Verizon and their morse code press release...Hmm

Use your secret decoder skills to hear what Verizon has to say about the recent FCC proceedings.

http://arstechnica.com/business/201...ous-response-to-fcc-in-morse-code-dated-1934/

 

What "they" have to say don't matter. What has not been widely reported is that the FCC has asserted that the Internet is now a utility. Get THAT?.... a... U-T-I-L-I-T-Y.

This means, for the first time, - local city and town governments can now become ISP's and setup their own systems.

Currently, this is illegal in over half the states (within the USA) because it wasn't a U-T-I-L-I-T-Y.... Get it?

In nearly every country in the world, the Internet is regulated by some government agency. America was the very last because Congress didn't want to fund the FCC to do so because of corporate pressure.

Net "Neutrality" is was really just a red herring.

Soon your local government will be free to setup their own wireless internet and open them up for citizens use.

Know of anyone or group who has any rf comm experience? hmmmm? Start doing research on Google and get your club to contact the local city manager or mayor to offer your expertise.

Hopefully, next year, we will see some really cool projects getting started and hopefully USA can catch up to Africa or India. (Europe and Asia is so far ahead, it will take years but at least we are getting started)

K5BIZ - www.bandconditions.com

 

Now what could possibly go wrong?

 

It also enables a lot of localities who already assess a local tax on Utilities such as power, gas, phone (including cellular) and Cable TV to now assess that on Internet, including those who have it bundled with any of those services.

So not only can local government possibly setup their own, they can choose not to and tax it instead. They have been doing it in Stockton City Limits for years.

Should make it easier on Comcast and AT&T since up till now they have had to break down the cost of the bundle in order to properly tax what was eligible and what wasn't. Now that Internet is a utility, they don't have to do that anymore.

 

I'm trying to think of the worst government public service I've ever experienced... DMV perhaps? It was no where near as bad as Comcast customer service. To cancel our service we had to stand in line for 90 minutes at our local Comcast service center to return our equipment. And then they tried to charge us the following month a penalty for not returning the equipment!

Comcast -- The Worst Company in the Universe ™

At least the bar has been set low for the municipalities that decide to give it a go.

And then there's Verizon. We live in a semi-rural area where the only broadband options are satellite or Verizon wireless. $297 a month for our home internet, and capped at 60 gigabytes of data ($15 for every gigabyte we go over that). I would love, love, love to see our community establish a local broadband service.

 

Verizon's manually typewritten translation is a nice touch. Maybe I should ask if they have a job for someone with a commercial radiotelegrapher's license. But somehow I don't think they'd give a very polite answer. Whatever the arguments regarding the FCC decision, they really do come off as sore losers.

 

I'm all for it. Why? Because, I live in an area of WV/VA that has minimal, if any, access to the Internet.

This past Saturday I was at a regional meeting of a large nonprofit volunteer organization. Several people spoke up that most of their volunteers did not have access to e-mail or the Internet.

To me, this is like implementation of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) over 100 years ago.

I grew up in an isolated rural community on the shores of Lake Superior where we didn't have electricity or phone when I was born. It took the 1935 Rural Electrification Act (REA - and Ready Kilowatt) to get electricity to my rural area in about 1950. I believe it was about 1953-54 before we finally got a phone's on an 8-party line.

If it werent for these actions we could very likely be a 3rd world country today!

I am lucky to live in an area with 1.5 MB DSL and minimal, but mostly usable cell service.

 

$15 a gigabyte over? That's ridiculous!

I feel this will have an up side and a down side but I tend to trust the FCC more than the big internet corporations.

 

so, no one was able to justify building out service to the area with 5 people and a few goats, and now everyone else has to pay for the fact that you chose to live there?

 

True, people choose to live in the country. You should be glad. Where would you be without farmers? Eating bytes for breakfast or drinking water from our polluted rivers instead of drinking milk? No, not everyone in the country is a farmer. But virtually everyone in rural area's contribute to the tax base and economy of this country just like you "City Folk" do (I assume you are one from your answer anyway). That makes it worthwhile. Like we used to say in the military -- everyone has a place on the team and needs to pull their load. Everyone on the team shares in both the good an bad. (And no, I'm not a farmer. I just respect what they do for the rest of us.)

Anyway, Net Neutrality isn't really about where you live. Of course big business and government will try and get some money out of the internet. I'm all for a level speed playing field so the little guy can be heard. To me, that is far more important for freedom (on multiple levels) in the long run. We can still fight the battle of how much it cost, but wouldn't have had a chance to hear the little guy if Net Neutrality hadn't been passed.

N4XL

 

My parents used to have dialup, then painfully slow DSL, before moving out of the Sierra Nevada and to Texas.

You take what you can get. If I was able to live up there (and have a job, obviously!) I'd tolerate slower internet.

 

The scariest part of this is that I don't know what the rules that were passed really *are* about. Tagging these rules with the term "Net NeutralitY" is optimistic at best.

No one disagrees that farms are important, but you seriously do not want to be taxed at the same rate as "city folk" do you, if in fact you are getting few of the services?

I mean, tax really should be justifiable based on services the local government renders, and not just "paying a fair share" because everyone else does, right? (yeah, riiiiiight )

So, back to Net Neutrality, the one side of the coin is that Companies shouldn't get fast lanes on the internet by paying more.

Conversely, companies that consume and/or generate enough traffic to degrade *your* service, should pay more, right? Net Neutrality, in some forms, again I'm not sure
what these rules will impose, takes some of the teeth out of the ISPs ability to charge for what it actually costs to provide service to a particular company.
That was the gist of the problem with netflix and comcast. Netflix is charged for the big pipes they demand in order to provide service. They then changed
their server configuration (belief was they were trying to 'optimize' and lower cost), degraded their own service in the process and then pointed the finger
at the ISP as being the bad guys!

Somehow, this is not "neutral", ie companies presence on the internet makes it not neutral for everybody, and in the process this slogan has morphed
into a "fairness" doctrine of sorts, now having government somehow regulate this "fairness" ... yeah riiiiight.

ok, I'm really looking forward to government building out ISPs and charging me for what I don't need like they already do with the school systems
(real digression here, but seriously, do our schools need astroturf or equivalent on middle school fields???), or other services they provide?

The more basic the services are, the less the government has to do, the better off.

But for high tech? Really?

 

They should not have to pay the ISP on the OTHER side of the transport. They are already paying a lot to their ISP. Forcing them to pay the USERS ISP breaks how the internet works.
It would likely be a downhill slope from there.

 

You understand the issues here. In the US we have worse Internet access than Romania and more expensive.

The fact that municipalities will now be able to offer Internet will provide the giants like Verizon and Comcast with competition instead of the near monopolies they have now.
Competition is good, and not allowing corporations to throttle or censor Internet content is good as well.

 

Folks , you don't need government approval to setup an ad hoc network. Hams in Austin Texas have been doing it and writing about on QST and CQ for years. Now the public and government can get in the act in a big way.

The DOWNSIDE will be that the public ( and local governments ) will start using overlapping ham frequencies and think it's OK.

To stop that, hams -MUST- get out in front and draw our bounder lines in the sand. Setup our own networks. Otherwise it -WILL- be OK to steal our frequencies.

Don't expect the FCC to protect you. I think even the ARRL is behind the curve on this one.

OK HERE IT IS... PLEASE READ...

http://www.cheapinternet.com/fcc-strikes-down-state-laws-against-municipal-broadband


Overturned by the FCC decision were arcane regulations and exorbitant taxes designed to inhibit or prohibit municipal broadband networks in twenty states. Were the laws and taxes passed as a result of checkbook campaigning on the part of Comcast, Time Warner and other large cable television companies? The answer seems clear to us, but you’re free to reach your own conclusions.


It is expected that dozens — perhaps hundreds — of communities across the nation will note this decision and begin planning their own municipal broadband networks.

HAM RADIO MICROWAVES UP FOR GRABS (YA THINK?)