ACLU Study Wary of Broadband Providers

An anonymous reader says "The ACLU recently had a study done that suggests that broadband access is a threat to internet freedom. Their study focuses on the control available to broadband providers who don't have to deal with the same level of competition or regulation as ISP providers. The result is the ability to radically control internet access combined with the omnipresent corporate incentive for profit, whatever the cost to free speech."

Comments

text version here

[wrinkledshirt]

Go here for a text version.

Re:Profit

[Edmund Blackadder]

The problem is that you cannot use anybody else.

most broadband providers have a govt sanctioned monopoly.

And after the recent declarations from the FCC the little competition that was coming from small dsl providers will soon evaporate.

Re:Reports in PDF - why?

[sstory]

Here in the year 2002, if you can't easily read a pdf, it's not someone else's fault. You should upgrade to a less primitive system.

that is impossible

[Edmund Blackadder]

how do you suppose that will happen?

thanks to the fcc the telcos can now exclude competitors from their hubs. The cable companies will never let a competitor on their cable. The cable networks were created with large government subsidies and such subsidies will not come for a duplicate cable network.

This government of ours has ensured that telcos and cable companies will have a monopoly on broadband for a loong time.

Summary is deceptive

[waytoomuchcoffee]

The ACLU did NOT state that "broadband access is a threat to internet freedom". This is a study on the problem of broadband monopolies being created in the cable market only, due to common carrier restrictions.

Re:not in the UK

[Tim C]

There are indeed loads of ISPs here in the UK offering ADSL conncetions.

However, almost all of them get those connections from BT wholesale. If BT decided to start imposing some draconian conditions, we'd still be screwed.

Sure, oftel (the regulator mentioned - OFfice for TELecommunications, iirc) are making lots of noise about BT opening up their exchanges and allowing other companies to install equipment (for a suitable rental fee, of course), but it's not really happening. Last I heard, only one company had actually done so, and only at a couple of exchanges. BT are not making it easy (that's the reason for all the noise).

The UK has plenty of competition amongst residential-level and business-level ISPs, but only really one backbone provider. There are others, of course, but not to homes, the majority of which already have a BT line.

Cheers,

Tim

first amendment

[akb]

Actually, courts have ruled the first amendment does apply to corporations. They are using this to overturn many of the FCC's regulations on ownership, including limits on the percent of the national market that cable companies can own and the TV/newspaper cross ownership ban.

Re:Reports in PDF - why?

[Anonymous Coward]

*nix - xpdf and acroread (sometimes)
Windows - Acrobat Reader
MacOS X - Preview, Acrobat Reader

There are also things you can download to convert it to html.

PDFs are nice because they show up exactly as you want them to (fonts and all). You can't always guarantee that with HTML.

Most broadband providers suck

[lanner]

I am a network engineer and sysadmin by trade.

As a consumer, I am very distressed with the state of broadband. I just can not find broadband providers that meet the needs that I desire. The only option that I seem to have is getting a DS1 or fractional DS1 at extreme cost to get what I want.

What do I want?

Broadband is made up of two things -- latency and capacity. Low latency is important. Anything over 100ms is high and can cause problems with time sensitive applications such as voice communications, shell usage, and action game playing. In regards to capacity, this is the pipe width of your circuit, be it 128Kbps or 1.5Mbps.

But it is also made up of other things. Does your service provider allow you to use servers? Will their mirror your reverse DNS files since they hold the masters? What about in and out port and protocol filtering? What about quality of service? Uplink costs are about $1000 per 1Mbps -- that is $1 per Kb! In order to make money and provide a good service to their customers, they need to oversubscribe, and also deal out the bandwidth fairly.

I have no sympathy for the P2P copywrited material sharing fools out there who are upset that they can not pirate software -- that is not what the Internet is for. The Internet is not TV -- you do not just watch things. The Internet lets you publish, touch, interact, and exchange information on an International scale.

Companies who do not let you run servers on ANY connection, be it dialup or DSL, are NOT providing Internet connectivity. They are providing browse-only-Internet, Read-Only Internet, or just plain TV-like crap.

Companies that do not provide quality of service mechanisms are also doing a poor job. Implementing a QOS scheme with modern equipment is very easy and works, but nobody wants to rock their big dumb ISP boat and say that they need to do something like that.

Offering only an OSI layer 2 (bridged) network connection is NOT acceptable. This means cable providers, LRE (long range Ethernet), and PPPoE/PPPoATM providers that do not provide point to point circuits. If you want to provide this kind of service, then that is okay, but not as an only option.

Any ISP that does not provide for IP allocations is no ISP at all, period.

I do not need a 1.5Mbps upstream and 128Kbps upstream DSL line. I would much rather have a 384Kbps bidirectional ADSL or SDSL line (yes, you can have a balanced line with ADSL, there is no technical excuse) and be able to use it.

I do not mind paying a little more for these services, but overcharging me for things like a small IP allocation, or reverse DNS on the allocation, or using servers, is unacceptable. How much work does it take to do a SWIP and enter a configuration line in your RDNS pull system? I KNOW how much work it takes because I used to do it -- about two minutes AT MOST, almost zero resources, does not have to be done by an engineer, and is easily automated.

AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate modern broadband providers, and I hate the people who use them blindly. Why does nobody care?

In Denver I was paying $150 a month for a 640Kbps PPPoATM ADSL line with a /29 IP allocation from Qwest. They permitted me to request and return IP allocations from a web based system, and I could do my reverse DNS from this web based system (not as good as pulling from my DNS server, but acceptable). I almost always got the full 640Kbps if I needed it and my line had uptime of months between occasional DSLAM reset. My first hop out was 45ms, which was kind of high, but consistent and acceptable.

I have recently moved to the Orlando Florida metro area, and while looking for apartments have found that I am really screwed. I just can not get what I need. Almost all of the apartment complexes here used digital line compression on their phone lines, which kills DSL. There is nothing wireless, and only RoadRunner cable modem service is available, and I hear very oversubscribed.

I hate everybody! Die.