Thursday, December 3, 2015

And the job hunt drags on

I've been back in Bonn for two and a half weeks now, and a lot of my time at home has been spent looking for work and doing little things, like study German, that might help me get a job. There is definitely a real chance for me to find work in Bonn or in a nearby city, but the trouble is finding it sooner, rather than later. I'm definitely getting anxious to hear back from a few different places that I've applied to a couple weeks back, because the longer I wait, the more I feel like I'm not going to get even an interview. And it seems like the quality of opportunities is shrinking too, since I've already applied to my favorite places. Graduate degrees don't mean shit if you're in the wrong place, but not finding even an internship in something I'm interested in here is even more depressing. Going back to the US also reeks of failure, unless I can grab a nice job somewhere, but that is also a long process.

Woof.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Berlin Part II - FSFE

The whole point of me going to Berlin was because I had an internship at the Free Software Foundation of Europe. The details of my work aren't exactly sexy or exciting, so I won't bore you the details. Basically they are a non-profit aimed at empowering users to control their devices (by switching to Free Software). The idea is that Free Software allows people to see and modify the software in whatever way they choose. This is great because it allows a very high level of transparency in software, given that you can understand the code. This transparency is pretty useless if you can't understand the information. But overall, the concept of sharing knowledge and co-creating better products and services through Free Software means is pretty cool, and it can lead to a lot of great innovations that proprietary companies like Microsoft and Apple might try to lock down for greater market shares.

Even though I'm not a verified computer geek, I still found things to do at FSFE.  Since they are an advocacy group, rather than a creator of software, a lot of the work involves writing up news items and press releases, or publishing comments about particular issues that are going on in various parts of Europe. So a lot of my work was to read up on whats going on, digest it, and turn it into something understandable for others. In the process I learned a lot about Free Software programs and systems myself. I used a Linux OS for the first time, got a lot of practices entering commands in the terminal and managing data on a subversion network which controls the shared data among our team.  It was definitely challenging at first, going from 0 experience to a full Free Software environment in a few days, but I think it was pretty valuable. I learned a lot of shortcuts for writing up HTML and publishing content online.

The office itself was pretty small, just one room with enough space for about 6 desks and some shelves for promotional material like leaflets and stickers.  I worked with 2 trainees most of the time, one guy from Italy and a girl from Estonia, and the President, from Germany. Everyone was really nice and helpful, and being in such a close environment meant it was easy to ask questions when they arose. On the downside, close quarters meant shared germs and there were definitely a few sicknesses going around. Some days 3 or 4 people were sick, with 2 of them completely out of the office, combined with typical German holidays meant it got pretty quiet at times. The office itself was pretty centrally located in Berlin, just in the northern part of Mitte (the downtown neighborhood), and it was surrounded by loads of hip restaurants and cafes, so if you want to pay 5 euros for mediocre 'craft' beer or coffee, you were in the right location.

However, on my last day, I did go out with the two trainees to a nearby Belgian bar, that had an amazing selection of Belgian beers that were completely reasonable in price. I consider 5.50 euros for a full 12oz 12% something something to be a very good deal. Or 4 euros for a 9% something blonde something. 10/10, would try again. Love me some Belgian beers

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Berlin, part I

I arrived back in Bonn on Saturday evening, after a lengthy, but enjoyable bus ride from Berlin.  I know I haven't updated this blog in a while, and it's mostly because whenever I started to work on writing something, I never felt motivated enough to finish it. Therefore, I have a lot to cover in this post, and it'll probably get broken up into 2 parts at the very least. I guess the part about Berlin will be more like a story. Later I'll start talking about my work at the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). And lastly I'll get into my graduation experience, job searching, and some odds and ends. So stay tuned!

Well, I can start out by saying that overall, my experience in Berlin was quite a bit more disappointing than I had anticipated. This is probably due to my own personal choices and situation during the three months I was there rather than the city itself failing me. 

It started on the night I arrived in the city. I was at the S-bahn station near the main bus station trying to buy a ticket, when this little middle-aged woman some baggy, colorful, and dusty clothing comes up and starts pestering me to buy one of these "leftover" train tickets from tourists that have left already and are still valid (according to her). I told her I would rather buy a new ticket from the machine. Definitely don't want to get ripped off on my first trip. She asks me what I do in Berlin and I told her I would start working and she immediately tells me: "Ah so that is why you are not cool".  That response kind of set the tone for my experience in Berlin: You're a square if you work and don't chill with the hip crowd.

 For anyone who doesn't know, finding apartments in Germany can be very difficult, especially if you only need it for very specific time period (like I did), so actually being happy with your first apartment (especially in Berlin) is almost never going to happen, but that's a different story. Since I could barely afford a cheap apartment, and I was scared about not finding one at all and having to live in a hostel for a couple weeks, so I took the first apartment that fit my budget and was available.
It was a bit like a hostel, I shared a room with 3 other people and paid too much money for it. Overall it wasn't too bad. Like college dorm room style. The guy in the bunk bed below me snored very loudly but I adapted (and by adapt I meant I stopped giving a shit). There was hot water, heating, and a bed. If the guy who I was paying rent to could live like that 10 years, then I sure as hell could stay for 3 months.

Outside of the apartment, Berlin was fine. With around 3.5 million people, it was the biggest city I've really spent a lot of time in. I lived in Wedding, pretty much central north of the main "downtown" area. My neighborhood was mostly immigrants, heavy on the Turkish side. There were tons of shady looking cafes, late night shops, and casinos lined up back to back down the main streets. During the daytime the sidewalks were crowded with people. There were usually groups of moms in headscarves  taking up most of the sidewalk with their gigantic 2-child strollers and some older children hanging around nearby. Some places got really crowded around fruit and vegetable stands, which provided a huge selection of ridiculously cheap produce. Kilos of oranges, a dozen varieties of apples, bananas and melons were always for sale, and towards November the clementines started coming out too. It was at one of these crowded intersections between fruit stand and the family brigade of strollers that I saw a guy who was working a fruit stand ash his cigarette at his side, right onto a kids face while his mom was pushing him by. When so many people smoke, there are so many children in strollers, and so little space on the sidewalks, I'm actually surprised I hadn't seen it happen before. It gave me a good chuckle, because I think I was the only one who noticed any of it.

Though I was in a "bad" part of town, I never felt unsafe. Everyone tended to their own business, and I never saw anything bad happen. We had security guards in a lot of stores just watching out for troublemakers and breaking down cardboard boxes, but I only saw a few messed up addicts try to pull any shit.  That said, I didn't go out much at night. I didn't have any money, or friends, so there wasn't much for me to do. This was also fine. I worked during the week, and even though weekends got a little boring, I spent 5 weekends visiting friends in Erfurt, or Erika in Bonn.

I also saw, but mostly heard, the planes. Tegel airport is quite close to my apartment, and walking to and from work I often heard airplanes flying overhead and every time I always got that wanderlust to be on one. I didn't even know where I wanted to go, maybe back to the US, maybe just being out of Berlin for awhile would be sufficient, but I just wanted to be on a plane going somewhere.

In early September my friend from the Willy Brandt School, Krishna, came to visit. He had a close friend from his high school in Nepal who was in Berlin for a language course before starting his PhD in Leipzig. So I went out on a Friday night to visit him at the student dorms nearly an hour away. It was great weather, and we had a lot of whiskey and beer to drink. He bought a bottle of Jim Beam specifically because he knew I liked it. I stayed the night and the next day we all went to the lake nearby. Again, the weather was sublime and we sat all day at this lake, hanging out with our feet in the water and drinking beer. They cooked a bunch of Nepalese curry throughout the weekend, and I slept really well in the evening. It was probably the best weekend while I was in Berlin.

A few weeks later I met up with the same Nepalese guy and another friend of his and actually did a bit of sightseeing. I checked out all the major sights, the Spree River, the cathedral, the Brandenburger Tor, the German Bundestag, the Tiergarten, and the Siegesäule. All of them were quite pretty and I really enjoyed visiting them.  Of course, I liked this part of the city, and I think my favorite part was hanging out in front of the Bundestag (German Parliament building). It was a huge building that was built with a glass roof, to represent transparency within its walls. Directly in front of the building was a large open grassy area that people just hang out on. It seemed like there was quite a few people there, but it could have just been because it was a Sunday. I'll let some of these pictures at the bottom do the talking.

After that day of sightseeing, I didn't go out much. The honeymooning phase of seeing a new city never really kicked in, and I had a lot of other necessities to take care of, like writing my final report for school, job searching, and applications to fill out. After finishing at the FSFE, I wanted to start work right away, but I knew that was unlikely to be the case. But I still had to make the most of it what I could, so I prepared a few applications for jobs in Bonn, and spent the rest of my spare time studying German, taking (read: trying) some free online courses, and dulling my senses to my less than ideal living situation.

Overall I found Berlin to be an interesting place, but I think I was there at the wrong time. It's probably way more exciting, with tons of great things to do if you have money and friends. I wasn't unhappy, but definitely a bit unfulfilled. I only met one person who was from Berlin (actually from Potsdam, but its in the train network), most of the people I saw or met were from a different country, probably looking for a better place to live. I don't think Berlin actually has a ton of great opportunities to start a career, except for a few specialized jobs or in something related to politics. But if you come from very little, or just want to chill out and work at a restaurant or coffee shop, you will probably find something viable there. But I don't entirely blame the city for that, the whole WWII and especially the Cold War really ruined a lot of potential that capital cities are often expected to have. There were definitely some beautiful things in Berlin, but not the same kind of grandeur you might find in Paris or London. It definitely will make up for that with multitudes of cool people, y'know the kind of people who recommend wearing sunglasses at night, or where being a male with skinny jeans, roughed up leather boots, and a plain black t-shirt actually makes you a square (aka me).  I'm happy to be back in Bonn, where people don't try so hard to fit a city-stereotype, and where the Rhein provides all the natural beauty a small town Iowa boy needs.













Thursday, August 6, 2015

Berlin

So next week I'll move to Berlin to begin my internship, and I'm actually pretty excited.  I found an apartment for a decent price within walking distance of my work, which will save me a good chunk of money, and hopefully I have a cool roommate. I still don't know exactly what the room looks like, I've only seen 2 pictures online, and I pretty much took the apartment based on price and location, and because it fit the amount of time I was going to be in Berlin perfectly. I'll start working at the Free Software Foundation of Europe and even though I still do not exactly know what tasks I'll be doing, I'm still quite excited to work. I think the theme is very important and interesting, and most importantly it'll get me some experience working in an digital content related field. And with any luck, I'll be able to find a job or other good work experience somewhere else in Berlin or Bonn.  I think it would great to work at a smaller digital content rights organization, like the Creative Commons or something, but I don't know how likely that is. In reality, I would take any job as long as they pay enough for me to actually make a little money, rather than borrowing from people.

So during these next 3 months of internship, I'll have a lot of applications to write to find a real job for after the internship ends, but I'm optimistic, for now.

Das Auto

One of the nice things about summer is that its warm enough for all the nice cars and motorcycles to come out of winter storage.  While I was in Erfurt, I didn't see, or maybe didn't pay attention, to too many nice old cars except for the old commie, East German car, the Trabant. But since moving to Bonn, especially in my particular neighborhood, I've seen tons of cool cars I've never seen before. I'm a big fan of the old Mercedes-Benz sedans in all shapes and sizes. My favorites have been the S200 or S220 (I think) and there are a couple nice ones on our very street. Like this baby blue one.



There is another one, that is slightly older than this one in dark gray with some big ol' tail light fins. But I didn't take a picture of it because it's not is super great condition. And for some reason both still have a horseshoe stuck to the grill. I read that sometimes Mercedes-Benz will award badges to cars with a certain number of miles on it, but the horseshoe is probably related to some other club or organization.  

Also around the corner from my apartment I've seen this hilarious little 3-wheel transport car, called the Piaggio Ape, that looks just like this picture, but in white. I used to pass by it all the time on my runs and it always cracked me up because it was so little! I can't imagine even sitting in it. I guess it makes sense in some old Italian cities with tiny streets for delivering newspapers or milk or something, but now it is just a novelty car.


Lastly I've seen a few cool motorcycles and mopeds around, and now I really want a moped. When I was biking in the next town over I saw some girl with long blue hair and lots of piercings driving a Simson s50 or s51 which seemed like a super moped or a really small motorcycle. I couldn't catch a picture of it, but I saw it up close and it seemed really really cool. I really like the seat and the size. Fast enough to have a lot of fun, and but hopefully small enough I don't need a motorcycle license if I try to pick one up.  Any thoughts, Nash?



The final cool moped I've seen around a lot is a Zündapp moped. It's exactly like this picture, with that shiny blue finish and rack and all. Of course German automobiles are the best, they are so sweet to look at! 









Post-thesis-post

Yeaaaaaah... we finally made it into August, which means there is approximately 2 weeks of summer left in Germany before it returns to being 50 degrees and cloudy most of the time. I finished my thesis on time with the help from my sister and support from Erika. I don't think it was a super great thesis, but it was good enough. I'm proud that wrote nearly 22,000 words in a comprehensible fashion, and better yet, I feel like I am quite knowledgeable about net neutrality and recent FCC broadband policy. So, woo! Shortly after I submitted my thesis, Erika took a long vacation from work and we got to spend 3 weeks together in a sort of summer honeymooning phase before I head off to Berlin for my internship.  But for lack of disposable income, we spent most our time in and around Bonn, and became much more acquainted with our city.  We spent a lot of that time near the Rhein river, it being a major geographical highlight of the area.  Beaches, picnics, hills, bike riding, people watching, clouds, sunsets, and wine all topped the list of our major priorities and here is some evidence to show it!







Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Europa Park!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of joining Erika's family to visit Europa Park, one of Europe's biggest (if not the biggest) amusement parks.  Erika's mom got 4 free tickets from her work, including 40 euros worth of food vouchers, and she asked Erika and I to join her and her partner Sven.  Score. Also it was approximately one hour away from Erika's family's apartment by car. Double score. I hadn't been to an amusement part since the 8th grade trip to Adventureland, but Europa Park was a huge step up. Roller coasters are awesome, and they had a few big ones. Probably not as awesome as Cedar Point or whatever it is in Ohio, but that's a pretty American thing to do, have the biggest and fastest of something. Europa Park is smaller in size most likely, but with much more style, probably. It's divided into 13 different countries, with different architecture, styles, and attractions to match the country. Iceland was pretty awesome because thats where all the new roller coasters were, not sure why though. Also interestingly enough, the newest roller coaster located in between Iceland and Russia was built with money from the Russian gas company, Gazprom and was title "Blue Fire". They had a fancy little Gazprom exhibition hall with company propaganda and an 8 man foosball table and bouncing techno music for the entire roller coaster queue.


The entrance at 9am. It was probably high of 50F and overcast the whole day. I could start a roller coaster feeling reasonably warm, but by the time it was over I was shivering and with a wet stripe of tears from the edge of my eye to my ears.


Here is one of the roller coasters, the Silver Star. An oldie, but a goodie. That way up was very slow and suspenseful the first time around, but the drop was awesome. 



The Grimm Bros. area, mostly for kiddie rides on mushrooms and the like


I thought this was a pretty cool design for a toilet...


Italy


The Russian area was really cool. A couple roller coasters (top left corner) and directly in front is a model of the Mir station, I think. Still not sure how legit it was but it had some signatures painted on the side and some biographies inside.  


Kremlin gateway to Russland.


Finland


This big ball in France actually had a roller coaster inside of it. It was space themed and simulated a blast off. It was also awesome because of the techno music, spacemen, and because it was pitch black inside except for the strobe lights.  And the big bow tie was added this year to celebrate Europa Parks 40th anniversary this year.



Portugal's water coaster. It was fun, but quite cold afterwards. You can see the splash in this picture. Best part was that there was no line.


They even had a little parade rolling through the main streets. It's hard to see from the picture, but that girl is waving a Netto flag. Netto is a discount grocery store that Erika's mom works at once a week, and they were the ones sponsoring all the free tickets. There were hundreds of flags and banners around the park because it was "Netto Employee Appreciation Day" or something, so the park was opened specifically for Netto employees and families. I used to shop at a Netto in Erfurt and thought it was a pretty good grocery store, and now that I got some roller coaster rides out of it too, Netto just moved up a few places in the grocery store hierarchy. Aldi is shit. 




Moving into Bonn

I'm about 3 weeks late to post about our my recent move to Bonn, but I think its time I share some photos of our new place.  It's almost double the size of our old apartment, which means we had a lot of empty space when we first moved in, but after finding a new couch and a bigger dining table, the space is starting to fill up. I have no doubts that we will manage to fill it up with more side tables, comfy chairs, and lamps in the upcoming months.




When you move into a new apartment in Germany, its pretty typical not to have anything in your kitchen. No refrigerator, no oven, no sink.


Here is our sink sitting on a lawn chair in our living room. I now understand why Ikea is so damn popular in Europe: because that is the only cheap store around where you can buy your sink. 


You even have to buy countertops. From Ikea, and they only come in dimensions of 2.4m x .6m.  For reference 2.4m is almost 8 feet long. Way too long to put in a common elevator, which means carrying it awkwardly up 7 flights of stairs to your apartment.



This is after I installed the light fixture, because normally there is just a little box you have to wire your lights to. 


But at least the apartment has nice big windows facing south-westish. All that beautiful sunlight is shining on our new couch we picked up for free from down the street.  Getting it home was a bigger challenge than expected, but that story is better when I tell it in person. 


And the view from the window is pretty nice. There are some nice jogging paths up the hill by that mansion-apartment building. I went there a few days ago and it was still in its gross, muddy spring phase, but it could be nicer in the summer.


And the view from the top of the hill has a nice view over south Bonn and our neighborhood, Kessenich. All these buildings are pretty close to the Rhein river, on the far left is a UN headquarters, the tall dark one is the DHL headquarters, and the white, industrial tower is the Haribo gummy factory. Sometimes when I bike down to the river I can smell the licorice.

When the weather improves I will take some more pictures of our neighborhood. It's really nice and convenient with grocery stores, banks, pharmacies, cafes, tram lines, and a gelato shop within a couple minutes walk.  It's a real cute little neighborhood.



Monday, March 2, 2015

Net neutrality update

Good evening! A few days was a big day for Americans in the World Wide Web, when the FCC passed a vote to include high speed Internet as a common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act. This was the most important story of Feb. 26th, making headline news all across the country until that stupid "what color is this dress" thing came out of nowhere. Anyways, I just spent my last week writing about net neutrality for class, and I thought I should share some of my conclusions about what this net neutrality thing means for us. I won't talk much about the history, but more about what the FCC actually voted for and how we might be affected.

Firstly, I want to point out that when I say for net neutrality, I mean for Title II classification.  That is what we've really been talking about the whole time, should broadband Internet be classified under Title II or should it be left as is, under Title I. I make this point because all the big companies who have been named and shamed as "against net neutrality" have all made it quite clear that they are not "against" net neutrality, they just have a different vision of what that means than the people who are typically "for" net neutrality.  You can imagine what kind of political/economic blunder it would be for someone or some company to say they are against net neutrality, meaning they are against open and free Internet. C'mon, this is America we're talking about, you can't not love freedom. We just have a whole helluvalotta ideas about what freedom means, and it shows in more places than Internet policy.

Okay, so that's cleared up. What did the FCC sign when they signed the Open Internet Order? Here is an excerpt from my paper. I did some editing of the less important stuff. Warning! Lots of text incoming! (PS I removed my in-text citations to make it shorter/easier to read. I have evidence for the things I'm saying!)

 "The proposal adopted on February 26th, 2015 reaffirmed the core principles established in the 2010 Open Internet Order, that broadband providers cannot block access to legal content, they cannot throttle (provide slower access) legal content; and they cannot authorize paid prioritization (provide fast lanes) to certain content over others. These three “bright line” rules are a complement to the high transparency provision that survived the 2010 court ruling, and are now the guiding principles for an open Internet. These rules will also apply to mobile broadband, something that the original Open Internet Order did not include in 2010. 

The FCC plans to regulate Internet service according using a combination of so-called “light touch” Title II regulations, and complementing it with its previous regulatory powers from Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.  This provides the FCC the legal authority to maintain an open Internet, along with the flexibility to encourage investment and growth. Title II regulation was originally conceived in the 1930s, so the FCC will use its power to forebear, or not act upon, on over 700 regulations that do not pertain to modern Internet technology. However, it will enforce the regulations that pertain to protections against discrimination, protecting people with disabilities, open access to utility poles to competitors, and retain the power to levy taxes for infrastructure development. All the important things that the majority of people wanted. 
The statement also highlighted some key Title II provisions the FCC will not enforce in an effort to assuage the fears of many broadband providers. These include: Stating that it will not establish any sort of rate regulation or last-mile unbundling, that it does not require broadband providers to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (even though the FCC retains the power to do so under Title II), and that there will be no additional state and local taxes on broadband service. The FCC grants ISPs with significant powers to manage their network according to their technological needs, as long as the management pertains to legitimate network interests, rather than business interests. 
Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, the FCC now claims the authority to address issues related to interconnections between broadband service providers and other network services.  For the first time, the FCC will now “hear complaints and take appropriate action if it determines the interconnection activities of ISPs are not just and reasonable”." (I'll get into interconnections a little bit later.)

Great! The FCC is going to protect us! All is well in the world! Well not quite. There are still a lot of problems facing the FCC and these rules aren't go to solve them all.  So whats the problem?

"Lawsuits
The next hurdle the FCC must overcome will be the inevitable lawsuits that broadband companies will file against reclassification, or against provisions within the reclassification. Though Title II classifications provide the FCC with the strongest authority to regulate open Internet, there are still some gray areas for cable companies or ISPs to find an incongruous portion of text that can hold up in law.  The exact details of the new rules are not known, and implementation won’t take place for several months, so detailed analis of the the legal challenges is not yet possible.  But one example stands out just in the simplified text released by the FCC, that being the contradiction of FCC power to regulate “interconnections” versus forebearing on rate regulation.
The more commonly used word for interconnection is the term “peering”, where different network actors make agreements to mutually improve access speeds between their networks. Peering is generally viewed positively because both networks benefit from faster access, and many, but not all, of the peering agreements are done without any money exchanging hands. However, free peering is less common in the US than in most places in the world, meaning that networks often extract money from content providers, like Netflix, for improving the interconnections’ flow of data to consumers around country. [Here is a link to a great article about peering. I used it for my research] Under Title II, the FCC has the authority to require fair access and reasonable pricing for interconnections, and in the FCC’s open Internet statement, it declared that it would listen to and enforce claims that the interconnection is not just or reasonable on a case by case basis. However in the case that the FCC finds a paid interconnection to be unjust, it may not be able to enforce its decision to because it has already ceded the power to regulate rates. This kind of mandate discrepancy between different network actors may provide enough wiggle room for lawsuits to split FCC powers under Title II.

Fickle politics
Though most of the power to regulate broadband lay in the FCC, an independent regulatory agency, net neutrality was highly politicized issue.  As mentioned before, approval of the Open Internet Order split 3-2; Democrats to Republicans. FCC commissioner Ajit Pai’s oral statement against the order (2015) explicitly called net neutrality “Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet”. And Obama’s open address to the public in November received considerable backlash from Republicans in Congress.  Senator Ted Cruz, a particularly conservative leader went so far as to Tweet that “Net Neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not function at the speed of government” Republicans in Congress tried to block open Internet regulation through legislation but failed to do so because it lacked any sort of Democratic support.  This partisan division in Congress and within the FCC shows that net neutrality may be here today, but there is no guarantee it will remain 10 or 15 years in the future.  During Republic leadership in the early 2000s broadband Internet was deregulated in an effort to spur investment, [just the opposite of now]. Net neutrality advocates should be wary that the regulatory pendulum has swung in their favor now, but as markets and technology evolve, the struggle to protect consumers will also evolve.
 [So Leah, to answer your question, the reason it went 3-2 is because of partisanship. Not  a very exciting answer.  The FCC is an independent agency but there is definitely a revolving door with private interests. You vote against Title II, and when you're finished as commissioner you can come and sit on the board of Comcast.  John Oliver mentions that Comcast or telecoms in general are the 2nd biggest spenders in Washington. And I know somewhere in this book by Susan Crawford about Comcast she pegs them as the biggest spender.]

Unbundling the last mile
Perhaps the most damning section of the Open Internet Order is the explicit mention that the FCC will not regulate last-mile unbundling, meaning that competition (or lack of competition) between broadband service providers is not going to change any time soon for the average consumer. Part of the FCC’s mandate is to remove barriers to competition, but at this moment they are avoiding stepping on any more cable company toes. Unbundling the last-mile would require monopoly cable companies to lease the last mile sections of wire to third parties.  Allowing third parties to lease cable means they don’t have to invest in all the expensive sunken costs that attribute to a cable’s natural monopoly position.  Supporters of last-mile unbundling believe this could lead to all sorts of competition as witnessed in the European Union.  As it currently stands the majority of US consumers only have the choice between 1 or 2 service providers they can access at home , but this poor selection of service providers isn’t new to the American public, and the new net neutrality rules don’t suggest any changes are likely to happen soon. 
Even some critics of net neutrality argued that the US wouldn’t need net neutrality guarantees against discrimination if the broadband market had greater competition, and that net neutrality rules are really only applying a bandage to a wound that needs surgery. Effective last-mile unbundling will likely take considerable collaboration with Congress and the Department of Justice (which oversees competition law); perhaps the FCC is simply trying to jump one hurdle at a time so as not to deal with any more lawsuits than necessary for now."

Those are the big points I took from my research on the Open Internet Order. But really the whole thing is pretty cool.  Net neutrality was a huge issue over the past 14 months, and it's really amazing how much online activism played a part in getting strong regulations passed. The little guy beat out the Goliath telecom companies. The FCC certainly did their job well too. Everyone was shocked by Tom Wheeler's proposal to reclassifying Internet as Title II. When he was appointed as Chairman, everyone had him written off as a right wing deregulatory hound, but he proved everyone wrong.  I would really like to read a biography about him after this decision, I want to know his thinking and reasoning for why he changed his mind. It truly was a landmark decision.  
But basically the FCC has their work cut out for them if they are really going to improve the Internet situation in America. Comcast and Time Warner are huge monopolies, and it'll be very difficult to get them to cede any leeway in softening up their stranglehold on Americans.  This net neutrality victory is more of a stepping stone into other Internet issues.  There is still lots to do, hopefully activists are willing to shift gears and move into the next challenges.

Whew. Done for now. Next I'll write about municipal broadband, maybe.