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Net Neutrality, Schlocky Salesmen vs Monopolist Plumbers
Andy Kessler has written a short tongue-in-cheek summary of the net neutrality debate over on the Weekly Standard. Kessler identifies the two sides as the 'schlocky ad salesmen' (Google, Yahoo!, etc) and the 'monopolist plumbers' (Verizon, AT&T, etc) and when you add the politicians to the mix it creates a pretty untenable situation. From the article: "But the answer is not regulations imposing net neutrality. You can already smell the mandates and the loopholes once Congress gets involved. Think special, high-speed priority for campaign commercials or educational videos about global warming. Or roadblocks--like requiring emergency 911 service--to try to kill off free Internet telephone services such as Skype. And who knows what else? Network neutrality won't be the laissez-faire sandbox its supporters think, but more like used kitty litter. We all know that regulations beget more lobbyists. I'd rather let the market sort these things out."
It doesn't really matter which way this issue goes.
Either way, YOU LOSE!
Whoever spends the most money on lobbying will win.
...The problem (from the telco's point of view) is that Google is paying only one company for the bandwidth it uses. Wouldn't it be nice if they could all get a share by threatening to throttle Google's traffic on their networks? Not only that, you can squeeze out any small-time competition from the market by threatening to take away a big chunk of Google's users if they sign with a smaller company for bandwidth. Only why stop at Google, you could do it to anyone! Heck, maybe even political parties? (So, probably not but the telcos would love to do it anyways, I'm sure.)
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
Google may have stumbled across a very expensive but robust solution.
Long ago, in a humor column on religion, I wrote: "Humanity, by nature, is an ambivalent animal, given to fits of inertia, and we're more than likely to sit on our noncommittal behinds unless there's a bogeyman to chase us out of our chairs." I was talking about how certain religions use the concept of the Devil to scare us toward God, but it applies to a lot of things.
I'm not so sure that the market will work things out due to a few factors:
With all those factors working against switching broadband providers, will the market really work itself out? Things will have to get pretty bad to force the average consumer to vote with their wallets and go to the ISPs that deliver the services they really want. There may be some ripples felt in terms of new entrants to the market, but most of those will be people moving into new homes or new apartments. When it comes to the people in existing residences where broadband is available (excluding people in rural markets who are still waiting for broadband to become available), if they don't have broadband yet, are they really among the technically savvy people who will know enough or care enough to shop wisely?
Start a happiness pandemic
So we shouldn't prevent telecom companies from providing preferential access to certain kinds of internet content, because some blogger can come up with a hyperbolic hypothetical scenario where congress might provide preferential access to certain kinds of internet content.
So, never mind net neutrality! We need big strong nanny corporations to protect us from the big mean government!
If you like the Intarwebs and want to see a neutral web, the best way NOT to have either is to promote their regulation. Legislation solves nothing - a free market would sort it out quite nicely. That's why I disapprove of the EFF campaigns.
Global warming is a cube.
This wouldn't even be an issue if the ISPs were not government-sanctioned monopolies, using public byways to fleece their mandated customers. I agree that net neutrality should remain unforced, but only if these monopolies are eliminated. (Don't give me any crap about "deregulation"; if you actually look at any individual telecommunications market, and see real competition, you're probably not living in the US.)
Ick -- Slashdot is linking a blog post with the first two paragraphs of the real article. Go here instead:
c les/000/000/012/348yjwfo.asp
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Arti
You know, in order to increase demand for their automobiles in Cali? I dunno...that analogy and the article's tone as a whole is kind of disturbing.
Blar.
The "internet" didn't get big until the 1990's because that's how long it took for just modems to get out from under Ma Bell's monopoly thumb. There's very many articles here on /. about how the telcos tried to sabotage regular 56k dial up... like we never get that because they won't clean up the lines! Every Net Neutrality argument misses this point. It's like now that stuff is faster we forgot what life was like when we "rented" phones, and paid $$$ per minute charges. What's even more disheartening is that there's a good share of Reps and Senators that were in Congress when we Made THAT rule... and when we broke up Ma Bell... and they STILL don't get it!!!
Admittedly, the tone of the article is tongue-in-cheek, but this is a radical position for a conservative publication, isn't it? Plus, remember that the eminent domain powers required the government to pay the fair market value for the takings as decided (usually) by a court. Wait a minute, maybe this isn't so radical: if the telcos and cable companies could secure a taxpayer-funded buyout of their lines and cables to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions, then they'd be a lot better off than the buggy whip manufacturers when *their* business became obsolete. Time to buy Comcast stock!
...which is at the end of TFA. Kessler raises the issue of arguing for an application of eminent domain. The government-granted monopolies (cable TV and the RBOCs) aren't motivated to provide serious broadband at a reasonable cost—in fact, they're motivated not to (e.g. if you have the bandwidth needed for IPTV, you'll ditch plain old cable and even digital cable)—so pay them a reasonable price, grab the plant, and hand it over to someone who will do so.
(I'm glad that the item was linked to, but it would have been nice had the summary summarized TFA in its entirety (like, say, my submission of it that was rejected... not that I'm bitter, you understand...).)
...then you are against us
(us being the people, the small businesses, innovation)
the reality is that the market CAN'T sort this out. the only way it could is if there were competition with broadband, and the sad reality is that the only people who have more than one choice for broadband are those who can get cable internet AND dsl.
-- lol pwned
RTFA here. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/012/348yjwfo.asp
The summary does injustice.
The author is neither pro nor anit-net neutrality. The next paragraph following the quote in the summary starts with "But what market?"
Kessler acknowledges that the Teleco's are aging giants and that something needs to be done. At the same time he does not think that NEt Neutrality and regulation are the right answer.
He does bring up an interesting tactic of using the Kelo ruling on eminent domain to sieze teleco wires and hand them to new players who want to expand and innovate.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Specifically, keep in mind that THE GOVERNMENT made the internet, not the telecoms. The telecoms just went along with it providing their services as the government told them what to do. If we had to depend on the free market, there would be no internet.
I work in Michigan, and there are still areas that cannot get a better connection than the old 14.4 modems. This is because the major teleco's STILL have true monopolies here. There are Rural Carriers (different from Common Carriers) that do not have to open their networks, nor are they bound by most of the regulations that the Common Carriers (AT&T, Verison, etc) have to follow. When a simple PRI still costs the same in adjusted USD as they did in 1995 it makes it very hard for an ISP to offer anything there. No access for DSL, Dialup costs a fortune for the ISP, and the cities are small, there is one vity in Central Michigan that has 1, count them 1 dialup provider. Even teh Teleco (CenturyTel) does not provide dialup, or DSL in that area. Next comes Cable... The same area has one very monopolistic cable provider. Nobody is allowed to touch their network. They charge access fees nearly double than anywhere else in the country. These same Reps and Senators granted these companies, via the FCC, the ability to gouge the customer, ad now they are letting teh big ones get back into the game.
The Great God The Free Market will solve all ills. We must only have faith. If we regulate, we will be cast down in the eyes of our God The Free Market, and he will be much displeased, and cast us down for defying His will. Since it is impossible that a piece of legislation designed to solve a problem could ever actually solve the problem it is intended to solve, we must simply continue to pray that The Free Market shall turn His eyes kindly upon us, and accept His just decision when it comes.
we would have a whole, additional set of headaches as detailed by the article. Imagine how fast costs for bandwith would rise when the competition isnt about quality of material, but merely a war on aquiring high speeds. Whereas network neutrality in its current state is certainly open to corruption from political sources and large companies, read microsoft, google, that doesn't mean the idea should be disbanded completely. Personally, I have no desire to pay a dollar for every video clip I pirate, er download.
nihil est semper facillie
... until I asked a ninja.
Now all is clear.
It's like asking the Hot Dog On A Stick Girl To Pay AT&T to let you watch her make lemonade, which is just wrong.
It's also true that they are trying to tell you watching Robin William's cousin squeeze bacon juice is "the same thing"...
ask a ninja about net neutrality
-pyrrho
...sort of sounds like "I'll let those chickens handle that fox problem".
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Question about Net Neutrality:
If net neutrality passes, what if I need a connection with QoS (quality of service) for two-way video or VOIP communication?
In order to implement QoS in a workable way, my packets need priority. But if my packets need priority, that's not "neutral". And it seems like network neutrality is designed to prevent me from buying any kind of QoS from network providers.
How is this a good thing?
And we all know that market solutions breed big expensive and oppressive monopolies that are only good for the existing big players. Something of the like that would make Google, Amazon and Verizon happy but will screw all their competitors out of the market.
Most individuals don't have the money to fight their way into the "market" and the market doesn't 'care' about individuals in any case. "Markets" can be perfectly fine with single monopolies and no magic of the market will change that.
At least the people in office need my vote and, on paper at least, serve my interests.
To cite a possible solution from wikipeida, Enough and as Good -- if operators prioritize bandwidth, they must leave enough and as good bandwidth to permit non-prioritized services to reach consumers. Now, i may be an uneducated surf, but I see that as the most intelligent route to take. Pass legislation that lays down a minimum requirement, and then let whoever wants to pay more $ for more bandwith splurge to their heart's content.
nihil est semper facillie
Ok, I may be dense here, but are the local telcos (ie, the ones actually providing access to users) paying for transit or do they have peering arangements? It would seem to me that they would make out in the transit arrangement already because they are receiving more data than they are sending.
?
Forget the argument that telcos need to be guaranteed a return on investment or they won't upgrade our bandwidth. No one guarantees Intel a return before they spend billions in R&D on their next Pentium chip to beat their competitors at AMD. No one guarantees Cisco a return on their investment before they deploy their next router to beat Juniper. In real, competitive markets, the market provides access to capital.
So the telcos take our money, give us lousy service, and complain long and hard about how they're not making enough money, though last I checked they all seemed to be financially solvent.
The telcos, like an industry, are afraid of change. But they are going to have to change -- or the Internet will pass them by. Forget DSL; they need to start laying fiber as fast as it can be made. Because if they don't, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN will, and pretty soon people will wonder "what ever happened to the phone company?"
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Think of Google, MySpace, iTMS, etc. as the content providers -- much like NBC, VH1, etc. provide content for traditional cable service. Then you can see that the "tiered internet" concept is ass-backwards: cable companies pay the content providers (TV networks) for the privilege of serving up their programming, because that is what drives the local cable market. Similarly, Internet content providers are what drive individuals to sign up for broadband service. The major Internet sites are already providing the content to the telcos and cable operators free of charge. Thus, the concept of a "tiered" internet is pure and unprecedented greed.
The Weekly Standard is William Kristol's neocon rag that cheerleaded us into this Iraq debacle, this $9-45 TRILLION debt, and the rest of the BushCo agenda to crush the government that we use to protect ourselves from corporate anarchy.
The standard neocon procedure is to loudly insist that all the problems with their own policies are what's wrong with what they're attacking. It's boring, but it's worked, so they're doing it again.
The standard attack on Net Neutrality is Net Doublecharge, where the backbone like AT&T gets paid already for publishers like Google to connect from upstream, and paid by consumers like you to connect from downstream, to access their link among other networks. They doublecharge websites like Google because they want more money, and can get the entire industry to charge at once so there's no "routing around" the more expensive blackmail networks.
You want to see what their Net Doublecharge Internet will look like? It will look like AT&T's HomeZone, their updated version of AOL's "walled garden", where you get access only to AT&T's official Internet: sites that pay AT&T for access, which don't make any trouble for AT&T's control.
--
make install -not war
It just keeps picking up speed.
The Net Neutrality buzzwords have been proliferating the web these days like its the most important subject ever, then you get reading into it and realize, whatever.
Why not just lump Net Neutrality and 2 Tier Internet in with the Web 2.0 standards and post the articles on craigslist.com or myspace.com. Of course, this technology will only work on a MacBook running Windows Vista. Then we can group all the current slashdot over-hyped postings in one place and get on with some real stuff that matters.
I don't care so much about net nuetrality as I do about government neutrality on this issue. This is one of those issues that has significant impact to commerce, to Americans, and to the future of our government. Information is power and those that control the flow of information have an enormous amount of it. Thus, our representatives should ignore the lobbyists and do their own homework on the issue and come up with a good solution. A good indicator that they are right is when no one is happy with it.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
What?
Verizon has installed all the equiptment necessary to provide DSL service in my town - this is according to both the local techs and online account access.
They refuse to offer the service to anyone because they are trying to blackmail the PUC into doing what they want.
Their actions do not make any sense.
The problem is not that regulation in-and-of-itself is a bad idea in this case, but that the people who would be doing the regulating do not have their loyalties where they should be.
All current broadband providers hold their essentially monopolist positions by virtual of public franchising agreements. Where I live, only Comcast is allowed to supply cable to my door, and only Verizon is allowed to supply phone service. And these companies are happy for the regulation that has put them in this position -- witness Comcast's county-by-county holding action to try to stop Verizon from supplying cable TV via its new FIOS service.
Perhaps Congress wants to pass a law saying that any network provider is free to run a wire to my door. But if it doesn't, what we seem to have here is a group of government-sponsored monopolies claiming that if they leverage their monopoly to compete unfairly against nonmonopolists, it's the "market in action." Gimmie a break.
I humbly bow to my 'schlocky ad salesmen' (Google, Yahoo!, etc) and the 'monopolist plumbers'
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
I just got a responce today:
June 20, 2006
Mr. XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Dear Mr. XXXXXXX:
Thank you for contacting me with regard to the issue of net neutrality. It was good to hear from you.
The principle of net neutrality suggests that data from all Internet content providers should be treated equally, regardless of provider or content. In recent months, broadband service providers, including cable, telephone companies, and wireless providers, have expressed a desire to charge Internet content and application providers, such as Google, eBay, Amazon, and Vonage, for delivering content to Internet consumers.
Net neutrality is one of many issues that have been the subject of hearings held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation as it prepares to advance telecommunications reform legislation. Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) has scheduled a meeting for June 22, 2006, where details of his proposed legislation will be debated among members of the Committee. Furthermore, you may be interested to know that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced legislation, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 (S. 2360), aimed at codifying the concept of net neutrality. According to Senator Wyden, S. 2360 would prohibit network operators from charging Internet content and application providers for faster delivery to consumers or from favoring certain content. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have introduced similar legislation, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (S. 2917). Both of these bills are pending consideration by the Commerce Committee. To keep track of future actions on this legislation, you can go to the "Bill Tracking" service at http://lieberman.senate.gov/issues/resources.
I strongly support efforts to promote broadband deployment, but we must remain vigilant to ensure that congressional efforts to promote deployment by reforming telecommunications law maintain the openness of the Internet that has fueled economic growth and has reinforced our nation's commitment to free speech. Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind should legislation affecting net neutrality come before the full Senate for debate. I also want to review the materials and testimony from the Committee hearings and actions. My official Senate web site is designed to be an on-line office that provides access to constituent services, connecticut-specific information, and an abundance of information about what I am working on in the Senate on behalf of Connecticut and the nation. I am also pleased to let you know that I have launched an email news update service through my web site. You can sign up for that service by visiting http://lieberman.senate.gov/ and clicking on the "Subscribe Email News Updates" button at the bottom of the home page. I hope these are informative and useful.
Thank you again for letting me know your views and concerns. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress.
Sincerely,
Joseph I. Lieberman
UNITED STATES SENATOR
The more I realize that I could do without the internet. If this does ever go through are these companies thinking about how many people may just drop their net subscriptions? I know I would just do my searching from work and cancel my home account if I had to put up with the sites I use being slow. Either that or drop my cable/dsl and go to 9.99 dialup again. I'm suprised more people arn't complaining about this tho. Considering the number of Online gammers out there. I mean how much would say Blizzard have to pay to keep WoW in the fastlane? How would this effect you if you started up a game server for you and a few friends to play a game for the night? While the Telecoms might make money this for a few years it could kill the internet in that time as well.
Is there a place for fresh thinking and new recommendations in the infamous "network neutrality" debate?
Seth Johnson, David P Reed, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Pamela Samuelson, David Weinberger, Andy Oram and others [including me] have issued a new proposal on designed to "Preserve the Internet Standards for Net Neutrality."
The authors point out that "IP-layer neutrality is not a property of the Internet. It _is_the Internet." Then go on to say that "Providers certainly should be allowed to develop services within their own networks, treating data any way they want. But that's not the Internet."
Explanations are provided for CongressCriters, lawyers and lawmakers and human folks.
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Some people want to make it sound as if it's like going to the grocery store (5 different companies), it isn't. If food product a costs too much at store z, you check out v, w, x, and y. If v and w still charge too much, there are 2 more stores.
If the telcos get to play thier game, all the ISP's will because they can, and they know they can, in which case the internet in the U.S. is hosed, at least until people start using powerful wireless transmission mediums and form a kind of ad-hoc internet.
I got nuthin
Get the pattern :
... is happening ... Net neutrality so so and such ... corporations such and such .... but you think, net neutrality might not be shmock and shmack ? .... id (check out the bait!!!) rather let THE MARKET (the telcos) sort it out ....
So so so
In short the guy says 'Im typing a text that seems like in favor of net neutraltity, but im lobbying for big money in fact'
Read radical news here
I guess I believe a little bit more in the value of a free marketplace than you do. My take on it is, honestly, the free market would have taken us to the moon as soon as it was economically feasible to go. When we went in 1969, frankly, it wasn't economically feasible at all. It was done at horrendous expense, and with very little "return on investment". Oh, sure, you'll read the NASA propaganda about all the wonderful inventions we enjoy today because of the space program -- and there's an element of truth to that. But I venture to say we'd have just as many, if not *more* great inventions if all the money funding the "space race" was redirected to general research science instead.
Quite a few folks would pay a good sum of money for the opportunity to visit the moon as a tourist, but again, we're not quite able to do that safely and economically yet. Left to purely the free marketplace though, yes - we would get there. Only difference is, we'd let anyone go who wanted to pay to go, rather than a few select "astronauts" on government payroll - and we'd do it only after making it magnitudes less costly and at least somewhat safer.
Unlike ISP's, mall owners don't charge admission to enter the mall. ISP's do. It's perfectly okay to charge stores in a mall big rents. That's what they expect to pay! BUT the malls not only don't charge shoppers to enter, they usually provide incentives f0or them to do so. ISP's not only charge me for entry, but they me charge MORE if I want to ride on the moving sidewalk as oppoosed to walking along (more $$ = greater speed) That sidewalk should be able to take me anywhere in the mall for the $$ I pay, NOT just to where the mall owner wants me to go.
There are a few other choices. There exist some wireless broadband providers. One could also include cell phone wireless broadband here. FTTH (Fiber To The Home) is possible, and apparently being done in some places. I can imagine some sort of laser delivery system outside of fiber (I recall a company that once provided cable tv that way). And there's still BPL (Broadband over Power Lines), maybe.
The big question would be, how competitively could these alternatives be priced?
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
I don't think ISP's will degrade or restrict access to web sites (stop your typing about port 25 and craigslist now). I do think what they will do is offer private or exclusive bandwidth to their partners. For no extra charge to the end user I expect them to cordon off a portion of their fiber bandwidth to be used exclusively by their partner.
Let's say you have a fiber connection and a 15mbps plan. I think the ISP would give you a value added extra 5mbps for dedicated for use by a third party, let's say MSN.
So in your house you have your son using up bandwidth playing counterstrike, your daughter chatting away on skype while downloading a Warner movie using Bittorrent and your significant other watching a streaming video on how to boil water from YouTube.
You want to check your stocks so you go to google, google has to share that 15mbps connection with the other apps and is slow, so you switch over to MSN and find it blazingly fast in comparison. So you start to use MSN more and more and google less and less. Is that because MSN is doing a better job then google? No it is because the ISP has partnered with MSN. Over time this will limit your choices and you will find that you only use you ISP's partner services.
Has your ISP violated the tenets of Net Neutrality? They are not blocking your or slowing down access to sites.
I think the author confuses the issues a bit. I mean, how does using eminent domain to force more competition and/or better service eliminate the issue of net neutrality?
We're screwed either way, because the telecoms are hellbent on dragging their feet.
No regulation is going to make them stop.
I'm all for neutrality, but if the service providers choose to be assholes, there isn't a good means to stop them.
The government needs the telecoms (to spy on us) more than they need any of us or our votes (thanks to Diebold).
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If you live in one of those smaller towns with only one high speed solution you will be really in favor of net neutrality legislation.
If you live in a dense area with strong high speed competiton even two cable companies which run multiple lines in to your house (like I happen to have right now), they cant play monopoly games too much because people have a choice.
You know, this isn't exactly 100% related to the article, but, one thing I've been wondering about since I first heard about this is, what's to stop the companies from deciding they don't like, oh, say their competitors or someone who hasn't paid his extortion fees (and don't kid yourself, by every definition I can find -- except the one that relies on the word "illegal" -- this is extortion plain and simple) on schedule and setting latencies to that site so incredibly high that it causes anyone trying to visit to get a timeout? Essentially cutting that site off of the web as far as anyone is concerned. Even if they can't get away with setting it that high, imagine if some big online game company accidentally bounces a check or something. If they add any latency to those lines at all, the game company goes right down the pot. Online games just don't work once heavy latencies start. Who would pay to play, say World of Warcraft, when latency can never go under 1s (and I might add that they are kind of shooting themselves in their own foot with that background downloader saturating people's connections and causing latency to shoot up to 1+s while the average joe doesn't know what's causing it or how to disable the thing.)
I'm really worried that we may be looking at a heck of a lot worse than making the competition's websites act really slow. I'm afraid they may have the ability to cripple online games the moment they have a disagreement with the game company (essentially pay up or I'll break both your legs type of thing) and cut competition completely off the web as far as their customers are concerned -- not just make the sites slower. This really scares me because it puts the Internet largely in control of the ISPs and if they get too greedy, they can essentially make the Internet a useless thing for US citizens -- essentially killing the Internet as far as we would be concerned.
Perhaps I am reading too much into this? Maybe all the law is talking about is allowing them to use those little squid-type caching services simply to speed up sites rather than applying latency to slow sites down? I can understand the idea of charging for maintenance of the servers that would be necessary to implement such a large scale caching system (though it should be the customers who want the benefits of the caching who pay, not companies who are afraid that their sped up competition will get ahead while customers get tired of waiting for their site to load.) Please someone tell me it's just the caching one?
If these shills want a "market solution" to the problem, then the first thing that needs to happen is that all the entitlements, sweetheart deals, and monopoly enforcement that the telcos currently enjoy needs to be taken away!
That would be a fucking "market solution!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The "internet" didn't get big until the 1990's because that's how long it took for just modems to get out from under Ma Bell's monopoly thumb.
1974 -- US Justice Department files suit against AT&T
1981 -- RFC791 (Internet Protocol) released. IBM PC released (with no modem)
1982 -- AT&T settles the antitrust suit
1984 -- AT&T broken up. Apple Macintosh released (with no modem).
1985 -- Microsoft Windows released (without TCP/IP)
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I would like to see the root of the problem squashed. If we must have a new law how about this, YOU CAN PROVIDE A NET SERVICE OR PROVIDE CONTENT BUT NOT BOTH. I realise this is a gross over simplification of the issue but its a major conflict of interest to allow the telcos to do both.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
But the last mile is the killer part. I highly doubt google is going to become an ISP.
Watch for them to buy, lease, or option-to-lease some spectrum, or partner with someone who has.
With a backbone in place they can bootstrap up the last mile part of a service with WiMax. (They could also do it with infrared links, a WiFi mesh, or any of a number of solutions - but WiMax on licensed bandwidth has the advantage that they can make service-level agreements.)
As enough people sign up to produce crowding they can subdivide the cells, and eventually start running their own fiber (or copper) where things are REALLY dense.
And then they can eat their competitors' lunches by underselling them on voice and video, too.
Perhaps buying that fiber is just a doomsday device to rattle at recalcitrant networking providers. But if there's any company that can assemble the resources necessary to break the hold of the legacy networking companies, and has the guts to try it, it's Google.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...the monopolist plumbers have already received lotsa billions of dollars to rollout high speed networks all over, to the premises, and apparently failed to do so adequately. Now they want more money..for what again? Both ends of the internet are paid for with the model we have now, they want some additional middleman fees..just because they can and can threaten to choke off traffic. Screw that! Instead of them getting more money, how about they get sued to provide what they already got paid to build?
It seems like in this net neutraility argument, nobody considers that some people don't care about having equal bandwidth to all sites out there, or prioritization. Why don't we insist instead that if your ISP/telco offers a plan with prioritization for HD video and etc. they must explicitly say so in the plan, in unofuscated language that anyone can understand: "premium services included in this plan take priority over general web browsing. use of premium services may cause slowdown or interruption of general internet connectivity.". Then say that people can buy this if they want. Then insist that they must offer an alternative plan that does NOT have "premium services" (i.e. internet connection just like we have now) so that people who don't want "premium services" can browse the way they want to. Make it so that your ISP cannot throttle unless your plan says so, and make sure that a plain internet connection plan is at least a choice for the consumer.
And don't forget Richfield Oil, which later became Atlantic Richfield who also had a hand in the destruction of socal trolleys. I have fond memories of riding the trolleys in LA and San Diego as a kid (yeah, I'm an old fart). Look at what both cities are doing now; spending ++millions (billions?) to rebuild the trolley systems.
Yeah, this war could destroy the web as we know it but it is my hope that something better will replace it, reguardless.
If telcos DO manage to get this through, and the internet becomes more expensive to do anything beyond what they want or whatever pricey schemes they do, how long until we have the tiered internet equivalent of "phone phreakers"?
Neutrality toward packets is a fundamental and essential feature of the architecture of the Internet.
Only temporary exceptions, such as defensive measures against denial-of-service attacks, can really
be contemplated.
It depends what we think the contract of the middle of the net is. And for it to remain scalable,
the middle must remain ignorant of the semantics of the content of the packets. Anything else just
becomes unworkably complex and a barrier to application level evolution. Anything else will have
complex and unpredictable dynamics. Think L.A. at rush hour.
A non-neutral Internet is not the Internet. It's something else. We could call it digital TV perhaps.
As such, if the U.S. gets too silly in its non-neutral internet architecture, then the rest of the Internet
will just have to treat it like trouble and route around it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The National City Lines exploit involved much more than just trollies in California. It also involved buying bus lines throughout the country and systematically putting them out of business. A part of the story can be found on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Lines
I can't remember where I saw this before but some one had an intelligent solution to this debate. If telco's want net nuetrality, give it to them but on the condition they no longer have "common carrier" status.
As I understand it, "Common Carrier" status ensures the ISP's don't get sued for people who download child porn or arrange drug deals via email. You could add a provision to the bill saying any ISP that chooses a non neutral way of handling traffic looses the this common carrier status. If any of their users downloads at lease one child porn pic, or email through there system that facilitates a crime, they are held responsible in both criminal and civil court. Politicians would love it as they can show they are cracking down on crime on the internet, and it would pretty much garuntee that every ISP would be net neutral for fear that one users downloads something they aren't suppose to.
for political ads and campaign spam.
But the rest of us will be forced to reroute via the slower sections of the net.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Maybe there could be some kind of bill proposed to
BREAK THE FUCKING MONOPOLIES?!
Seriously, how in the hell did these companies get monopolies granted to them in the first place?
Yes the free market works and kicks ass.
But not when you mix it with slimy politicians giving some groups preferential treatment.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
I'd rather let the market sort these things out.
If the market was sorting things out alone, there would be one telecommunications monopoly, you'd be paying whatever the hell it felt like charging, and there wouldn't be any competition.
Laissez faire economic fantasies always depend on willful ignorance of the fact that wealth is a competitive advantage. Sooner or later, especially in fields like telecom where the barrier to entry is high by nature, one player gets far enough ahead to either buy out or squeeze out the competition. Excessive or ill-considered regulation is always a bad thing, of course, but some degree of regulation is necessary to ensure that competition exists in the first place. Mature markets do not have spontaneously occurring competition in most cases.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Google is, unquestionably, getting into at least the wireless ISP business with its joint venture with EarthLink in San Francisco. The question is where do they go from there.
Within two paragraphs, we already encounter this particular misunderstanding:
"Everyone should be allowed to hang out in the town square and use it as they please, one low price, eat all you want at the buffet."
The rest of the article isn't worth reading. That level of grasp on the problem tells me the writer already thinks in glittering generalities and doesn't understand the issue. "One low price" hardly begins to describe the current state of net neutrality.
Not too surprising, however. I've yet to see an opponent to net neutrality who can make their case without misunderstanding or misrepresenting this particular point, if they examine specific points at all.
Tweet, tweet.
Net neutrality is about equal access based on WHO you are not WHAT you are doing.
E.g. they cannot ban blacks from visiting a mall. They can ban people playing football in it.
In this case, if you have GoogleVoIP, it is treated like VoIP. If you have Google, it is treated like http. They can be treated differently. BellVoIP can be treated differently from Google, but not from GoogleVoIP.
As someone else pointed out, though, you need a personal WAN to get proper QoS: otherwise ALL hops need to be QoSd to get under the QoS limit.
...sort of sounds like "I'll let those chickens handle that fox problem".
Close, but I'd phrase it a tad differently...
"I'll let those foxes handle that chicken problem".
And W(here)TF does the linked author get off suggesting the use of eminent domain to solve the problem? "Hey, I've got a great idea... The telecomms love screwing the consumers - So let's encourage them to just steal physical property from the consumers to facilitate their normal rape and robbery".
Riiiiiiight... That worked well with yuppie scum on the Connecticut beachfront. Let 'em try it in Northern New England, or the Deep South, or parts of the midwest - They want a civil war, we'll give it to 'em. They can take the front 6' of my yard (over and over until I no longer have a yard and oh gee they turned down my variance, gotta sell to Wallyworld) when my body, and my neighbors bodies, and their neighbors bodies, and so on, ROT in that 6' ditch they want to steal.
We don't need fuckwads like Andy Kessler giving them any more ideas. Andy, You betrayed your real motives quite nicely with one sentence - "Because without the ability to extract money from the webbies for the use of their not-so-fast Alexander Graham Bell-era wires (forget that you and I already overpay for this)". Forget we already overpay... No, Andy, I don't think I will forget that niggling little factoid. We already pay! So does Google, and I'd bet they pay boatloads more than most of us. Even the terrible evil dark-side of Microsoft pays through the nose for their bandwidth, and I see no need for any of us to pay again. Yeah, so you finally lost the tax "for" the goddamned SPANISH AMERICAN WAR. Suck it up, Andy, and whichever baby-bell bought your soul - I just can't hear the violins.
Um, hello? Mods, DAldredge has posted the story in the GP post many, many times (always in a context it is worth telling). The AC who make the remark in the parent is by no means 'off topic', (troll or flamebait maybe) but not "off topic".
SEC. 3. DECEPTIVE PRACTICES IN PROVIDING INTERNET ACCESS.
(1) Definitions.- As used in this Section:
(A) Internet.- The term "Internet" means the worldwide, publicly accessible system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP), some characteristics of which include: i) Transmissions between users who hold globally unique addresses, and which transmissions are broken down into smaller segments referred to as "packets" comprised of a small portion of information useful to the users at each transmission's endpoints, and a small set of prefixed data describing the source and destination of each transmission and how the packet is to be treated; ii) routers that transmit these packets to various other routers on a best efforts basis, changing routers freely as a means of managing network flow; and iii) said routers transmit packets independently of each other and independently of the particular application in use, in accordance with globally defined protocol requirements and recommendations.
(B) Internet access.- The term "Internet access" means a service that enables users to transmit and receive transmissions of data using the Internet protocol in a manner that is agnostic to the nature, source or destination of the transmission of any packet. Such IP transmissions may include information, text, sounds, images and other content such as messaging and electronic mail.
(2) Any person engaged in interstate commerce that charges a fee for the provision of Internet access must in fact provide access to the Internet in accord with the above definition, regardless whether additional proprietary content, information or other services are also provided as part of a package of services offered to consumers.
(3) Network providers that offer special features based on analyzing and identifying particular applications being conveyed by packet transmissions must not describe these services as "Internet" services. Any representation as to the speed or "bandwidth" of the Internet access shall be limited to the speed or bandwidth allocated to Internet access.
(4) Unfair or Deceptive Act or Practice- A violation of paragraphs 2 or 3 shall be treated as a violation of a rule defining an unfair or deceptive act or practice prescribed under section 18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B)). The Federal Trade Commission shall enforce this Act in the same manner, by the same means, and with the same jurisdiction as though all applicable terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act were incorporated into and made a part of this Act.
Aire Libre
People like the sites they go to. They don't "search" for things, they "google" for them. It's what they know and love. To them Google, eBay, Gmail, Myspace, they ARE the Internet. Teh technical details are lsot on them. So if they surf to Google and instead of the site get a message saying "Your ISP is slowing us down so we are blocking them and you can't use us, here's a list of ISPs that you can use instead" and they get the same thing from eBay and so on they aren't going to care why. They'll call their ISP and demand that they "fix my Internet". All the reasoning and alternatives will be lost on them. The issue will be ISP X lets them get what they want, Y doesn't, therefore Y is broken.
If the content providers unify and strike back, it will be devistating. The content is what the Internet is to people, and for most it's only very few sites that are of real interest. That other sites exist doesn't matter. Most people go to only one news site and if it's slow they get mad, rather than just picking another. It's their new site, they want it, not something like it.
Another possible technical way to go would be for me to me to ask your provider for priority in exchange for a fee. That would allow me to video-conference with you on your current connection because your provider and mine have collaborated to provide end-to-end QoS for an additional fee.
But we have to have net neutrality, so that whole range of services is basically illegal.
That's my technical objection to network neutrality.
My objection to that sort of solution, from a consumer's point of view, is that I don't want anybody else out there determining what gets priority at my end of the connection. What if I want to tune in to your video conference feed but don't want it to have highest priority over my end of the network? What if I'm running a file server or something that I don't want squashed by the massive amount of bandwidth your video feed would take if it was given preemptive preference? But I still want to be able to see your video feed...
More in this vein is the concern everybody keeps raising that, for example, Cox customers (like me) might start getting crappy connections to YouTube because Google Video is paying more for priority over Cox's network, or vice versa. What if I think Google Video is shit and want YouTube to have higher priority? (All examples are fake, BTW - I'm not a big user of either). Both Google and YouTube are paying for a certain speed connection on their end and I'm paying for a certain speed connection on my end, and since both of their connections could easily saturate mine a hundred times over, I expect that if I'm doing nothing but looking at my preferred site, I will get it at full speed over my connection. I shouldn't get crappy speeds with YouTube because Google is Cox's Preferred Video Partner or any such.
Which is basically where the big concern comes from, with non-web services like VOIP or IPTV. People worry that Cox's preferred VOIP partner (or subsidiary) will get highest priority VOIP traffic over Cox's network, and thus people who want to use a competing service will get crap connections, allowing Cox to effectively leverage their near-monopoly power to get more near-monopoly power in a different market. Right now, cable and phone companies (Cox and Verizon in my area) have monopolies on phone and cable, respective, and almost complete power over internet connectivity, in that there's basically only those who options. But now, high-speed internet is opening up a lot of competition for both the phone and cable companies themselves with voice and video services over the Internet, and that worries both the phone companies and the cable companies, and yet at the same time makes them see dollar signs.
Imagine if Cox could create it's own VOIP service or partner with an existing VOIP provider, give it highest priority on their network, and effectively become another local phone company competing with, in my area, Verizon. Ka-ching, more power for Cox. Or if Verizon could create or partner with an IPTV or other internet video service, give them top priority on their network, and compete against Cox's TV business. Both cable and phone companies are trying to work this angle as "look, allowing us to tier the network will create more competition for phone and TV companies!", but what they mean is "it will allow us to be more competitive against our major competitor's other areas of business". But at the same time, while trying to gain competitive advantages for themselves against each other, they're squashing the ability for even more competition to flourish.
Which is what this is really all about. It's about consumer choice. I've no problem with Cox or Verizon or whoever giving VOIP or IPTV traffic higher priority than web or ftp traffic. It's more lag-sensitive, and it needs better throughput to give adequate quality results. What I object to is what is effectively monopoly bundling of services. Instead of being free to choose what VOIP or IPTV service I want, if I want decent quality I'll have to go with the one that pays
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The incumbent phone companies will finally be able to absolutely squash the biggest threat to their revenue stream. What prevents them from adding lag or blocking voip addresses? The QoS gear that they can't afford to install today will suddenly be deployed, but to discriminate against lag-sensitive apps that don't kick back to the telco.
They'll claim that it's expensive to provide reliable low-latency links regardless of bandwidth, and add a cost-recovery fee of $15/connection/month to carry such traffic. Soon, the only voip available will be theirs, and it will cost very nearly what we pay for traditional phone service today.
In the long run, I'd like to think that such tactics will amount to suicide - the market will gain a huge incentive to create alternate solutions for 'the last mile'. If this need can be cheaply satisfied, the existing local distribution monopolies will die an irrelevant death much more quickly _because_ of their attempts to collect connection tolls.
Seems to me this fits exactly into what the article is really about, eminent domain. It's in the town's best interest to provide high-speed internet. Verizon was given a virtual monopoly to provide this service. If they're not, it's in the public's best interest to take the lines under eminent domain and give them to somebody who will provide the service.
...their OWN satellites...I can't believe that somebody there has not already thought of this.
I read that the author wanted to use Kelo as a sort of cattle prod in order to get the telcos off their asses and fix things. I don't think he really was advocating it.
And what do you do if they call your bluff?
As the previous poster pointed out: A government buyout at a court-determined fair market price might be perceived as a BIG win for the tellcos. Cash out the centuries-old, rotting, infrastructure (which the government will then probably have to contract with you to run, at a big fee, in addition). Then invest it wherever makes more sense - or hand it back to your stockholders and hold a big party.
If you're going to bluff you have to have a plan for what to do if it's called.
Further, even if the consequences for the other player are dire, if you want to get the other player to fold you have to LOOK like you'll follow through. (That's why presidents during the Cold War under the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction had to act like they were just crazy enough to actually fight a nuclear war if the other superpowers didn't give them what they wanted. Otherwise "MAD" turns into "US Assured Destruction" and the dominoes fall.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Damn, I think I used too many different "you"s in the previous sentence. But you know what I mean.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Hey has anyone noticed that hidden in the so called Nework Neutrality bill (S. 2686: Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109 -2686 are provisions to create digital video and audio copyright flags, to implement analog watermarking, and to force all hardware and software to respect them? What a ticking time bomb!
All you need to know about net neutrality told to you by a ninja.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Forgive me, I'm just a lowly student who understands these thing not... but I cannot find, to save my life, the units for "government regulation", "government management of the economy", and "centralization of capital". It must be in those 500 level economics classes, eh? Or, perhaps, that's what your doctoral thesis was on?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
and they made promises of fibre to the home. Read all about it at http://www.newnetworks.com/scandals.htm Get it straight it's another something for nothing deal for big business...
Just a littie summary...
This book documents the largest fraud case in American history The case is simple: Do you have a 45 Mbps, bi-directional service to your home, paying around $40? Do you have 500+ channels and can choose any competitive service? You paid an estimated $2000 for this product even though you did not receive it and it may never be available. Do you want your money back and the companies held accountable? Background: Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies -- SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives. The Commitment: * By 2006, 86 million households should have already been wired with a fiber (and coax), wire, capable of at least 45 Mbps in both directions, and could handle 500+ channels. * Universal Broadband: This wiring was to be done in rich and poor neighborhoods, in rural, urban and suburban areas equally. * Open to ALL Competition: These networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed-in network or deployed only where the phone company desired. * Each State: By 2006, 75% of the state of New Jersey was to be wired, Pennsylvania was to have 50% of households by 2004, California to have 5 million households by 2000, Texas claimed all schools, libraries, hospitals....Virtually every state had commitments. * Massive Financial Incentives: In exchange for building these networks, the Bell companies ALL received changes in state laws that gave these them excessive profits, tax savings, and other perks to be used in building these networks. * This was not DSL, which travels over the old copper wiring and did not require new regulations. * This is not Verizon's FIOS or SBC's Lightspeed fiber optics, which are slower, can't handle 500 channels, are not open to competition, and are not being deployed equitably. * This was NOT fiber somewhere in the network ether, but directly to homes. The Harms and Outcome * Costs to Customers -- We estimate that $206 billion dollars in excess profits and tax deductions were collected -- over $2000 per household. (This is the low estimate.) * Cost to the Country -- About $5 trillion dollars to the economy. America lost a decade of technological innovation and economic growth, about $500 billion annually. * Cost to the Country -- America is now 16th in the world in broadband. While Korea and Japan have 40-100 Mbps at cheap prices, America is still at kilobyte speeds. * The New Digital Divide -- The phone companies current plans are to pick and choose where and when they want to deploy fiber services, if at all. * Competitor Close Out -- SBC, BellSouth and Verizon now claim that they can control who uses the networks and at what price, impacting everything from VOIP and municipality roll outs to new services from Ebay and Google. The Truth: This is a Fraud Case * Fraud: There is a dark secret -- the networks couldn't be built at the time the commitments were made and are still not available. If someone pays thousands of dollars for a service and doesn't get it, isn't that fraud? * Collusion and Cover-up: TELE-TV and Americast, the Bell companies' fiber optic front groups, spent about $1 billion and were designed to make America believe these deployments were real in order to pass the Telecom Act of 1996 and enter long distance. How did every major phone company in America not know that these fiber-based services couldn't be built and were able to defraud over 40 states? * The mergers killed fiber optic deployments in over 26 states and harmed competition.
If these shills want a "market solution" to the problem, then the first thing that needs to happen is that all the entitlements, sweetheart deals, and monopoly enforcement that the telcos currently enjoy needs to be taken away!
Exactly! And not just the telcos or RBOCs, but also the cable cos, and broadcasting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Google: Uh, I don't think so. I think we'll just make google.com inaccessible altogether to your pipes, and buy a few ads supporting your competitors who provide full service at normal prices. Take a minute to think about how your customers might react to that before you try to throw your weight around against us.
Telco: We don't have any competitors.
Google: Oh.
Telco: Pay up, bitches.
Google: Okay then, we'll become your competition.
Partering with Earthlink, Google is setting up wireless access in San Francisco. The service is called MetroFi and is advertizer paid for, there isn't a subcriber fee. The Wall Street Journal has an article that mentions it:
Cities Shop
For Lower Prices
In Wi-Fi: Free
Also mentioned is Portland, OR's plans. MetroFi is waiting for city council approval and they will offer ad supported as well as paid for services.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is nothing. Just wait until companies start trying to squeeze the internet garden hose in ways that it wasn't meant to be squeezed. We'll get an object lesson in "the internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it". A network that doesn't route IP in a standard way will, justifiably, be perceived as damaged. Throw hackers/crackers, offshore proxies, ad-hoc wireless networks (in legal and illegal varieties) into the mix and it'll make the file-sharing wars look tame.
Gentleman, start your un-capped cable-modem MAC-spoofing wireless gateways!
If we're lucky, the suits will kill enough golden geese to spark the kind of real innovation that will drive the incumbent telcos almost totally out of business. Somebody still has to provide reliable E911, but if we could segment that off, then the rest could be done so cheaply there wouldn't be any need to meter it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All that fiber is useless if it doesn't cover the last mile to people's homes. If a monopoly (or duopoly) still controls that (which they do, pretty much everywhere) then Google is screwed.
Ah, but Google can use wireless for the last mile. Google is partnering with Earthlink to provide wireless access in San Francisco.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You lost you. .... I .... I mean, me!
You lost me
There is currently an advertisement on slashdot that is very clever. It's a flash animation saying "To see the future of the internet". If you follow the link www.internetofthefuture.org you'll see a cartoon advocating the people to rise up and protest against the net neutrality bill. It's a very misleading cartoon, yet entertaining. There's no credits or contact info associated to this ad, and at one point they even boil the argument down to an issue of "the people" vs. "the government".
This banner ad can be found at the top of the slashdot home page (hit refresh many times)
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
There is currently an advertisement on slashdot that is very clever. It's a flash animation saying "To see the future of the internet". If you follow the link www.internetofthefuture.org you'll see a cartoon advocating the people to rise up and protest against the net neutrality bill. It's a very misleading cartoon, yet entertaining. There's no credits or contact info associated to this ad, and at one point they even boil the argument down to an issue of "the people" vs. "the government".
This banner ad can be found at the top of the slashdot home page (hit refresh many times)
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
5) Profit!!!
Suppose your town had four telephone companies. How do you get service from one of them to your house? Somebody has to pay for the physical lines between their CO and your home to start with. If there's just one phone company for that "territory," that company can estimate the revenue they'll make by running out trunk lines to a neighborhood; with four companies, none of them can make nearly as good an estimation. Do you pay for the actual last mile between the nearest junction box and your house? And who owns that last mile, the phone company you're buying from? What if you want to switch services? Does the new company have to run out *their* trunk line to your neighborhood to get to you, and do they have to put in their own connection to your house? Their competitors not only aren't compelled to give them access, after all, they now have a vested interest in making that access *difficult.*
There is a solution as to who owns the last mile, wireless. Because many other countries don't have landline structures in place they can go straight to wireless. Finland and South Korea for instance. Or countries in Africa. Building wireless services is cheaper than laying landlines. With wireless all you need for transmittion over a broad area is to buy or rent a small area to build transceivers/repeaters. IEEE Spectrum has had a number of articles on what groups, whether businesses, communities, or organizations, have done in different countries. Even in the US people in most places have a choice in who they get cellphone service from. I, like many colleges students, only have a cellphone. And with today's technology if the FCC were to open up more frequences, or better yet was compleatly abolished, more services could be offered.
As counter-intuitive as it may seem, I suspect your choice of local phone company, cable service, etc. would still be dictated for you in a "purely free market" scenario, because the economies of scale involved would drive the phone companies to negotiate exclusive contracts with subdivision planners, builders, property managers and, yes, municipalities. (The only solution to that I could come up with would, ironically, be *more* government involvement, not less: make the "last mile" an actual public utility; the four theoretical phone companies could connect at the municipal COs, all at the same rates.)
I could possibly go with this. A few days ago I posted an article that was published in the IEEE Sceptrum about A Broadband Utopia , where "a municipally owned network in Utah is poised to offer 100 megabits per second--and that's just to start". Normally I'm all for free trade however I think this idea of communities owning the physical last mile and allowing various businesses to access it and sale services may be a good idea.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wrong. True libertarians wouldn't of given the landline providers, whether phone or cable, the monopolies of landlines. Libertarinas would of opened access to all comers who could pay to lay cables, fiber, or lines. It wasn't libertarians who gave cablecos and telcos their monopolies. As far as the railroads are concerned, like the cablecos and telcos, they were government granted monopolies. Governments granted them rights of way just as they did with the other monopolies. Government even gave them the power of eminent domain, where they could condemn someone else's land and take it. It was partially for this reason they were called Railroad or Robber Barons among other names.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The market is a false idol. It is a heartless beast brought to life by the myriad selfish acts of millions of individuals. It does not in any way act in society's interest, though it may benefit society in many ways. The idea that the market can be trusted to solve any problem is utopian, just as the communist ideal is utopian. Net neutrality is of interest to society, not to the telco's. The market will not act to protect net neutrality. It is up to society to prohibit the market from dismantling net neutrality.
Let the Supreme Court step in if the fighting between the two gets to the point that guns are going to be drawn..
A president can tell both congress and the Supreme Court to fuck themselves. That's what Pres Andrew Jackson did. When he forced the Cherokee to march from the Carolinas to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears congress sued him in the Supreme Court. The USSC ruled against him but he jst said he was the commander in chief and if they wanted to stop him then they'd have to get their own army. While it may not work with some it could work with others.
Amen Brother! I grew up a Reagan Republican.
I first voted for Carter in '80. I don't recall who I voted for throught the '80, but since 1992 I have voted for the Libertarian candidate when Ron Paul ran for president except in 2000. In 2000 I specifically voted against Bush instead of for Harry Brown the Libertarian candidate. At that tyme I felt Gross, er Gore, was slightly less bad than Bush.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Some phone or cable company owns the lines for the last mile. Deregulation means they own then and nobody else can run lines (unless we want a spagheti mess going to every house). So then, where is the competition? Last mile needs to be considered something like a municipal service. It needs to be fiber, and then we can connect up to whomever we choose at the hubs. There really isn't any other way to do it that I can see that doesn't involve some corporation owning the lines and therefore having a monopoly. At least we have some more direct control over the city officials.
What deregulation means is that a competitor can come in and offer better wireless connectivity. Or the community itself can laydown and own the landline/fiber and allow others access to it and sale various services like what some cities in Utah are doing. A Broadband Utopia. A municipally owned network in Utah is poised to offer 100 megabits per second--and that's just to start.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is classic non-committal Liberman - notice *nowhere* in his
letter does he give support for this legislation. This is why
I'm voting for Lamont. I hope you will join us.
A free market needs to be protected and enforced by rules. The optimal solution for providers is monopoly. The telephone market is a very good example of this - much of the value of the service is the ability to connect to others. Thus, if you have large marketshare, there won't be more competition. Game over. Getting large marketshare? For the telco companies, the incentive to merge would be huge - you could lower competition and obtain monopoly. Just become large enough, kill traffic to other companies (if you have 80% when doing this, the remaining 20% will just become yours) and set the pricing at what makes the most money.
Imagine you're a politician. Now, the topic is something in the area of botany or chemistry, or pick anything you don't have the foggiest clue about. And, quite honestly, you could hardly care less about it. You don't even want to get too involved with the subject because there's better things for you to do.
In comes Mr. Lobbyman, who first of all mentions that his company gave some big cheque to your party, and why it would be a very good idea to see it from his point of view. He even gives you some examples why it would be a good idea to do what he wants besides the money he bribed you with.
Now, like I said, you don't really care about the topic. This way or that, it makes no difference for you. And there's someone who first of all gave you money (and will continue to do that, most likely, if you vote in his favor), and he also gives you "useful input" why it would be beneficial for "everyone" if you voted in his favor.
How would you decide?
This is how lobbying works. Giving one sided information, and of course, money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I like the way the article uses the false equivilency argument to inspire apathy in readers. Was this article posted by some Telco shill or what?
It's a great tactic to say "they're all the same" if one wants people to tune out and do nothing. Then who wins when the public is asleep? Easy, Big Telecom wins becasue they have the lobbying bucks and the decades long presnece in Washington.
The idea that Google and such even compare with the Telcos and CableCos in Washington, and their associated interests? Crazy. Google and like companies, despite their recent stock explosion, are still the wide eyed noobies founded by idealists compared with the bare knuckle Telecom lobbyists in Washington who've been working politicians on deregulation and media ownership issues for generations.
I also like how the author doesn't mention that Google and such companies are the only people defending consumer's right to the internet as it currently exists, where consumers pay for bandwidth and pay for the infrastructure to be built, and then get to choose what they want off the web. The Telcos propose a model where the consumer pays for bandwidth and infrastructure, and then the Telcos charge content providers on top of that to determine what consumers get.
It's basically paying twice for placed advertising and services. Any consumer who goes for that over what we have today, is a total F'ing idiot. But Telcom is spending big bucks to lobby this issue, and I'll bet they have people spamming forums with pro-deregulation BS too. They have tens of millions to spend on spinning this issue, and many billions to make afterall.
The author suggests that rather than legislate, the Government should just declare ownership over the lines, or at least threaten to. That's what he means by using eminent domain.
Strikes me as a really bad idea.
Did anyone RTFA and notice this?
That's complete and utter horse shit. The entire infrastructure is ALREADY paid for by all the broadband consumers out there. When I use Google, my Telco is already getting paid for that, by me.
There is no shortage of broadband consumers, nor any shortage of funds to build out new infrastructure. This is simply a greedy move by Telcos to see how stupid people and government are to grant them a strangle hold on our entire future media from internet phones to internet TV, to internet movies on demand. A monopoly that would make the old Hollywood studio system or the old MaBell monopolies seem trivial by comparison.
Of course they're trying, they'd be stupid not to. If they win they can basically print their own money and weild more power than just about any other US corporation. In 10 years anyone controling contetn on the internet basically controls the country via the media. The only question is if people are stupid enough and our government corrupt enough to go for it.
If so, may as well grant a monopoly on drinking water to some MegaCorp next, because if we're stupid enough to lose Net Neutrality who knows what kind of stupid shit the US public will go for next.
Get a clue people:
WE BROADBAND CONSUMERS ARE ALREADY PAYING THE TELCO FOR THE BANDWIDTH WE USE AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE.
That's how it's already paid for and built. Why for example moms in South Korea can video conference to trade recipes and yak all day, while the kids play MMORPG simultaneously, on DSL lines 10x faster than ours, without paying a single penny more on their monthly bill. Because the infrastructure was already fucking paid for by the monthly fee, with enough left over to profit and build the next generation network despite their already being way faster than us. Their monthly fees are also lower than ours btw.
And as far as US network capacity goes, we have plenty, and it's cheap to build by comparison with all the money telcos are taking in from broadband subscriptions. They just don't want to give up the money. And why would they? If the US public is stupid enough to bend over and take it, of course they'll go for it.
GOOGLE or whoever is providing a service to ME, on the network I've leased from the Telco who are already getting paid. They have no call to get into extorting fees from content providers so as to control the media too.
Only a completely ignorant or just outright stupid person still doesn't get why Net Neutrality is important.
In the UK we have a monopolistic telco - BT. We also have a government watch-dog - ofcom - which has mandated that BT must offer the local loop to competitors such as bulldog, etc.
Whilst this initially progressed quite slowly it is now at the point where you can get cheap broadband with up to 16Meg connections with the added bonus of being able to choose alternative phone line suppliers too. In fact you can now get 24Meg connections (dependant on distance from the exchange and quality of the wire).
But what if your ISP offered you Microsoft's new gonzo search engine at full speed? And while it wasn't as good as Google, it was 90% as good?
See now thats very interesting. What makes you think Micrsoft is going to be more willing to pay these fees than google? But of course they can easily afford to, they have mountains of money. So while google and yahoo dwindle to shadows of their former selves, MS waits out the storm from their multiple market pedestal, and mops up the remainder. They can then lobby to get the net neutrality laws in place when everyone else is gone under, and come out as heroes. I'm not saying its that involved a conspiracy, but any way you slice it, these new charges work in their favour.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Just wondering, but this (the whole net-neutrality thing) would only be applicable to the US, right ?
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
the telcos and ISPs fail to see is that we the customer are paying for a service and if they cut access to parts of that service because google or any other domain fails to pay their extortion money then that is considered what i would call breach of contract...
And you're right, it wasn't libertarians who gave monopolies, it was the nature of the market that gave the monopolies. You really need to re-read your eocnomic histroy.
And as to the moniker of 'Robber Baron' or 'Railroad Baron' -- that had more to do with noncompetitive business practices (including brutality to 'dissuade' competition, as well as gouging when owning a monopoly) than anything else. It had nothing to do with eminent domain, according to every source I've read -- if you want a quick review, check the wikipedia entry.
Still, I think what you're missing out on here is that, with the high cost of infrastructure, the only viable business model would have been based off monopolies. The natural setup of the industry would have resulted in monopolies anyway, so would you rather that they can wield those monopolies to the detriment of the consumer, or would you rather that they are regulated?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
A simple explanation of Net Neutrality by our local resident ninja: http://youtube.com/watch?v=H69eCYcDcuQ/
The last mile should be owned by the people who use it. Local co-ops are the best solution. The four telcos should be competing to hook up to the neighborhood hub (or maybe the district hub or the city hub).
Wireless sounds good, but it goes against my intuition to think it can really scale and deliver the same bandwidth that wires can. Fortunately, this is Slashdot, so some nerd can chime in and refute or confirm my intuition with actual facts.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Be sure to enclose a check (a really LARGE check) if you actually want your letter to be read.
Writing to one US Senator from NC (Dole) is assured to bring by return mail the latest Karl Rove talking points on whatever issue. Writing to the other (Burr) never gets answered.
Our "elected" representatives respond to money and only money. The system is broken and those responsible for fixing it are its biggest beneficiaries.
*shrug*
I've yet to see a proponent of net neutrality make their case without leaving the world of fact and reasining, jumping into appeals to emotion and leaps of logic.
"Think special, high-speed priority for campaign commercials or educational videos about global warming." You know what? My bullshit detector went off the scale on reading this. It's quite obvious where he's coming from, and whom he's trying to fool. Goddammit those assholes got no shame. Without reading any other text in the posting or TFA I know fore friggin' sure that this guy is paid by the telecoms for this garbage piece.
Can anyone tell me, does this net neutrality issue only affect the US or will it have negative implications for the rest of the world?
This problem is nothing that a few hundred thousand simultaneous cancellations won't cure FAST.
Ah, but Google can use wireless for the last mile. Google is partnering with Earthlink to provide wireless access in San Francisco.
That's great and all, but I was kind of hoping we might see some decent speeds and competition within 10 years. That's not gonna happen at this rate.
According to CNet"Google will manage the free 300-kilobits-per-second Wi-Fi service, while EarthLink will offer the faster premium service of 1mbps for up to $20 a month." That sounds like pretty decent speeds, yes tech offers higher speeds but most people don't even have those speeds. At least in the US, most people still use dialup. Heck, I'm a subscriber to Earthlink cable and I don't know that I get 1MBPS. And definitely not at that price. Sometymes it doesn't seem that much faster than my old dialup. Heck if it were offered where I live, I'd get rid of my cable and go wireless at those prices and speeds.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In a way, yes a free market needs to be protected. But increasing the size of government isn't the way to do that. The more government, laws, and regulations you have the less of a free market you have. Take the FCC for instance, it allots radio frequencies based on the technology of the 1930s. Back then transmitters needed more space between radio stations to reduce interference. But with the technology available today more radio transmitters can transmit through a narrower radio spectrum thus allowing more stations within a given area. Heck there can be more micropower/pirate radio without interference. The way to protect the markets is through the courts if needed. This would only be as a last resort though, if one station interfers with another then it could just adjust it's frequency, or if it didn't then the first one could increases it's power. What would happen would be an arms race between them until they either run out of money to buy more powerful tramitters or they come to an agreement as to what frequencies and how much power they will each use. Of course the big broadcasters don't want more frequencies opened up because with more radio stations they would loose their market share, unless they spent more money for more transmitters. Fact is is that the open market libertarians call for would create more competition.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No one would pay to lay cable etc without some reassurance of profitability... so if you wanted to stifle telecomm as a whole, then sure, Libertarianism would have worked.
Nobody should be guaranteed profits, only the potential to make profit. Intel didn't have a government guarantee when they first built their fabs yet look how big they are. Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen didn't either, yet MS has created more wealthy people than any company I know of. Admittedly that's not really says much but MS has created a few of the people of the world's wealthiest. Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn't have a guarantee either. All these people had was the potential to make profits. Well, and the knowhow and drive to create something.
The natural setup of the industry would have resulted in monopolies anyway, so would you rather that they can wield those monopolies to the detriment of the consumer, or would you rather that they are regulated?
Laws and regulations can just as easily stifle competition as encourage it. Like with the net neutrality being debated I'd only agree to regulations once a problem has been identified and it is known what is a solution. In this case I don't agree with prior restraint. The only tyme I can think of where I lean towards prior restraint is dealing with ecology and the environment or people's health. Here's one place I disagree with many Libertarians. Oh also while previously the high cost of infrastructure may of needed monopoly conditions, it's not really much like that now. With few exceptions, say maybe the building of spaceports, there isn't so much the need of high cost infrastructures.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was not trolling you asshole.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
I'm not disagreeing that the service speeds will be good. I was referring more to the speed of rollout of wireless across the country. Seems like it's going to take forever. Meanwhile, we still have to bend over for the local monopolies.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If there are particular oft-repeated poor arguments employed on the side of net neutrality, by all means, feel free to point them out. It would be a service.
On the other hand, it wouldn't change the fact that it's simply untrue that under the current state of net neutrality, we have "one low price, eat all you want at the buffet." It's true most arrangements include a certain amount of traffic/bandwidth at no additional charge, but whether a single burger has an 2 oz patty or features a half-pound of beef, it ain't a buffet. If there's a package out there with no cap ond bandwidth -- an arrangement that allows unlimited traffic without paying additional fees -- I'm unfamiliar with it.
And yet, the telcos and their talking heads seem to not only speak as if there are such arrangements, but even continue to imply that the bandwidth isn't being payed for at all.
This isn't "appeal to emotion" or "leap of logic." This is called *lying*.
And again, if you can find similar tactics at work in defense of net neutrality, by all means, enlighten us.
Tweet, tweet.
I think there is a proper, though radical, solution to this problem:
Just split telcos/cablecos into 2 parts:
1. physical last-mile connection provider/maintainer consumer-owned (possibly also employee-owned) and heavily regulated co-ops. These co-ops should be prohibited from offering their own services on these lines. Taxes/user-fees fund the co-ops. This all should keep them from pulling any shit that would screw-over customers as they have no incentives besides keeping the customers (and [maybe] employees) satisfied.
2. for-profit service providers which use the last-mile connections. The split takes away these companies monopolies, thus losing their bargaining chip to pull stuff like charging Google for its ability to be accessed by me at a decent speed. Should they try and pull something, content providers can backlash and the end-user can change service providers.
This will never happen though because of the telecommunications lobby and the fact that it will seem to Joe Sixpack that the tel/cablecos are being 'robbed' by the state. The truth is that there should be no for-profit government-granted monopolies as the temptation for misconduct is too great. For-profit monopolies can only make money by (a) abusing their monopoly status, (b) lowering costs, (c) offering improved services. Since (c) without (a), and (b) are not as effective as (a), they'll choose (a) a lot. Gov-monopolies should all be regulated co-ops, which makes customer satisfaction [(c) w/o (a), and (b)] their incentive.
This solution would avoid the issues w/ just the free market and removes the necessity of regulation, and thus the possibility of overregulation.
I can dream, can't I?
I'm not disagreeing that the service speeds will be good. I was referring more to the speed of rollout of wireless across the country. Seems like it's going to take forever. Meanwhile, we still have to bend over for the local monopolies.
Yeah, many locations aren't being offered broadband by businesses, so when the local government steps up to offer it themselves businesses unfortunately try to stop it saying something like how it hurts business, well I say how can it hurt your business if you aren't offering the service? "Well it's not profitable". If it's not profitable then why complain when local governments or groups decide to offer it? While I prefer small government, especially at the federal level, if business won't offer a service then they don't have a leg to stand on when they complain because the local government offers a service they refuse to offer themself. Now, paying for it should be done by the users or by ads or however but not by taxpayers. For instance someone who doesn't even have a computer shouldn't be forced to pay for something they don't want or need.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Thank you for making my point for me. You're apparently selecting your data after making your conclusion. Not exactly the scientific method with which I'm comfortable.
And, no, my comment wasn't a smart-ass way to avoid the primary issue... I just have a different primary issue. Mine being, when one selects your figures correctly, your facts come out to say what you want them to.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?