Hello and welcome to cross talk where all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle the single most important social equalizer of our time the internet is under grave threat the decision by the federal Communications Commission essentially gives Internet Service providers the keys to the internet without Net Neutrality will be Economic Opportunity divide only widen for all. Stocking Net Neutrality im joined by my guest who rivera in new york he is the editorial director for reactionary times and a news max columnist and in tampa we have Scott Rickard he is a former american intelligence linguist right gentlemen crosslike rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate scott let me go to you first in tampa first i want to kind of express my bewilderment but maybe it should and shouldnt be will be looking at Mainstream Media covering this story on Net Neutrality a lot of stories out there but the meaning of it seems rather moot. To me and its i think its because so many of these news outlets are owned by Internet Service providers ok comcast and others like that here i mean what is the significance of this move because i think you know an era of the internet and as i said in my introduction i mean one of the great social equalizers of our time is under threat and maybe well tell our grandchildren i remember the golden years go ahead scott well thats interesting i mean its very multifaceted obviously the Media Companies i have a very symbiotic relationship with the carrier. Theres this this relationship goes a long way they pay a lot of money even for local news you know its up to like seven dollars charge just for local news or rebroadcast the cost Cable Companies so you have a real close symbiotic relationship with individuals who are profiting from a Current Business so a lot of this really has more to do with the legality of rebroadcast the copyright component and obviously the economics theyre trying to transfer of the upgrade of their networks to the economic wages of of the people thats whats really happened here and when you talk about a fast lane versus a slow lane lets be clear here that they are of seeds are written very clearly once youre up on the network the quality of service is actually built in the bandwidth is there you know each strand of fiber will give you ten gigabit theyve pulled a lots of multi a modem but mostly single mode fiber around the country this goes well right past everyones homes and they can install the equipment on the corners that will absolutely handle the quality of service whats interesting is that the companies that when youre trying to get faster speeds today are actually making you pay for that equipment by charging exorbitant installation fees so thats really whats happened is that technology is very simple to give people a Quality Service but what theyre up against is theyre trying to obviously make more money from something that doesnt really need to happen very much like enron very much like ethanol and very much like unfortunately the carbon tax charging for our in the United States i guess is how the americans have done this ok we have one and we have julio dissenting and thats what we wanted on this program really let me go to uni york you need to follow the four weeks ago i moved some more we explode here guys hang on you know julio i perfectly understand that i s ps this is a business in its Serious Business and its an important business for our time my most important concern is. To make sure that everyone gets to stay in on this platform here and and and this is what a lot of people worried about when it comes to Net Neutrality are we going to have people left behind because there are lots of communities in the United States that dont have the best quality internet and if theyre facing higher prices for not an improvement in quality that leaves them out thats my primary concern i have other concerns as well after this long introduction of my part my friend go ahead julio in new york. Well you know what that sounds very conspiratorial there was what scott was talking about listen the fact of the matter is the people that are getting hurt are people that are due to that neutrality are people in rural areas people that are in urban areas that are underdeveloped i mean the fact of the matter is were already paying extra for better levels of service thats already been happening because if you get Business Class intra you know high Speed Internet you pay a little extra and you get a little bit better Quality Service its not like everybodys getting the same level of service all across the board it hasnt been like that and didnt think about the twenty plus years before two thousand and fifteen when they put in this additional regulation the internet for arrived its not like taking it away is going to make the thing explode i mean this is really alarmist nonsense that theyre just another reason to attack donald trump saying that hes doing something dangerous its really theirs and theres not going to be any consequence the average person is not going to feel any difference because of this guy i dont see it and i dont see the trump connection here so clearly here i theres a lot of theres a lot of people in red and blue states that are concerned about this here you know scott the argument you know that Net Neutrality slows down investment i mean if you look at the bottom lines of the major piece i mean look at their stock prices are doing pretty well here and since two thousand and Fifteen Investment into infrastructure of these grids you know has dipped only a little bit here it is down to five percent what it would i would say is that he does not assert his years of argument since the ruling in two thousand and fifteen things havent been that bad then you have a google and facebook and so on and so on and so forth saying that theyre there and they were are worried that the eye of peace will not be held accountable you know title two that everyone talks about go ahead scott well i dont deny the fact that there are any issues with a. Rural areas not getting speed but lets be clear here that the American Government has invested millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial companies the acquisitions have been tremendous you look at Small Companies like sentry tell that gobbled up qwest that gobbled up a lot of the c lex around the southeast century tel is now one of the Largest Companies in the country from a Telecom Perspective obviously john malone and paul allen have done quite well gobbling up some Cable Companies recently so you have a very serious amount of investment that theres not only coming from the u. S. Government but also coming from private investors and this Net Neutrality thing is absolutely more about the legality of things lets be clear here they are theyre not able to throttle back the pirate days or the codys or these types of things that are theyre basically bashing into their their income so theyre going after the of law in a way to actually throttle these things back and block them out lets be clear as well i cannot find our t. V. On a on a Cable Network across the United States our t. Is not syndicated on the Cable Networks in the United States lets be clear here as well i can easily get our t. V. I know the guys i ski with these people out in denver helping out the u. S. Disabled ski team so these are individuals that are absolutely blocking this type of access for r. T. And this will be another thing this is a freedom of speech issue for me because in the future if they dont want us to get our t. On the internet they can actually throttle that back as well and thats the only place i can get that so thats my biggest fear ok thats a fear of mine and i was actually to get there and everything go in we can go there right now who we want you know one of the i said my major concern was equal access and a subsidiary concern is you know are we going to see what comcast than eighteen bryce and what they want us to see and they could give them preference ok because im sorry because if comcast likes. Wants to support m s n b c i think the whole world is in trouble here the question is can they stick can will they stay focused on business or would they be political ok go ahead Julio Wallace and theres been a couple of isolated incidents there was the vonage eighty and tea thing that was a Google Wallet thing yes but to have this. Broad sweeping you know regulations over everyone in advance listen we have antitrust laws you know we have the f. T. C. Which was originally in charge of the internet before fall under the f. T. C. There or the f. C. C. Rather under title two you know we we dont need another additional layer of regulation listen there were twenty two s ps that went to go to the to the f. C. C. And they met with. That they have you know smaller customer bases less than a thousand people they cant grow because banks wont loan them money because of the uncertainty that comes along with this so i mean its hurting america its hurting jobs its hurting the level of Service Every day and do anything positive and listen before we had it we did have these widespread issues of you know i s ps undermining you know their competitors. Ok scott you know it but one of the Major Concerns is that youre going to have the major ions being that you get to force you to buy their products here and they will throttle and disappear oh that the competition see this is you know the internet really thrives when there is competition no one is really to buy any you know see that you can you cant see something you cant buy the problem here is the again every step of the way its equal access if its political ideas or products or being able to be on the internet in the first place go ahead scott one minute before we go to the break well of the Competitive Local Exchange carriers and they did try this they do regulated in one nine hundred ninety six really so theres a theres a real serious problem from the deregulation from ninety six but at the same time when you look at current competition a. O. L. Built their networks upon advanced Network Systems advanced Network Systems was they were the guys that built arpanet for the folks at both paranaque and newman and managed it for the guys so this is a this is not a competition environment obviously time warner has some of the best. Actual landlines and best actual fiber across the country after buying the arpanet infrastructure certainly these guys. Have some great infrastructure because theyre rare road connections so this is not a competitive environment these are these are individuals who understand in a much higher level ive attended meetings at the National SecurityTelecommunications Advisory Council and so i understand these these types of issues and the most americans they dont understand this so when you talk about competition though there is no competition theres absolute control and there were things that i find is that these types of individuals that are controlling it can control their access to and they jump in here way to go to a short break or floss no i mean i dont know you dont have your chance after the short break im sure people can you know or discussion of the future of the internet stay on our. Across he will song alone events i can go over the utilities many bottles brought up locals are ready to stand up for the basic human rights the access to water its about water but its also over much more a lot its about the hurt and the redistribution of all of west birds their debt down towards the one dollar. A plate for many clubs over the years so i know the game inside guides. Football isnt only about what happens on the pitch for the final school its about the passion from the fans its the age of the super money kill the narrowness and spend the trip to the twenty million one playa. Its an experience like nothing else on to because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful guy great so it will transfer. To me its going to. Join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and ill be speaking to get from the world of politics sport business im show business ill see you then. Hey everybody im stephen both. Test hollywood guy you suspect. Proud american first of all im just george bush and honored to do so this is my buddy max famous financial guru where shes a little bit different on this day and. With all the drama happening in our country and she brood have fun every day americans. Hopefully start to bridge the gap this is the great american. Welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered on people beltre month were discussing the state of the internet. Lets go back to you in new york and scott had the last word in the first part of the program and you were dissenting please go while i was just going to say we cant fall stern environment that creates money not police i mean these smaller guys still at least have to have a fighting chance listen theres over four thousand individual i s ps in this country you know obviously we have the big dogs you know and theyre the ones that control the majority of it but hows our consumers ever going to have a choice you know if these smaller people can even compete in the market and i on the side you know i just wanted to bring up that you know going back to something that scott said earlier isnt it ironic or isnt it really not really that surprising that we would give up you know forgive foreign access to our internet infrastructure in the ninetys under the clintons is not like follow a pattern that we wound up seeing going to she was secretary. So you do a different topic and id like it id like it thats a good one theyre ok all right you know scott you know what doesnt it doesnt you know i think. Theres always patterns with that. People you know scott you know ok we just heard from the you know theres a lot of very small i a speech but you know what its really almost a monopoly like environment its the same thing with facebook at the same thing with google here is another thing im concerned is more and more concentration and now it looks like the f. C. C. Reports to the eye is peace thats what it looks like after this ruling here it is and you know shedding responsibility i mean they have to have f. C. C. Is supposed to make sure that people have access to broadband ok i mean on the on the on the very top of their responsibilities. You know and so i wonder looking at you know shouldnt they be these Big Companies be broken up and we had standard oil we had other Major Companies that were broken up i mean it seems to me theres too much concentration of power too much concentration of money and its bad for the marketplace and for consumers go ahead scott. Well theyve tried that they did break up ma bell bell was broken up and then read. A actually at war divorce they remarried under age n. T. And all the all the bells came back together they also tried that with the seal ex and they a lot of people did make some decent money but obviously those have been all basically gobbled back up they did the same thing in the cable industry those all started out very local and you had advance newhouse one of the ones early on here in the florida area but theyve also the time warner isnt the individuals that own the backbone impose structure you know its very similar like you brought up with standard oil they own the Railway System that was transporting the oil and thats how they control the industry well the same thing goes for the Backbone Infrastructure for the internet that is owned by a very small select group of people who are controlling that transport on those Backbone Infrastructures and you know that infrastructure is very easily managed you look at the kinds of inner connect that they have you know each single fiber will do ten gigabit of. Bandwidth and they have tons of single mode fiber polled where they need it and they can always pull more so theres not a problem with the bandwidth issue i think what it comes down to is like you said with rural areas and individuals i live in a neighborhood for example that hasnt been upgraded for the Telecom Industry so i can only get seven megabit to my house but on the cable side i can get one hundred megabit to my house which is plenty for these days i mean theres plenty of transport to my home at this point seven megabit i would be challenged i mean obviously i can stream as well across that is the quality of service on the streaming that i can get from my my Cable Provider when i go out to cody and other places obviously the origination point and the terminations point will determine where the band with quality is going to be so i cant get as good a quality but that the way that they buffer and they do there can bring stuff in even from across the planet so obviously when youre getting out. Rural areas it takes more investment are the Companies Investing in a row or areas absolutely not theyre investing in five g. Theyre going to make Everything Wireless theyre actually going to put the wires out of business in the neighborhood by basically installing stuff on the odds of getting it was moving in a different direction i mean we could get kind of an internet apartheid in the us is this what its leading to. Not of the certainly think its going to i dont know listen i think that now its going to be a little bit more competitive i think you know the Smaller Companies or even if they wanted to combine and band together perhaps and you know go and fight the big machine lets say you know like i said its better to not have an environment where the monopoly just gets more powerful and thats basically what Net Neutrality did i mean if you look at it in the billions of dollars of lost investment you know and all the studies that came out and granted people you know complained about the studies because they were funded by you know the i s ps but this interesting. Point more money lets see what money can do here scott you know i mean. I looked at. Something that is unnecessary to charge for who you are dissenting again on the program go ahead. Listen when i before he became you know involved with the f. C. C. He was based anti Net Neutrality back in twenty fifteen and it was a group made up of the smaller piece youre not really getting the end of the stuff so much from the big dogs you know because theyre the ones that are a profit up by this type of you know all overlapping unnecessary legislation or or rule regulation rather they only really hurts their competitors you know so it may be if they have to go through a couple extra hoops they dont mind doing it because they can afford to do it is so long as it crushes their competition and they never have to worry about not being on top and thats the issue here ok well scott i mean i again i mean were kind of looking at it from different points of view here because i see you know its not all that can pet a tip here i mean whats competitive is their services and you know they will compete the have Different Services and and and content here but i mean were looking at you know i know there are a lot of biased piece but you know theres a few elephants in the room and Everything Else is very very marginalized and it seems to me the f. C. C. Is again walking back its going in the wrong direction because i dont see that these smaller guys are going to be protected i mean keep betting though ok ok well thats good a bit if they go make sure but again going back to the beginning of the program if everybody has access ok and i dont see that happening again i see a step back where people go to get really Crappy Service and you have to pay a lot of money for it thats not good again everyone should have access to broadband everybody should have access to water and air to go ahead scott. Wall its a broad view on the one out of the smaller eyes are you going to the or its really not a lot of the smaller bees were a lot of the smaller pieces were against that neutrality because it took a lot for them to deploy their infrastructure you know they couldnt keep up and they had to rent space in order to provide the quality of service that people were demanding and they have to rent space from the big guys and its not cheap i mean they theyre renting quality and theyre in their Colocation Centers and theyd like to have their own Colocation Centers and have their own infrastructure and when the smaller guys do get together and i dont blame them they dont want to have the same demands put on them by Net Neutrality which i understand that they can afford it and that the same time theyre not going to win this game theyre just going to be gobbled up as soon as they get enough customers anyway so the fact is is that this is the status quo in american capitalism that you see and this is how its always been it is i dont think its going to change much with the f. C. C. Ruling i think the most interesting thing here that everybody is missing is that this is a legality issue this is how the speech will legally block content that they dont want on there to let networks they will legally block and throttle back things that they dont want to prioritize on their network. Other its a lot of the supporters of Net Neutrality say going to go to court what are their chances of winning all right well listen i want to bring that up from the legality issue you know forget that neutrality there was a decision recently between two Software CompaniesEnigma Software and model whereby its one of my columns up on newsmax where an interpretation of the Communications Decency act actually allowed one company legally to engage in a torturous interference against a competitor malware bytes when after a unfairly and basically it were protected by the Communications Decency act so whether or not we have Net Neutrality protecting us or not these i. S. P. You can go ahead and do that and then just have coverage under that law until its a piece of legislation that was poorly written there is actually a mistake in the way it was written which i pointed out in my column but they would have protection under the Communications Decency act even if Net Neutrality is not there ok well it would do you think that they could they will this will be overturned through the courts ok i want to ask maybe scott real quickly and then maybe scott can finish up what about the quote the in the court. Of the court that i dont why do why i dont want neutrality song fine were going to go back to the way it was and we got last two seconds go ahead scott ok so youve had several judges speak out against it already. In support of that your trial it also you had governors actually supported that neutrality certainly a good lawyer knows the law but a great lawyer knows the judge so is the relationships with anything that is for the people of florida good and that will be the case of that in this area line. Thats the best ending on this program in a very long time thats all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guest in new york and in tampa and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r. T. C. You next time your member cost. About one hundred fifty of them i did not. Know my mother. On that image if one came it up about this missile but came away a lot of money will be still slot. Machine of slate not a single thing posted. That. Ratified and beginning to it doesnt it doesnt loom so some on the forum and on sunday the let alone a lot of people doubting that something is in the. Hands. And the most will go down. As become a hot item stomping. Commitment in my own within the club and in the police news. From some small town somehow must post some solar system a guide. To. Come in the night club to learn how one of the phenomenon of hitting. The world is a finite place and yet he marries capacity to generate garbage seems infinite oh my god how are those two going to work how do you square that circle. Former u. S. Intelligence chief James Clapper claims President Trump is being handled with an axe it. On the First Anniversary of the deadly Christmas Market attack in berlin germanys chancellor merkel that there were errors in the governments handling of the atrocity assy his from people who lost loved ones that day. U. K. Parliamentary Committee Talks fake news and russias alleged meddling in numerous countrys election but struggles to even get some of its basic facts straight. Simeonoff used to say he was would like to offer the all to all interview of the same people she was told that the germans were with him