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Small Cable Groups Seek To Break Net Neutrality
saikou writes "CNet's News.com has a story on the first cable companies openly going against Net Neutrality. As usual, request for equal treatment is labeled as 'special favors', and Google is used as an example of company that should pay for a fast connection to the end user." From the article: "'I think what the phone industry's saying and what we're saying is we've made an investment, and I don't think the government should be coming and telling us how we can work that infrastructure, simple as that,' Commisso said during a panel discussion about issues faced by companies like his, adding, 'Why don't they go and tell the oil companies what they should charge for their damn gas?'"
Agreed. Any company who has a presence on the internet pays for it's bandwidth, and the people accessing it are paying. What more is there to this?
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Not to be a troll, just Devils Advocate. What do you think would happen if Cox "blocked" Google. Do you think the vast majority of Cox users would care enough to switch ? Do you think they have the ability to switch ?
To me this is scarier than any MS monolopy. With MS I have alternatives. I have no other choice for highspeed other than RoadRunner. I cannot get DSL, and have only one provider. What happens tomorrow if they decide to throttle back Gmail, and throttle up Hotmail ??
This is something that needs more press.
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I had a similar idea but without paying for any trial.
Surely Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc can identify trafic originating from that ISP via IP addresses. When anyone trys to access your page from one of those ISP, redirect them to a page explaining that the ISP is holding back bandwidth to this site so your expierence may be slower than it should be. Then provide information about competing ISPs in the area which don't do this as well as contact information to the ISP to complain. Then after 5 seconds or something you are redirected to the actual page.
Yes, this will probably annoy users but I think that annoyance will mostly be focused toward the ISP. Then the market can sort out if its worth it to implement this.
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You forget that in both of those cases, the "end user" winds up paying more for the use of certain infrastructure, like transoceanic cables, satellite time, or airmail. Users also, with certain exceptions like flat-rate phone service (which still doesn't include overseas calling), pay per actual usage of the service (i.e., per-minute phone rates or postage stamps). And in the case of stamps, you can pay more to get better service (overnight, 1st class v. Parcel Post, etc.)
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The funny part is that these completely incompetent CEO's have no clue as to who they are dealing with. If Google wanted to they could put a nice hurt on them all in short order. Google owns a crapload of wonderful dark fiber all over the place. A google Backbone ISP offering services that cut into the real pie of these idiots will wake them up fast. (VoIP over an encrypted port range that Comcast cant screw with to make QOS bad for customers other than THEIR VoIP service.. Yes they do that right now. Video content that makes people ditch their cable tv for ala-carte show access.)
I really hope that is what Google is planning on. Something to fire up all that dark fiber and flip a giant middle finger to the greedy assholes at SBC and Comcast that think they deserve to double charge customers.
IF Comcast lost google to the local DSL company. (I.E. www.google.com resolves to "Comcast want to charge you more to access us, so we are unavailable in order to save you money. here is a list of DSL and other broadband providers in your area that will serve you better than Comcast wants to serve you.") they would be hurting really bad nationwide within 30 days. Their margins are pretty thin because they spent way to much on poorly engineered networks and Cisco gear that is way over sized. (They have a Fiber ring that is designed by a moron in the midwest. Very little redundancy.. you lose a connection and large amounts of cities lost all TV signals.)
They need to play hardball with these idiots. Everyone already has a bit of hate for the companies already,(even comcast employees hate the place) if a large loved company were to take a side, the change would be pretty damaging to the company that they target.
Just display a page with a message saying "XYZ isp is making you wait N seconds before accessing Google".
Using the end user's ISP named and N being the average from that ISPs throttling. Include a link to a page explaining what the ISP is actually doing - slowing down the users connection to try to make someone else pay them money. In other words the users service was reduced intentionally (without notifying them). Just use simple words because most users don't have a clue about computers.
The incumbents are only universally available because the government mandated that Ma Bell serve every single house out in the middle of nowhere. Without government regulation, the most remote 10-20% of the public probably wouldn't be served at all, and probably half of the remainder would end up in a natural monopoly because the market can't sustain more than one player.
Outside of major metro areas, the cost of running the lines never pays for itself. For example, in my hometown of 8500 people, when the cable company's limited monopoly came up for review, a second cable company came in and challenged the previous company. Both were regional entities. The town agreed to let them both duke it out in the free market.
The new cable company came in, put in brand new lines for the entire city, competed on price, and got almost a third of the town to switch. After two or three years, they realized they were still millions of dollars in the hole and weren't likely to break even in any reasonable time frame. They sold their lines to the original incumbent cable company. Thus, effectively, all competition did for us was to upgrade the cable company's lines for pennies on the dollar... but to make up for their losses, as soon as the second company went away, the original company's prices skyrocketed to half again more than they were before the second company came in.
Free markets don't work except for physical products (or location-indifferent services) that can be distributed broadly enough to make competition practical. For example, satellite cable service works because it is not tied to a geographical location, so a single infrastructure cost covers the entire country. Occasionally, they work for location-tied services, but for the most part, those collapse into a monopoly... and while not all monopolies are abusive, most eventually become abusive unless they are a not-for-profit entity (and occasionally even then).
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They aren't interested in Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. This massive lobbying is the result of only one thing: VoIP. VoIP has freed people and businesses from being tied to the circuit-switched network that is the core source of revenue for many telcoms. AT&T, Verizon, and the other players desperately want to tilt the playing field back into their favor. VoIP startups have been popping out of the woodwork over the past two years. At the very least, Ma Bell wants to slow down the growth of these nimble companies by charging tarrifs, which get passed onto customers and lessen the biggest incentive to switch to VoIP: cost savings.
Cable companies now are simply jumping on the bandwagon. Which, if you notice, seems to coincide with the rollout of their own VoIP services.
Last December I founded a small-business VoIP company myself. So I've been following this issue very closely; it's the only time I've ever contacted a federal representative in my life. However, this is bigger than simply a slower Google or putting me out of business. It's about real jobs and real innovation being extinguished.
Please read a recent blog entry of mine to put a face with this imporant issue. Or, even better learn what you can do to help.
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