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Will Providers Provide Equally?
theodp writes "Imagine the chaos if your power company could take money from Sony so that its appliances got a higher quality of juice - and thus worked a tad better - than those of Mitsubishi. The power system wasn't built that way, but ISPs have that very capability. It may seem like a dodgy competitive tactic, but Yankee Group analysts envision that broadband network providers could give precedence to their own revenue-generating services, possibly leading to the demise of the biggest VoIP player today, Vonage."
The issue is them raising their own priorities, not lowering anyone elses.
So vonage over ssl would be the same as vonage over nothing (well +performance hit).
I'd have no problem with this so long as they guaranteed internet as it is.
Ie; Comcast gives me about 3mbit down now, if they had their own content on local servers (movies, game downloads, VOIP etc) that I could access at 10mbit or higher, I'd probably pay for it - so long as my 3mbit pipe to the rest of the 'net isn't affected.
Reliability is a big hurdle for VOIP as it is, if comcast had their own route that guaranteed the service, and it was still cheaper than Ma Bell, and didn't interfere with regular internet service, I think that'd be cool.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I was under the impression that such regulation is generally effective in protecting the consumer AND thier choices. A good case in point is what happened when the airline industry was de-regulated. And very few can complain that we are worse off since the ATT break-up (though SBC no longer falls into the 'baby bell' status). But not having oversight in essential services ? Almost like drug companies: you MUST pay what they ask for ! I am a strong supporter in free-market economics, but we have seen (Enron comes to mind) when CEOs run un-checked. And your argument about cell phones needs a little work: it was the gov't who forced number portability. Is that bad ?