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Senators, ISPs, and Network Neutrality
Polarism submitted a good article about
net neutrality that is currently running on Ars. It's a good explanation of where the pieces of the problem are, the government issues, the industry issues, etc. Worth a read.
It's amusing to me that basically it comes down to greed, and if they have it the way they want it, they'll kill something great and hurt themselves in the long run. I guess the reality is they know that we've grown so dependant on the internet that we can't live without it, so no matter how much they screw it up, we'll keep coming back for more.
Over and over again the anti-net neutrallity rant is based on the presumption that web site operators don't already pay for bandwidth. I don't understand why this continues? While most people don't know the nuiances of negotiating a high-dollar agreement with a carrier, there are a great many people out there who pay $10-50/mo for simple web hosting. Surely these people know that both ends of a HTTP connection are already paying. I'd like to know if this is an intentional distortion perpetuated by the telecoms, or if this is an honest misunderstanding?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
The key to stopping these problems would be to impose rigorous common carrier status regulations on general bandwidth providers. Allow everything from political speech to hate speech to pornography. The only thing that would get exempt would be IPTV so that IPTV providers could organize content packages according to their customers' tastes.
For the love of God, get rid of all of the bullshit regulation at every level that allows governments to meddle in the prices of bandwidth packages and the ability of property owners to negotiate with the telecoms. Take away EVERY barrier that keeps new players from entering the market, or that even increases the cost of entering.
And I ask one more time. Does anyone want this Congress, with its meth-addled ADHD-afflicted child-level attention span for details and consequences to regulate complex technical issues when most of it are MBAs and lawyers? I wouldn't, and I despise Verizon. I switched to Vonage and would stay with Vonage even if cost more than Verizon or AT&T because it's not AT&T or Verizon, but I sure as hell don't trust this bunch of coin-operated cronies to regulate the Internet.
Depends on what they may be using it for, I'd say.
(end of post)
Yes, right now the ISP's are getting paid. $19.95 a month for DSL in many cases. Offered at a loss to build market share and penetration. Even cable systems charging $40-$60 a month aren't really paying the whole bill.
Why is broadband service being oversold at a loss? Because everyone thinks this will turn into some financial windfall in the future when it is a must-have. Someone at one end of the connection or the other will be paying for it. We are now seeing the beginnings of that where the "at a loss" status is trying to be changed.
Do you want to pay $100 a month for your 10Mb broadband connection? Probably not. The DSL and cable providers do not want to charge you that either - they want people that want to reach out to you to pay the difference. If they can convince Google to pay to present ads to you, then your bill will not go up.
Trust me, the money to support this is going to come from somewhere. It will eventually be paid by the consumer, one way or another. The choice is directly or indirectly and every business in the world wants it to be indirectly.
I hope people can start to figure this out. The pipes are paid for. We're all Leasing the bandwidth on both ends. Over the last few years i'm sure the comusmer market has paid for the pipes. I garuntee they're making money. This is just a bully tactic to force people to pay for the "privalige" to use their pipes.
The Confusion is almost all on their side of the argument. It would be nice if congress would look at how things work before they try to pass laws about technology.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Looks like we might get some action from Congress after, that's heartening, I just worry that in regulating this aspect of the net, it could try and get overzealous and use it as precedent to regulate other parts of it too.
My understanding is that currently a communications company can try to bill someone (like Google) whose traffic gets routed thru their network (and they do not provide the connectivity at the end points), but then Google can tell them to go to hell. Well, if they block Google traffic all their customers will leave, so now they want the government to force Google to pay. So now the 'Google side' has turned things arround and decided to get the government to force neutral access no matter what.
The truth is that we are probably better off with no new laws at all. Let the companies who screw with traffic go broke, and let the market force neutral access and not the government.
The Bush administration (and the FCC) has already decided to throw out neutrality. That means action by both the Senate and the House is necessary for anything to change. The House already voted against the Markey amendment (by 269-152, I think), so there doesn't appear to be _any_ chance of saving net neutrality.
this is simply ridiculous.
if Mr Whitacre is successful, the Internet will suffer immensely. AT&T and other ISPs are only hurting themselves here.
That's a good point. New American laws hardly ever influence legislation in other countries.
What a good bit of the debate does not discuss is that a number of players, Verizon in particular, want to bring TV into your house over IP (via a fiber connection) in order to compete against cable. This is the holy grail of the telecoms industry: bundled services.
In general, competition for cable is a good thing. However, what is not often discussed is that TV content would come over a dedicated connection from verizon that you the subscriber would not have access to directly (at least, this is my understanding). The really really bad thing about this is that it would let verizon do what companies in the mobile space are doing: mixing transport (delivering the bits) with content control. In the mobile space this has been a terrific failure for most customers as the wireless companies control the delivery channel and the portals (what applications and ring tones are available).
I think the critical issue here is that we need to insist that the delivery pipe from verizon is a level playing field and that others can delivery TV content if they so choose. The pipe would still be seperate from normal internet access but I would be able to choose my HDTV provider who would let me pick the "geek" bundle of channels (plus oxygen for the wife) and who would undercut both verizon and comcast.
Verizon and the cable companies are natural monopolies: there is no way around that. Verizon is sinking tons of money into deploying FIOS: they should be compensated for that deployment. However, that compensation should not comes with strings attached - they should bill the customer for access to a high speed pipe dedicated to video and that's it.
"But nothing in life is free" - Moonie^WWashington Times editorial
That Moonie editorial isn't merely "confused", unless you want to call fascist zombies "confused". It's evil.
--
make install -not war
Would not a solution to deal with high bandwith content is that these sites get their data cached locally by ISP's?
what prevents Google (or Ebay, or Microsoft) from slowing their internet connections to anyone who goes through the AT&T pipe?
The reason I'm asking is cause, as the article points out, I don't pay $$$ for a fat pipe, I pay $$$ for a fat pipe to these sites.
And if necessary, I'll pay someone else $$$ for a fat pipe.
So...if we lose net neutrality, what prevents Google (or others) from extorting AT&T?
Pipes for free? Hell, before we're done, we'll charge AT&T to use their pipes!
Why does every tech article, without fail, have more political jibes in it than tech comments? I just started reading the comments under this story, and this is only the first one I saw. I'm sure it won't be the last.
Slashdot should just save itself the trouble and redirect all of its traffic to MoveOn.org or DNC.org.
I'm not trying to troll here. It's just that this has gotten increasingly bad over the last couple months. Since there's nowhere else to make such a comment, I'll make it here and expect to get modded Offtopic / Troll / Overrated.
If I wanted to read this crap I'd go to Huffington's blog.
Wouldn't it fit the US spirit better to ensure more diversity in their ISP, to strenghten concurence and quality of service, rather than over-regulate their 2 or 3 giants ? The whole debate seems a little strange from here where most people can choose between enough quality providers (as one nationalized telecom company had to deregulate its lines, and in a few years time all willing ISP had ADSL2+ access to 75% of the interested population). I wonder how much the sentiment that americans have to have mildly bad and expensive internet accesses (as it is sometime said) influes on this debate. As, if so, the whole debate would somehow misses the point. Adressing an eventual futur problem doesn't improve todays issues. But maybe not, i gladly acknowledge i just make assumptions. As, at the same time, maybe there is a real danger lurking beyond... and maybe being confident in my ISP and in the fact that i could change to another fine ISP if i wanted or needed too, makes me miss some real problem. I just don't see it now. I don't say that the problem is not there, so far i've heard no good argument in favor of net neutrality other than it being supported by google and amazon. Wich as everyone knows are comited to supporting the human specie (especially in China), when telecoms companies are comited to destroy us. Common knowledge.
Let's break it down even simpler:
AT&T wants to charge Google for carrying Google Net traffic, even if Google isn't directly connected to AT&T. Let's say Google is connected to GCom, which is connected to AT&T, and Google users are connected to UCom, which is connected to AT&T (of course there are really many more intermediaries, but the system works exactly the same). Google pays GCom for its traffic, while users pay UCom for their traffic. GCom and UCom each pay AT&T to carry their traffic. AT&T gets paid its portion by Google and its users through those intermediaries. AT&T gets paid twice, once in each direction, for every transaction, without marketing the traffic: Google does that risky part.
AT&T just wants to doublecharge Google, because 1: Google has money, and 2: AT&T has a blackmail toolkit, including the huge network used by so many people, and Congress. If they just raised their rates, the traffic would flow over the redundant Internet to their cheaper competitors. So they're getting their cartel^Windustry to add a new kind of charge that everyone will collect, killing competition.
What does the telecom carrier industry plan beyond just ripping off everyone paying for our distributed Net access? To start, they're planning to suck up the "fast lane" with video, IPTV, to "compete" with cable companies and independent distributors. Including YouTube and any other upstart not in the telco club. Charging competitors outside the cartel too much to stay in the game, just like they killed the DSL competition. They'll also squeeze out any upstart VoIP competition, so their core voice business can keep its 20th Century domain intact.
Of course, along the way, they'll kick the crap out of any independent media they carry which tells the truth to the people. With voice, video and data under their privileged control, as well as the government, how can they lose?
--
make install -not war
Insightful indeed. Shortly sums up the situation.
Read radical news here
If the Corporate guns manage to modify the internet away from what it has now become in terms of the overall freedom of information flow, and general anarchism, I think we're going to see massive massive hacker incidents worldwide in numbers so large even the most in-depth IDS/IH techniques will simply fall flat.
Of course, I also think that this would be short-lived, and if the powers that be really do want to change the neutrality of the internet, they will, and that's that.
All your base are belong to Google.
Democrats 8r3 teh suxor
Exactly.
On a smaller scale, what if I had a son who was old enough for me to charge him rent. Let's say part of his rent went towards using my DSL. So my ISP is carrying both my and my son's traffic. Should they charge me extra because both of us use their service? Of course not. The bandwidth is bought and paid for regardless of where the traffic is coming from and who is generating it.
The same applies to the whole of the Internet. Some companies want to double-charge for their bandwidth, and it's wrong.
This sig rocks the casbah.
"I don't understand why this continues?"
:-( Sad discussion, isn't it?
It is just about money. But I'm afraid that with this kind of discussion I can end up with 3 minutes long page loading from Wikipedia meanwhile my neighbor downloads ten high resolution porn clips...
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
The idea that broadband services are sold "at a loss" is ridiculous. Even for the small time players it is sold for a profit. I've worked for ISPs that have as little as 30 xDSL customers to ones with hundreds of thousands. It shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that all of these companies made a rather nice profit selling broadband.
Yes, right now the ISP's are getting paid. $19.95 a month for DSL in many cases. Offered at a loss to build market share and penetration. Even cable systems charging $40-$60 a month aren't really paying the whole bill.
DSL for $19.95 won't make money back for almost 24 months of the roll out.
However, Cable makes money the instant they hook you up.
How do I know this? I used to work for a 3rd party major ISP that leased DSL lines and Cable connections.
Basically DSL was a money hole (at least in 2003)... You'd often pour $1,000 to get a single customer up and running with the installation and fixing all their line problems and finding the load coils and everything else that could go wrong (and even then some of it wouldn't work).
That is why we held this "contractual agreement" over a customers head and threatened them with a big fat cancelation fee if they canceled their service.
But the Cable service on the other hand was pure profit... We'd slap our name on the package and handle the email servers and lease our IP address to the local provider. Sent out an installer and boom they were up and running and bandwidth and support costs were nihl. Cable was setup on the get go and the matainece cost was such that we would get take a smaller cut, but still make more back than we did on DSL.
Of course I quit the ISP in 2003 due to things going downhill so DSL might be a bit more stable these days, but I don't think cable costs anymore.
One you setup a bandwidth it is like running an aqueduct. The only thing it costs the companies is when they need more of it, replace broken equipment, electricity, and pay the network egineers.
Once the structure is in place it doesn't really cost that much IMO. However it is the initial customer buy in and installation is what costs the most money.
This extra charge is not needed for the telcos, cables, and other ISPs to remain profitable. Bandwidth isn't free but isn't not as expesive as they make it out to be.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I wrote Illinois Senator Dick Durbin about this and got a message back, which I'll include below. Take a look at how he fairly carefully doesn't say what his real stand is.
Durbin has taken $37,000 in the past 6 years from telco PACs. Not a fortune, but might cause him to vote to favor Bill Daley, brother to the mayor of Chicago and shill for SBC ne AT&T.
- - -
Durbin's Office Wrote:
Thank you for contacting me about taxing Internet access and regulating Internet content delivery. I appreciate hearing from you.
The Senate Commerce Committee is currently considering the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S. 2686). This measure would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to report annually to Congress on whether consumer use of the Internet is being affected by changes in how Internet traffic is processed and in the relationships between Internet service providers and content providers. If the FCC finds significant problems, it would be required to recommend appropriate legislation.
This language is one small step toward net neutrality, a principle holding that Internet access providers should not be permitted to engage in favoritism when configuring their networks and delivering Internet content. Such favoritism could occur if a provider transmitted its own offerings at faster speeds than those of its competitors or if a provider charged digital content and application companies a fee for equally fast delivery.
This issue has gained attention recently as several telecommunications company executives have made statements raising concerns that delivery may be impaired for content providers unwilling to pay additional fees for fast transmission. Many of these executives later clarified that they have no intention of degrading or blocking other traffic, particularly if it might prompt customers to switch to other providers, but merely wish to offer video delivery to their own customer base at a premium service level unavailable to non-paying competitors. Some in the industry have favorably compared additional network performance tiers to airlines selling coach and business class tickets or package delivery companies offering ground and air service. Other observers have expressed concern about the impact of such steps on consumers.
Proponents of network neutrality - including major Internet content providers, hardware and software companies, and consumer groups - point to the money that operators already receive from end user and content provider access fees, the technological innovation that network neutrality may encourage, and the lack of high-speed Internet access marketplace competition, which leaves consumers in much of the
country with little opportunity to switch providers if their current provider were to engage in "bit discrimination" against the services or applications preferred by consumers.
Opponents of network neutrality argue that a regime prohibiting bit discrimination would deny network operators the opportunity to differentiate their services from other providers, thereby stifling the incentive to create innovative content for their customers. They also argue that network operators may face greater difficulties in raising the funding necessary for planned infrastructure upgrades if the improved network speeds would benefit their competitors as much as themselves.
S. 2686 would also change federal law so that the government's Universal Service Fund is supported by every "communications service provider" in the United States instead of every "telecommunications carrier that provides interstate telecommunications services," as is currently the case. The bill would establish a "Broadband for Unserved Areas Account" within the Universal Service Fund to help pay
for the deployment of broadband Internet service in areas that currently do not have broadband service.
Since Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1934, the federal government has sought to ensure acc
When 1gb/s of traffic goes down a 2gb/s pipe, we're all happy. If it's Qwest's pipe, then they'd like more traffic, or may think this is over-engineered, but there's no outage.
If we start paying a premium for some bandwidth, then a 2gb/s pipe may have 1gb/s of premium paying traffic on it, and all the receivers of that traffic will be happy. But there also might be 100gb/s of non-premium paying traffic. From the carrier's standpoint, that's not a problem. Who cares if other traffic can't get through? The traffic which makes money can, so there's no reason to upgrade.
Like your Internet the way it is now? Good, because without network neutrality, it's not going to change AT ALL. It'll never get upgraded, unless someone is willing to pay for more premium traffic on it.
More importantly, if you don't like where your senators stand, give them a call.
Basically DSL was a money hole (at least in 2003)... You'd often pour $1,000 to get a single customer up and running with the installation and fixing all their line problems and finding the load coils and everything else that could go wrong (and even then some of it wouldn't work).
That is why we held this "contractual agreement" over a customers head and threatened them with a big fat cancelation fee if they canceled their service.
So, basically the telcos sold something they really couldn't provide, and that's the justfication for locking you into a contract?
You don't think cable companies need to do line tests and what not? We had them come out once because our internet stated going flaky after they line to the cable modem was hooked up to an amplifier (which they later discovered filtered out 'noise' which was actually signal). It took them quite a few tests before they figured out what was going on.
Lets not forget the reason we needed the amp in the first place; the higher frequencies weren't reaching us as well, so we weren't able to use the VOD they just rolled out.
Ok I'll break this down for you
Creating a phone network costs a hell of a lot of money, and in mosts cases it is heavily funded by the government, in 1980 BT wanted to have Fibre optic to every door but couldn't because of lack of funding, they have now started to get said funding. The Telco's have a huge barrier to entry, in order to run your own telco you need a huge investment a multi billion pound investment at the least. This means that in the UK at least only the few telco's who were there from the start stood a chance and as the industry was nationalised any chance for competition went out of the window. So in the UK we have only really one big telco company.
Now I move to France and want to call home, now france is going to have a series of other telco's owning the network there, but they won't necessaily own a network in the UK, so in order to phone my home line on ther BT network they need to connect to the BT network.
Well obviously using someone elses network is going to cost that person money, they are only going to let you use it if you pay them to. However the BT and french Telco agree to allow each other to access each others networks as its expands the possible number of people on the network, which in a communication industry makes the telco more attractive.
Now lets think about this in internet terms, I'm with BT.Yahoo broadband, I pay my £20 a month for a connection to the BT network at a set data rate and data amount(we'll get to this later) There's something on a french server I want, the french server pays for a connection and bandwidth. So i send a request off to France for the information through the BT network which in turn is transmitted onto the french network, the french telco has an agreement with BT and so it reaches the french server. Which then sends the information off back towards me. Again as the french telco and BT have an agreement BT doiesn't charge access to use its network.
Now why do I have to pay for a set data rate and data amount? The more bandwidth I use the greater share of the network i use, so at 56k I'm using the equivlent of one phone line, at 512k i'm using the same as 10 lines. Now I know some people are shouting 'horse shit'. But most networks now run digital systems there are no longer 500 lines going into my local server just a few pieces of fibre with a limited transmission rate. One analgue phone call only needs x amount of bandwidth, so increasing your transmission rate increasing thes bandwidth on a line. I'm not explaining this well but you should get the point.
Now its in the telco's interest to provide me a cheap rate to other countries and networks, because it means I will use their service, Again it was in their interest to provide the line and quality to anouther telco because if they didn't that telco wouldn't do the same for them, they would lose customers.
The internet is different in how it operates, and is why net neutrality is so damm important, it doesn't matter if I'm in the UK,France,USA i might be downloading from the USA,UK,France wherever the server is located. Now companies are still have an agreement to use each others networks but net neutrality means that no company will hurt anouther in sending information by delaying packets accross their network. Its in their interests to get that information around
However the natural monopoly status of many telcos means people have limited choice. So if BT decided that because a German telco paid it then its packets would have priority over french ones, could effectivly ruin a frnech telco, the lack of choice would hurt the customers, its a bad idea. Because I have to use BT (because there aren't any other ISP's) then BT is increasing its cash at the detriment of the consumer, its not priortising german packets for any other reason than money.
So we go back to our world internet, Now its in the telco's interests to pass information faster for telco's which give them more money. So verizon pays BT alot and verizon using servers can no
It's turtles all the way down.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
As a case in point I share a house with 5 others, people use VOIP, people browse pages and I personally play a lot of online games.
You mention VoIP, but are you aware that Comcast has been known to reduce the bandwidth available for other VoIP providers that their subscribers use... in the areas where Comcast offers IP phone service? I use Comcast cable internet, and I use Vonage, and I'm fine because for now, Comcast doesn't offer phone service in my area. But as soon as they start offering it, I'm likely to be screwed because they will throttle my Vonage packets, and advertise their own phone service, which will magically be guaranteed 100% compatible with Comcast Internet, unlike those other VoIP companies.
Anti-net neutrality might seem to make sense, until you consider the fact that it's a way for the ISPs to knock out proven, dependable content providers in order to provide their own services with no competition. They don't have to offer quality service, they just have to make it more accessible than the competition. Just wait until your ISP decides that enough money is up for grabs in online gaming. They'll strike some deals with one service or another (Microsoft, Sony, Blizzard, or whoever), and when you use their services, you get great latencies. Any others, though, and you're screwed.
Now that we've recovered from the dotcom bust, companies have created serious business models around the Internet. But when Verizon, SBC, et al decide they can compete in new markets without having to work as hard to develop good products because they can quickly and easily render their competition's products useless, it's not going to help the economy any. If you care about your ability to use any internet services, from whatever providers you want, then neutrality is important.
So, basically the telcos sold something they really couldn't provide, and that's the justfication for locking you into a contract?
Pretty much yes... It was an unproven service for some (especially Bellsouth... SBC roll outs weren't as bit of a problem) and the ISP ended up paying the telcos too much Central Office fees for the initial installation that there had to be some sort of threat to keep the customer from cancelling and go through the troubleshooting process to make sure DSL could be installed. Doesn't mean you couldn't get out of it. If Bellsouth technician at the CO/NID declares that DSL installation was impossible because they couldn't get signal to the NID and our ISP would get a refund and the customer was let go (or sent back to dial up or cable).
You don't think cable companies need to do line tests and what not? We had them come out once because our internet stated going flaky after they line to the cable modem was hooked up to an amplifier (which they later discovered filtered out 'noise' which was actually signal). It took them quite a few tests before they figured out what was going on.
Of course not. I've had my personal connection die on occasion with Comcast, but speaking on someone who had to deal with these problems with a daily basis, the average cable installation costs nothing but to send a guy out whole may have to pull a line from a pole or the local hub box and drill a hole in your wall and put it in your living room and setup your box and computer and your good to go.
With DSL, you have to have a telco guy at the CO (the central office which could be up to 7 miles away) find an open rack space on the DSLAM, find your pair (that part is a bitch if they don't have it labeled correctly) and then tie them into the DSL (which ties into the ATM) and then goes to your house and checks the NID.
Of course often times to save time and money they'd assume they got it right and let the customer test the NID on their own. Now if something goes wrong... That is when it gets tricky... DSL was basically built over something that never had broad band in mind.
While Cable on the other hand has its whole system built around video. If a line goes down in cable the whole area is out and people don't get TV either... They've had these systems for years and often times once they get it up and running its not that hard to maintain.
At least as not as much as it goes with DSL.
I don't mean to be down on DSL and it works good most of the time, but having to support it as a technician while working with cable calls at the same time, there are more things that can go wrong with the initial installation with DSL than Cable. So cable is exponentially cheaper to maintain than DSL (at least now)
However, if DSL gets a better infrastructure and more customers it will of course be cheaper in the long run.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I might have this wrong but this is how it goes.
First, the House net neutrality vote was for a net neutrality amendment to a larger bill(COPE). They didn't include it obviously.
Now, the Senate is considering their version of the bill. Their version may or may not include the net neutrality provision. Talking Points Memo is keeping a tally of where Senators currently stand.
Ideally, the Senate includes it in their version of the bill. Then, the bill will go to conference to iron out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Hopefully, someone will champion it there and ensure it stays in the final version.
Then the larger bill goes to the House and Senate for a final vote. Congressmen who voted against net neutrality will probably not vote against the final bill.
Then it goes to the President for signing, and since Bush has yet to veto a bill, the bill likely becomes law and so does the Net Neutrality provision.
So the House vote was a setback but by no means the final blow.
All's true that is mistrusted
My Qwest DSL worked the day it got turned on til (June 2001) the day I moved with the lone exeption of when a nasty thunderstorm killed power for about an hour or so. Something to be said for blowing a couple of billion investor dollars on stupid wasteful infastructure products :)
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
The real problem that I don't see many people talking about is how this hurts the little guy (aka the next great thing). Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft... they all have the money to pay the proposed extortion fees.
But if I come up with the next YouTube, I not only have to pay for my bandwidth, I'll also have to pay fees to all the other providers so my site isn't slow for their customers. This model empowers the telcos to keep Google on top and YouTube on bottom.
The FCC has provided protection of network neutrality up until just recently. All that is being asked is that it be reinstated so the telcos can't act on their short-sighted and greedy urges. So enough with the 'regulation is bad' crap. Do you really want to trust the telcos to do the right thing without it?!?
Get informed. Get irate. Call your representative in the Senate. If you don't, you might regret it later.
If you still don't get it, ask the ninja:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69eCYcDcuQ
>Senators are not necessarily more technically inclined than anybody else.
/really/ about allowing phone companies to break into the cable market, and that Net Neutrality could hurt them in this regard because if they could not prioritize traffic then they could not offer video services at competitive speeds with the cable companies.
> Believe me, honest misunderstanding, or just lack of understanding, can
>account for FAR more than you think.
When I called my Congressman's office and asked his position on Net Neutrality, the aid I spoke to told me this:
She said that basically the "Net Neutrality" thing was just a small portion of the legislation and had been "blown out of proportion". She also said that their position was that the legislation was
So it sounds to me like the telcos want to become cable companies, and be able to prioritize the data on their networks so that their services get priority.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
We're going about this whole Net neutrality thing all wrong. I mean...all us techie, geeky types *know* why net neutrality is an important thing. We need to address this issue in a way the public can understand.
Net neutrality will help us stalk Registered Sex Offenders (TM) and will help catch child predators on myspace.com. It will also help relieve gas prices and slow down illegal immigration.
We have to present the story in a context of issues that actually have significance.
I mean...come on guys...have you no political savvy?
[/end_scarcasm]
Huh ?
PAID people that believe and defend WHOEVER PAYS THEM FIRST.
Whatever might be the truth, they set up fake grassroots organisations, launch advertisement and (dis)information campaigns in order to do the bidding of their payer.
What kind of phenomenon is this ?
What kind of democratic practice is this ? Liberty to get paid and DECEIVE or OUST anybody who might stand in the way.
I can understand this with lawyers, it is a concept of HAVING to defend the defendant, with the FACTS at hand.
But they are not allowed to MANUFACTURE FACTS. Like the telco 'lobbyists' do for example.
There is one explanation for doing such manufacturing of 'facts'. it is either called LYING or DECEIT.
I personally would take ANYBODY who would believe in any campaign, any idea, ANY WORD that comes from telco side lobbyists as PAID LIES. Because the concept is that simple - pay me, and i lie for you.
What is more appalling is that this is something LEGAL. How come ?
Why bother with this ? I suggest united states make the congressmanship/senatorship a PAID position that goes to the highest bidder for that term, and save the trouble of elections, lobbies and shit.
Read radical news here
Backbone.
5 0303.html
0 06/05/big_money_boys.html
http://www.businessweek.com/1998/29/b3587124.htm
You knew they would try this. If you didn't then you are stupid.
Cringley had a piece on this. I guess it doesn't make sense for them pay for a network that cannibalizes their long distance which voip does.http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200
Unlike this article. The phone companies DO own the net.
http://www.networkingpipeline.com/blog/archives/2
This is the end of the internet.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester
We need LOWER prices and faster speeds. I don't the phone companies with their history and now their attack on this network are going to be for that.
Ultimately we need a public municipal lowcost network with backbone owned by NO ONE.
- Mr. Vinton Cerf
- Mr. Walter McCormick
- Mr. Jeffrey Citron
- Mr. Kyle McSlarrow
- Mr. Earl Comstock
- Mr. Kyle Dixon
- Mr. Lawrence Lessig
- Mr. J. Gregory Sidak
- Mr. Gary Bachula
You can disagree with the end decision all you like, but it's pretty hard to look at the above list and claim that Senators don't have all the information they need about every angle of the issue. Believe it or not, smart people can get expert advice and still come to a different conclusion than you.Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
President and CEO, United States Telecom Association
Chairman and CEO, Vonage
President and CEO, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
President and CEO, CompTel
Senior Fellow and Director of the federal Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics, The Progress & Freedom Foundation
Professor of Law, Standford Law School
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Vice President for External Affairs, Internet2
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The problem is that the average bandwidth per customer of these ISPs is going up (because they are downloading more).
The solution is to increase costs. ISPs should stop offering "Unlimited" and start adding either bandwidth limits (use more than that and you get a bill at the end of the month) or traffic shaping (I dont mean discriminating by protocol, I mean that you get full speed on all protocols untill you have used a certain amount of bandwidth then you go down to a slower speed on all protocols, my ISP here in australia uses 64k with a 20gb bandwidth limit on a 512k connection)
ISPs over there have enough of a monopoly (most people can only get cable from one company and DSL from another) that they could impose these sort of changes without loosing customers. (since their competitor is imposing them too)
A lot more informative, and in video form:
n ja-special-delivery-4-net-neutrality
http://www.askaninja.com/news/2006/05/11/ask-a-ni
network neutrality == gluereed
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Excellent summary of the issue. Bravo!!!
Because almost nobody's bothering to *think* about the technology - MoveOn has a political agenda and no technical clue, and the telco guys have a knee-jerk reaction about always arguing regulation and money when anybody challenges them, rather than explaining the technical points they're making to politicians and reporters who don't have a clue about technology, and Dave Isenberg, who should know better, is arguing politics with the telcos instead of tech. Some people have portrayed this as a Netheads vs. Bellheads technology fight, but it's not - both sides are acting like boneheads, and everybody's pontificating about what the other boneheads said rather than looking at the real problem.
So here are a few technical and/or economic facts:
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Read this to dispell some of the propaganda you've been hearing
Remember back a few years ago when there were internet service providers all over the place. Everybody had a choice of who they wanted for internet service. That was until the Telcos decided that they wanted the business. They started offering their own service and driving the prices down. That forced the independent ISPs to consolidate or go out of business. The benefit of that shift in business is cheep internet service.
The problem is that the Telcos do not want to raise the cost of the local access, because that would leave room for independent ISPs to start popping up again. If the Telcos cannot afford to build out infrastructure because the Joe home user isn't paying enough, I say raise the price and keep Net Neutrality. We as consumers would have more choices. Choices cost money. I want more choices.
Let the market and the laws of supply and demand take care of this:
If Comcast gets greedy and their service suffers, some other provider will pop up to take advantage of the gap. It's called capitalism.
The fed is delighted to play this up as another of the red herring items that take people's minds off the really controversial issues; the war, energy, global warming, etc. It's easy to do because, for most, the Internet is a black box about which they know very little.
What if they did something worthwhile?
Take a fucking stand on something that actually means something, and not the spelling
of "fried potato strips" or whether John and Jon can easily buy a house.