Creating the New Public Network

Codeine writes: "Tom Lyons argues persuasively that the incumbent competitors might be incapable of delivering an utility IP network. Competition in such commodity markets encourages the breaking of connectivity, ``Connectivity is the fundamental service of the Internet, yet it is connectivity that suffers first when network providers compete for users and services.'' Thus he proposes the Institute for the Promotion of the Internet Protocol Utility."

Comments

Capitilism comes to the comunity

[oliverthered]

Sadly it looks like the internet is slowly heading down the same route as other communications/network technologies.

As soon as someone realises that there's money or power to be made(and lots of it) a once free (as in speech) technology becomes market controlled and regulated, in general the overall network gets dumbed down, and all but obsolete as new technologies come along.

Here are a few examples from the past few hundred years or so..

Science-Art, initially sciences and arts were free (thousands of years ago), they go locked down and made illegal in part for a hell of a long time.

snail-mail, this is a very good example of a vanishing technology, currently being opened up to full competition in the UK with the possibility of increased prices and a poorer service(YMMV).

Good old radio,
In the beginning anyone could put together an AM radio and broadcast anything, now a days they even control what you can listen to, and the airwaves are all sold out.

The Telephone,the common telephone has started to vanish in the UK, cell phones and broad-band are replacing standard telephone technologies almost to the point where telephone networks no longer operate for voice communications.
There's a very long story here especially in the US with bell labs and all that,
I believe there are lots of regulations in place if you ever wanted to start up a Telco. The selling off of the air waves regulation of other networks by governments makes telephone networks highly capitalised.

And now the internet,

Getting less private and more dictated, the market is not yet saturated enough for it to make a big difference to Joe public and corporations and governments are looking at taking over before Joe public realises what there going to miss.