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The Coming Internet Monopolies
scrm writes "'The Federal Communications Commission is quietly handing over control of the broadband Internet to a handful of massive corporations according to this Salon article." Very important stuff; Slashdot has covered this before, but this is a great article which sums up everything that has gone on over the past few years.
" They warn that if the FCC goes through with its plans, cable companies and the Baby Bells will quickly establish a monopoly on broadband service over their own networks."
The quote in the article states that this could give the Cable companies a monopoly on broadband.. This I see as bad because there is no compeition (locally) for cable companies. you get what is there, I see it bad for pricing/monitoring
you get 1 choice of cablemodem (cable company) or 1 choice of DSL (local phone company) or satelite (not great for gaming) and no real competition. Who wants to bet that Innovation in this field is the next to die?
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
The decision in March to let cable companies exclude competitors does seem to violate common carriage and will probably disappear after either a short or long series of appeals.
Likewise with the cable companies deciding what content is allowed on their pipes. I can't see that holding up under scrutiny either.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I know in my area (that being Atlanta), one cannot get DSL without having a landline or a Cable Modem without getting cable
I was wondering if anybody sees this as the same type of monopolistic behavior MS was convicted of when they bundled IE with the OS?
For example: I have no need for a landline as I have a cell phone plan that gives me more than enough minutes, yet I have to shell out an extra 45 (lets face it, one can barely get a bare bones phone line for less than 45 bucks when all the extra taxes, fees, etc are tacked on) for a phone line so I can have a DSL line. A phone I really never use. Thus my DSL cost is really 85 bucks instead of just 40
isn't this the one of the issues this article might allude too? shouldn't the government bring a lawsuit against the cable/telcos accusing them of bundling? or forcing their un-related product on us just as MS was accused of?
Just wondering.....
This is why it is imperative that with like 802.11[a|b] start becoming more prevalent.
And other wireless point-to-point and point-multipoint technologies. When I see articles like this one in Salon, it actually encourages me more about competitive service. Being responsible for a broadband network covering half of a state now, here's why the ploys by Congressfolks on incumbent telco payroll doesn't work:
- it encourages greater ILEC (incumbent local exchance carrier; e.g. your Bell or other quasi-monopoly entity) laziness. Competition is the only thing that gets these inefficient sloths to move, and these recent regs make them feel even safer and lazier. Let their managers spend their days at the golf course, not worrying about CLECs or such sneaking up on them. I can't tell you how many towns I've dealt with which have been told for years by their local carrier or cable TV provider that "broaband is just too expensive for your little town," only to scramble and race to provide broadband service when we activate our service.
- it forces the competitors to develop a competitive alternate local/regional backbone and last mile: Fixed wireless vendors we work with cannot keep product on the shelf now. The money is pouring into this segment (even though it hasn't caught the attention of Wall Street very much). Manufacturers are racing along with non-line of sight innovations, conversion of multipath into a benefit instead of a problem, etc. Costs for equipment are spiraling downward. This all creates an opportunity for a cost-effective alternative network. Incidentally, futurist talks of "radically cheap fiber" never did explain what catalyst would force carriers to slash their fiber capacity pricing - here's your answer. My microwave backbone covers half a state and costs me a hundredth or less what the same capacity would run leased on a carrier's fiber.
Bet on more local incumbant and longhaul fiber carrier bankrupcies, as more and more capacity fires up that has costs at a fraction the retail rate offered. And per Salon's worries, regulation of this sort has only fueled circumvention before. People want reasonable cost broadband and no fat, dumb and happy incumbant is going to tell them otherwise.
*scoove*
More and more internet access is a nececary thing to people and companies alike. I think govenment's should treat the backbone connections like a road system, public funding and public access. Think about the economic effects of all highways having unregulated tolls, do we want this for our data?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
This has been goiong on for a while now, and in all but a few big cities, a single company has the monopoly on broadband... If it's even availible.
Something we need to realize is how the companies veiw this situation (which the salon article does a wonderful job of NOT exploring). Most comapanies who provide broadband service are not making any money off of it yet. The demand is high, but the cost of bandwidth is currently higher. Many of these companies see the only way that they can turn a profit is to be the sole provider in a service area; which, to an extent, is viable.
I saw another comment which touched on the long-distance carriers. This is a perfect example of what may or may not go wrong. On one hand long-distance service is cheaper and more versitile than ever, but on the other hand these companies have had a similar situation to their current on for some time now, and it has only been recently that the large carriers are providing the 'low, low rates' that one sees today.
It's hard to say whether or not deregulation like this could bolster the industry. On one hand the demand exists everywhere, while at the same time the per capita demand is often not great enough to warrant a company to provide service in an area (as with ruby ranch). On the other hand, deregulation could spawn an explosion of service in areas which the cable companies and 'baby bells' (which aren't small in any sense) in areas they once thought to risky to warrant the investment of time and materials.
I'm all for it, because I know that a big part of what's holding back many telco's and cable companies in rural areas is the fact that they have to share their lines (which means they make the investment, but get no return). These companies could make an investment and have a guaranteed return, (provided their business analysts have studied an area well enough).
Hopefully, regardless, cable internet service will be availible in my area by the end of september, after 6 years of 'cable for christmas'.
Linux is dead.
LU
There will be several "competing" giants, but in your neighborhood, you'll only be able to subscribe to one of them. They'll tell you the price, take it or leave it. All ports will be blocked on your end, so you won't be able to put up your own "content". It will only exist so that you can connect to commercial sites.
Also, as in the first century of the phone system (and most current cable TV systems), it will be illegal to connect anything not on the approved list. This list will include the latest releases from Microsoft, and nothing else.
If you don't like it, well, you don't have to use it. Connectivity is a privilege, not a right.
Then, after maybe a century, we'll have some new laws making it legal to connect your own equipment that runs unapproved software. At that time, we'll see a huge expansion of the Internet, as the first innovations in many decades hit the market and the companies upgrade the lines to more than 100KB.
Remind yourself that if the old Bell monopoly were still in place, we'd still be using the old black rotary phones, one per customer unless you pay a surcharge for an extension line. Also, note that right now most of the cable companies are blocking port 80, preventing customers from being "producers" and limiting them to a "consumer" status. And we've read the reports that MSN has been buying up ISPs and blocking email access to everyone but Windows users.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
...for unfiltered IP access. As the article so insightfully points out, the issue isn't cost or even availability, it's that pretty soon the companies that rent you a cable modem or DSL connection will be the same companies that own (or have an interest in) a whole stack of content. These are the people who bought the DMCA, the people who want to buy DRM legislation like the SSSCA in its various incarnations. Now they will control the creation, the ownership, the distribution and the delivery of content. So much for the original intent of copyright law.
Ask yourself this: when your choice of access is a subsidiary or partner of either Disney or AOL-Time Warner, why would they even need to buy legislation? For your safety and convenience, they can just block everything except port 80, map that to their caching proxies, and firewall off any part of the 'net that challenges their profit models.
You think they won't or can't do it? Why not?. The FCC's position is that competition should be across technologies, not within technologies, and they seem to be lumping cable and DSL in as one technology. The cable/DSL providers could offer (e.g.) filtered 2048/64 cable modem or DSL for a giveaway price of $10 a month; if the competition is $100 a month 512/128 satellite service, or a range limited and contended 2.4Ghz wireless service, then that will just about kill off the idea of unrestricted residential (not consumer, dammit) broadband. That's quite apart from rate/bandwidth capping and billing depending on whether you're downloading content that you've bought from your provider, or if you're daring to go out onto the big wide internet.
Yes, I know that we've no right to demand cheap unrestricted content, and that we should vote with our wallets and so on. But here's something to think about. If you truly believe that an unregulated free market will take care of this, then you wouldn't object to a shell corporation representing the Chinese government buying AOL-Time Warner or AT&T-Comcast and owning 40% or more of the cable networks in the USA, right?
I use that example because the free market, in its purest sense, means that anyone who can afford to buy or do something should be able to do it. The assumption is that purchasing power is obtained through persuading people to give you money of their own free will, and that your actions will continue to be along those popular lines. There are holes big enough to sail an oil tanker through in that theory, the biggest being that once you get in a position to demand money, or you sell a service that has no effective competition, or (my example) you are spending the taxes you collectd from taxing a billion people, then you can continue to leverage that hold indefinitely, especially if there's a large capital investment cost to entering the market.
Capitalism suffers from exactly the same problem as communism: it works great in theory, because it assumes that people are basically good and honest and will cooperate with the spirit as well as the letter of the system. In practice, any system of human governance or interaction requires constant vigilance to prevent tyranny, even if that tyranny comes wearing a pair of big friendly round Mouse ears. I think we need to be asking our government if they understand that the whole point of the Constitution and of the American State is to prevent situations where We, the People can be oppressed and (de facto) taxed without representation. I'd say we're well past that point already; the only question is how far we'll push it before we either see mass civil disobedience, or we tear up the Constitution and start over with a political version of an End User License Agreement, complete with all the usual disclaimers of warranty.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
But the far more urgent concern is that media conglomerates will use their control over broadband pipes to restrict access to content, information, or technologies that compete with their own content or otherwise threaten their interests.
In a democracy, those who control the flow of information control the country. Grassroots movements can't get started without free communication, and as the Internet is becoming an increasingly used political sounding board, this deregulation will give the media companies more power than we realize. Unlike the government, which is required by the Constitution to allow free speech, the media companies have no such requirement - they can deny access to anyone without any justification whatsoever. Those with views unpopular (say Jews, Christians, or Muslims...) or critical of the ISP, may find themselves silenced without any legal recourse.The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Oh really? If what you say is true, then please explain to me how microsoft's behaviour is consistent with your argument [Corporations, on the other hand, have to keep you happy every day.]
Microsoft keeps the vast majority of users happy every day. To the Slashdot community, the users may be "Fat happy and dumb", dupes, or fools: but they are there and they are happy even if they don't know better.