makes commercial sense because 5G is about four times as "spectrally efficient" as 4G, according to Petty, and therefore a less costly option.

Lowering operating expenses may be the only way to improve margins, in this mobile broadband scenario, as Vodafone does not expect consumer spending to rise with the introduction of 5G." 'via Blog this'

What if autonomous vehicles actually make us more dependent on cars?

What if autonomous vehicles actually make us more dependent on cars?: "Autonomous vehicles may be able to park themselves away from urban centres, but they still need to be parked – and make return journeys to collect passengers, adding empty cars to the roads and contributing to congestion and air pollution.

 And there are lots of unanswered questions about how urban systems will work with the introduction of self-driving vehicles. For example, it’s not clear how self-driving vehicles will co-exist with pedestrians and cyclists. If they are programmed to stop whenever a pedestrian or cyclist gets in their way, there will be pressure to further separate vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.

The vision of future cities in the 2050s may then start to look more and more like the vision of the 1950s, with futuristic new models dominating the foreground, while human activities such as walking and cycling are relegated to concrete overpasses and gloomy subways." 'via Blog this'

Zero Rating, Net Neutrality, and the Chilean Regulation: Marco Correa Pérez (Wikimedia)

"The Chilean net neutrality regulation is one of the first national legislative efforts to recognize the principle of preventing
arbitrary discrimination of Internet traffic. One of the main challenges in interpreting and implementing this law within
Chile has been the regular practice of zero-rating, in which certain telecommunications providers prioritize certain
applications through free data. Although this practice was initially characterized as a breach of net neutrality by
the regulatory body (the Subsecretariat of Telecommunications (Subtel)), zero-rating is still practiced by mobile
telephone companies as part of their subscription offers.

This white paper summarizes the research and findings of
a larger academic project that seeks to analyze both the legal status of zero-rating in Chile and the evolution of the
Subtel criteria, which has led to the proliferation of this practice in the country" 'via Blog this'