Slashdot Mirror
Coalition Sounds Off on Net Neutrality Legislation
DarqFallen writes to tell us that lately everyone has been talking about a tiered internet, though it seems there are other problems on the horizon as well. PCMag has the latest sound-off from the new SavetheInternet.com coalition. From the article: "Vint Cerf, so-called 'father' of the Internet, is among the big names and organizations that have come together to create the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which hosted a national conference call [yesterday]. [...] [yesterday's] conference call is one of the coalition's many campaign tactics to emphasize the importance of 'Net neutrality,' the concept of a free and open Internet." The main topic of conversation was the latest bill from congress, the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancements Act of 2006."
Why? Probably because they've been misinformed, or have misconceptions about how it works.
In just about everything else, we have tiers. High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on highways, premium cable channel programs, priority mail at the post office. People are used to the concept that if you pay more, you get more or better service. Heck, even internet access has tiers - you can pay $10 for dial-up, or you can pay $40 for much faster broadband or DSL.
If you think of the internet as a limited capacity system, the idea of tiered service becomes much more reasonable. Would you want the critical business document you're loading from the central office held up because some other person is hogging all the bandwidth downloading movies? People want to make sure that critical files get where they need to as soon as possible, and are used to spending more to this end.
Picture what would happen if your ISP said that because of increased traffic, not all messages will be sent with equal priority. You'd want to be able to make sure that your stuff got through when you needed it to, even if it meant paying an extra five dollars a month.
I am pushing our town to include a Network Neutrality provision in Verizon's cable TV franchise agreement. I feel this is the best way to advance the Network Neutrality issue. The telecoms will steamroll the politicians at the state and federal level, but we stand a chance at the local level.
It's simple. We say to the telecoms: If you want to run a cable franchise in our town then you need our permission. If you want out permission then you will agree to respect the tenets of Network Neutrality.
Please visit my website to follow what we are doing at the local level.
http://www.redbanktv.org/
Tom@redbanktv dot org