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."

Comments

Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever spends the most money on lobbying will win.

Re:Money

[FractalZone]

You would think whoever can buy the most votes would win, but don't forget that the telcos and cablecos don't actually control more than a small fraction of the content they carry. I hope that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. prevail in their effort to make Net Neutrality the law of the land. In every other comparable industry I can think of, the price one pays for a good or service tends to vary with how much one uses. Businesses get better rates when they buy phone service in bulk. As far as I know, no telco is allowed to provide "enhanced" for callers trying to reach Kmart and mere "regular" (read: degraded) service to those trying to call Wal-Mart just because Kmart pays them an additional feel. In essence what the bandwidth providers are trying to do is protect their ability to extort money from popular sites on the 'Net that happen to have deep pockets. The Network Neutrality folks are saying that content providers and consumers alike should pay for the bandwidth they use, regardless of how they use it. What could be more fair? If purportedly unbiased news outlets started giving preferential treatment to politicians who gave them the most largesse at the taxpayers expense, most people would object if they knew about it. Telcos and cablecos are supposed to be unbiased in this sense, since they exist because of government granted regional monopolies. FractalZone esotriv.blogspot.com

I think...

[alfs boner]

...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.)

Re:I think...

[greenguy]

Telco: Hey, Google, as of tomorrow, we're going to charge you an extra fee to use our pipes.

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.

Re:I think...

[Cleon]

"Heck, maybe even political parties?"

I think you hit something significant there, at least for me. You can talk about the financial aspects of Net Neutrality all up and down the information superhighway (remember that lovely phrase? Now think of a toll booth). In the end, however, we're talking about giving private companies control over the transmission of a giant steaming shitload of information.

So an organization with the sufficient funds could bribe pay someone, say, AT&T, to throttle content to sites they'd like shut down. So let's think beyond political parties...Suppose the Church of Scientology took it into their head to try and slow/stop traffic to, say, Xenu.net. Just a thought--I mean, I'm sure the Church wouldn't do anything so heavyhanded. After all, they've been so upstanding in the past and value open debate. Or suppose conservative organizations decided that adult-oriented content should be as inaccessible as possible. Maybe Microsoft reversing their position and decides that people don't really need to be able to access Slashdot.org, Firefox.org, or even Google.com.

The more I look at the issue, the more I'm concerned that this could open the floodgate of a free-for-all where you don't have a voice unless you've got a bunch of money to be able to pay for it.

Re:I think...

[rossifer]

The problem (from the telco's point of view) is that Google is paying only one company for the bandwidth it uses.

But the fees they pay go towards the provider's upstream bandwidth costs, so Google's fees get split with the upstream provider before you can measure profit. You and I pay into the same sort of a heirarchy, with everyone trying to obtain universal connectivity with everyone else.

What the telcos want is to obtain control over content. But the success of the internet is based on a lack of control over content. Anyone can publish, so (almost) everyone does publish. This results in enormous quantities of useless crap, but also more useful information than has ever been available to the public.

The telcos can get what they say they want already by selling dedicated channels beside the DSL channel. If you want DSL pay-per-view, there's not much preventing them from selling you a channel of that. You'll need some new gear to see your new TV feed, but people are used to that sort of abuse.

But when I agree to lease a 1.5Mbit DSL line, I intend to lease a 1.5Mbit link to the whole internet. If they stop selling me that, I take my business elsewhere. The huge problem arises if there's nowhere else to go.

Regards,
Ross

Re:I think...

[LordKazan]

that doesn't work since there IS NO COMPETITION IN THE USA in telecommunications

Re:I think...

[argoff]

Wouldn't it be nice if they could all get a share by threatening to throttle Google's traffic on their networks?

My understanding is that they can do that right now, but they wouldn't dare - because google could tell them to go to hell and all their customers would eventually too when they turn on the throttle. What the telcos want is the ability to not throttle, but the ability to let google use up whatever google will use and have the law force google to pay them and not give google the option of telling them to go to hell. So then google turned arround and tried to get the law to "force" net neutrality, and not let them tier service at all.

Let me state this now on no uncertain terms. They will force some kind of regulation, it will fail, and then they will blame the market for failing to meet the rigorous needs of the information age, but the truth is, we are better off with no new laws at all. No forced neutrality, no forced billing - just get the FSCK out of the way and let things progress via market forces like they have been for the last 15 years now.

Re:I think...

[Intron]

What the telcos want is to be able to charge a different amount based on the type of traffic. Less for html, more for netmeeting, voip. Extract the maximum possible that the user is willing to pay for any given service. Since I can hide my voip traffic by tunneling it on port 80, for example, the only way to do this is to charge more for guaranteed latency and then slow everything else down and deliver it out of order.

Re:I think...

[Billosaur]

I don't think it's a question of "hating" America, but more the system that we seem to be developing. It's obvious that money talks -- you don't need Pink Floyd to point that out. Corporations will naturally hold more sway than people (unless those people are Bill Gates or Warren Buffet), although collections of people can certainly bring to bear greater resources (hence special interests).

In the end, our government should not be about who has the money to have their voice heard, but what is in the national interest. The whole net neutrality debate is over what everyone thinks is best, but both sides, rather than having open and honest debate, are simply lining up their resources and preparing for a fight.

I've said it many times: the American people have the capacity and capability to make their voice heard, if they choose to. Vote. Write you Congressman. Write the President. If you are getting no satisfaction from them, find new people who you trust more. The only reason money in Washington, D.C. ever becomes an issue is because eventually, if you are there long enough, the power you wield will bring you suitors and they will court you ruthlessly, to get you to see things their way. That's the way of it, and even the best man will crack under it eventually, given a moment of weakness.

Re:I think...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Market forces? In the US telecom industry? Surely, you jest.

Re:I think...

[erroneus]

Google.com pays for its connection and class of service once. Now they're connected to "the internet." "The Internet" is at this moment a collection of network providers that agree among themselves to move data around. The money is collected from their customers. I don't know who Google's provider is, but for the sake of argument, let's just say it's Verizon. Google pays Verizon for its connectivity and a bandwidth capacity of "X." When I talk to Google's servers, my requests and Google's responses go not just through Verizon, but my own ISP and AT&T's as well. AT&T and Verizon have already agreed to let data pass though between each other... mutually charging each other the same amount of cost effectively nullifying expenses and costs. And keep in mind that Verizon is under obligation to pass Google's traffic at the rate and capacity they are paying for. It's not a free ride. My ISP is obligated to move data freely to and from my own equipment just the same, regardless of the type of data or where it's from. And as stated, AT&T and Verizon already have their agreements to move data as well.

Each hop is paid and accounted for. EACH ONE. And really and factually, the only concern that any entity on the internet has is itself and the peers it connects to. It doesn't matter if that peer is an end user, a NAT firewall or another ISP. Each hop has been paid for.

People keep making "road analogies" and so shall I. Imagine if you will that I own a segment of freeway. And I start to notice that an unusual amount of traffic is going to and from McDonald's restaurants. As it stands, everyone who travels across my road pays $0.25 per trip. But not only is the customer traffic to McDonald's getting ridiculously frequent, but so is the freight traffic brining bread, meat, cheese and pickles. Should I raise the rates for everyone going to McDonald's? Is it even my BUSINESS to know where they are travelling? Should I ask them where they are going? Will they lie to me? [hint: route obfuscation] Should I look down the road to a segnment I don't own and demand payment from McDonald's for burdening my road with their traffic?

My analogy, as complex as it is really comes down to the following:

A backbone provider on the internet is just like any other peer. They connect to a lot of other peers whether they are end users or other ISPs or backbone providers. The scope of their interest lies only to the extent of their immediate connection and no further. The backbone provider has no business modifying or otherwise snooping at the data passing their their pipes. Their only concern is that the peers connected to their network is a paying customer and they are paid to move the data; nothing more.

Anything that allows an ISP and/or a backbone provider to descriminate against data based on origin, destination or type of content represents a breech of general agreement (I'm pretty sure) and an invasion of privacy of sorts. The phone company is not allowed to listen to my phone calls, incoming or outgoing, simply because I am using their wires. They are obliged only to make the connection and let information flow.

It's just wrong and unethical for anything but net neutrality reign on the internet. Anything else will lead to all manner of problems, not the least of which will be invasions of privacy and interference with interstate commerce.

Re:I think...

[Mr. Slippery]

No forced neutrality, no forced billing - just get the FSCK out of the way and let things progress via market forces like they have been for the last 15 years now.

The reason we have had network neutrality is not because of "market forces" but because of regulation that made telephone lines "common carriers".

The question before us is whether cable, fiber-optic, etcetera networks should be regulated in the same way, or whether the common carrier requirements should be droppped from telephone (DSL) lines.

Market forces can't do dick when there's no competition; few consumer have meaningful choice between several broadband providers.

Re:I think...

[smilerz]

If that is true why have DSL providers been lowering rates in order to attract customers? The fact is that nearly every consumer of broadband has at least one additional option.

Re:I think...

[LordKazan]

if you think market forces are actually at play in the telecommunications sector then you're a fool - they're a zero-competition cartel

Re:I think...

[mrchaotica]

And Libertarianism?

True Libertarianism would mean ending the telco entitlements that created the problem in the first place!

I mean really, think about it: who are the ones advocating a so-called "market solution?" The telcos! And who are the ones with a strangle-hold on the so-called "free market?" The telcos! So how is it that nobody seems to notice how fucking absurd their position is? It makes me sick!

Re:I think...

[Onan]

And the funny thing is, this is actually most of the problem.

Telcos and cable companies have been so mad for market share that they've continued to cut prices until offering residential data service is actually not profitable for them.

And suddenly now they've noticed that they've got million of subscribers, and they're losing money on every one of them. They "can't" raise prices, because then those unprofitable customers would go somewhere else, which would retroactively invalidate the war they've been waging for years for market share at any cost.

So they've found a third option: charge on the other side as well! Keep losing money on every customer, but make it back up by using that huge customer base as a hammer with which to extort content providers.

This seems like a stunningly clear example of the problematic behaviour of unregulated monopoly. (Okay, duopoly, between your local telco and your local cable co.) It certainly does nothing to change my opinion that completely free-reign capitalism is as problematic as total socialism, and that they right mix is about five parts laissez faire to one part regulation.

Re:I think...

[sterno]

My understanding is that they can do that right now, but they wouldn't dare - because google could tell them to go to hell and all their customers would eventually too when they turn on the throttle. What the telcos want is the ability to not throttle, but the ability to let google use up whatever google will use and have the law force google to pay them and not give google the option of telling them to go to hell. So then google turned arround and tried to get the law to "force" net neutrality, and not let them tier service at all.

Actually no. What it is, is that the telcos want to be able to give preferential service to their own content. So you can get VOIP through some third party but the service will be better through your local telco's service. You can get Internet TV through anybody, but it will be choppier than through your local telco. Then the next step is permitting third parties to take advantage of that but then charging them a fee to do it.

They aren't going to cut google, or anybody else, they are going to boost other things. This sounds okay on it's face, but it has the same result: multiple tiers of Internet service. It puts anybody who doesn't own pipes at an innate competitive disadvantage when selling services. Worse, the companies that own the pipes are usually a monpology or at best have a single competitor. So there's no way to bypass whatever fees they want to extract.

Re:I think...

[Watts Martin]

The problem is that 'ending telco entitlements' is easier said than done. It's easy to dwell on all the problems caused by the government-created telco monopolies in various municipalities, but I haven't seen anyone really think about what the alternative would have been in a completely unregulated market.

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.*

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.)

Re:I think...

[blighter]

You realize, of course, that there is no such thing as a multi-billion dollar company footing the bill for anything.

They'll just pass that cost right along to thier consumers.

Re:I think...

[Marful]

Good luck getting said "politicians controlled by money" to vote on any bill that reduces the amount of money they are getting.

Re:I think...

[Onan]

Actually, I'm not concerned about the Googles, the Yahoos, or the Microsofts of the world. You're right, they can afford to grease the telcos' palms without batting an eye.

I'm concerned about the next Google or Yahoo. (Okay, screw the next Microsoft.) What about that great new company that will have an idea for a fantastic new service a couple years from now, but can't afford to pay for the phone and cable companies' protection racket to make it available to users?

Re:I think...

[Chmcginn]

In a better universe every issue would be decided by logical analysis of all known paths to reach the result that would benefit the most people the most.

And if men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Sarcasm & 18th century quotes aside, your statement is a good ideal to strive for... but considering that today, on all sides, on nearly every issue, people argue over the most basic facts.

(Surface temperatures warming or not? If they are, are they warming equally, and how much is the urban heat island? Adolescent crime rate of X years back higher or lower than it is today? Recreational drugs a huge threat to our society or a paper tiger? Etc.)

Indeed, most career politicians would probably argue that the system, as it is now, is close to what you describe - but since everyone has a different view of what's best for everyone, compromises are made, and no one persons vision has complete dominance over all. (Although some people's vision are certainly... self-centered, to put it nicely.)

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, not logged in right now, this is Red Flayer.
 
Do you have any idea what telco would have looked like without regulation of the monopolies? We'd still be in the info dark ages. The telco monopolies weren't created by legislation, they were bridled by it, inhibited by it, prevented from acting like the jackasses they are now.

True Libertarianism results in unbridled monopolies. Period.
 
Those entitlements you're so pissed off about? Why do you think they were established? There were two reasons:
 
(1) To encourage investment in the industry, since without guarantors of the ability to make profit, no one was willing to lay out tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of dollars (a HUGE amount of money at the time -- think Google market cap) on infrastructure for an uncertain market force. They'd seen what happened to the railroad and telegraph industries, and wanted no part of the disappearing profits once a competitor ran a line between the same locations.
 
(2) To have a means of regulating the industry. Like the initial telco companies, the public (and thus the government) did not want to see a repeat of what happened in the railroad industry, when gouging and monopolistic practices hurt the consumer. So the government granted entitlement to the telcos in return for the ability to regulate their activity.
 
Of course, in today's politicoeconomic climate, government doesn't need to grant entitlements in order to regulate industry... theoretically... except for the fact that business interests still control the government in the US. Grant entitlements, or we yank your re-election funding.

So what happens in a truly Libertarian situation? Exactly what happened with the railroad industry prior to regulation. Privately enforced monopolies. Gouging of consumers. Railroad companies going belly-up and bankrupting entire banks and communities.
 
I'll not disagree that with today's technology, the telco easements are necessarily justified. But I will say that they were absolutely necessary to put the US in the place of the tech superstar in the second half of the 20th century.

Re:I think...

[colmore]

It would take a good chunk of a decade for that to actually happen. We'd all be screwed for quite some time.

This is the problem with a lot of libertarian thought. Yes markets eventually optimise themselves, but depending on the situation this process can be slow. So slow that the unhappy situation in question might have changed shape completely by the time that market forces come in to save the day.

Also markets optimize along the parameters that are actually used by the players in markets. Modern corporate structure places little value on long-term investment. Large publicly held corporations give little incentive to avoid failure to top executives, and the stock holders themselves are frequently invested in competitors or are only invested short term (that is, they'd rather see a spike that gets them $10 million this year than steady growth that gets them $100 over ten years).

Lastly there is not nor has there ever been such thing as a free marktet in the United States. The founding fathers wrote the commerce clause into the constitution: the market has always been intended to be second to the General Will (as understood by enlightenment political thinkers).

What sucks is that there's basically no solution. Regulation begins a slippery slope of congressional involvement, and in the end that will mean special services going to the highest bidder (for every liberal "socialist" regulation enacted by congress there are 100 pieces of appropriations bill pork handed out to well connected and deep pocketed interests, and THESE do far more damage to the free market than even overly restrictive regulations that apply equally to all market players). But no regulation means that ATT is free to triple bill up until the point where real competition comes about, which is only comforting in the abstract. The reality of scale pricing is that any realistic competition is going to be unlikely to compete on billing at two points on the connection when ATT is billing on three, and they would sell more on outbidding ATT where their nonneutrality is particularly exploitative, but not on restoring neutrality.

All of this is why I have very mixed feelings on market capitalism. On the one hand, if you ignore it, or try to go against it too strongly, it eats you alive, or you become some kind of totalitarian state. But on the other hand, it seems that cases where competition creates symbiosis and beneficial growth don't really outnumber the cases that look like degenerate instances of the "prisoners dillema" problem.

Will the market really sort itself out?

[gbulmash]

Can the market really sort things out?

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:

• Consumer ambivalence - If your ISP starts slowing down X, Y, and Z sites, how bad will it have to get before you, as a consumer, go to the trouble of switching ISPs?
  
  
• Changing E-mail - While a lot of us have free e-mail accounts through Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google, how many people have just the e-mail address they got from their ISP? People who do not have established freemail accounts that they use as their primary address have an incentive to stay where they are, because if they leave, they lose the address everyone knows to contact them at.
  
  
• Changing ISPs can be a bear just on a technical level - I used to have 6 megabit DSL through speakeasy. When I made some job changes, I decided to downgrade to 3 megabit DSL from Verizon so I could save $700 bucks a year. Problem was that there seemed to be no way for me to cancel the Speakeasy DSL line and have Verizon pick up service on the same day or even the next. Best estimate I could get would be 3 days or more without broadband service as Speakeasy/Covad released the switch and Verizon assumed it. I'd gone with DSL because my house was built without cable running into the room I used as a home office and I didn't want to drill through walls. Finally, I went with 8 megabit cable, coming into another room, then shunted into the office through a Broadband over Power Line (BPL) bridge. With some tweaks in cabling and placement of the bridge units, I was able to get about the same speed I had with the 6 megabit DSL. But it was an adventure in frustration.
  
  
• Lock-in Contracts - The broadband providers have taken a page from the cell phone companies. They're offering free installation and equipment, but to get that, you have to sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract with early termination penalties. So if you have ISP X and you have 6-8 months left on your contract, how slow will your favorite sites have to get before you're willing to pay the early termination fee?
  
  

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?

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[One Louder]

I think the market can probably handle this- here's the scenario:

1) Some ISP attempts to extort Google
2) Google responds to all searches from that ISP with simple page explaining what's going on with appropriate contact information
3) ISP wishes they had a time machine so they could undo the damage
4) ISP stops extorting Google

The problem with these ISPs is that they really don't understand where they live in the food chain as far as customers are concerned - Google is an increasingly important tool, and the ISP is someone that sends increasing bills with diminishing quality of service. The music industry is in the same boat with Apple - a label that threatens Apple with removal of their catalog would be playing with fire.

If Google were not available from my ISP for even 24 hours, I would go to a *lot* of trouble to find another ISP.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[DarthParadox]

Also: To what degree is there sufficent consumer choice to permit the market to work it out at all? In my area there are two high-speed internet providers. If both of them decide to slow down access to my favorite sites, I'm screwed.

Further, people tend to gravely misinterpret the ability of "market forces" to resolve a given situation to the satisfaction of all involved. If the supply of food suddenly dwindles, market forces will eventually bring the price of food up to the point where the number of people that can afford it is about the same as the number of people the food can feed. But this newfound economic balance says nothing whatsoever about what happens to the newly starving populace that can't afford the food.

Free-market economics and capitalism are not a panacea for the problems of corporations abusing their customers. They merely ensure that the various inputs and outputs to the system are balanced.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[gbulmash]

If Google were not available from my ISP for even 24 hours, I would go to a *lot* of trouble to find another ISP.

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?

Remember, that under the best of circumstances, you'd be looking at a couple of days to switch over to a new ISP. If Google slowed to a crawl, would you wait those days until you had a new ISP to do your search on Google? Would your brand loyalty to Google be so complete that you'd do without searching while you waited?

Maybe, maybe not. I think many people would try the alternate search their ISP was pushing. And if they got the results they wanted, the urge to switch might be diminished. They might take a "wait and see" attitude and try a few more searches on Microsoft before committing to switching. And if all those searches got them the results they needed, then it would become a matter of principle to switch, not a matter of utility.

Look at the way our country is today. Look at the people. Give me a ballpark estimate of the percentage of people who fall into one or the other of the following two groups. Group 1: People who get mad about something and do something about it! Group 2: People who get mad about something and merely bitch about it, but never get up the gumption to really do something.

Group 2 is huge and Group 1 is a minority. While you may be in Group 1, you've probably got lots of elbow room at the meetings. And because Group 2 is willing to settle for "almost as good" because it's easier than doing something about it, the market is not as efficient a regulator as some would have us believe.

- G

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[One Louder]

I don't think so - that would be hijacking the domain, and no ISP would take the chance. Google would have a restraining order on them within minutes. It would also threaten their status as a common carrier. Plus, neither MSN nor Yahoo would want to be party to such a scheme lest it later be applied to them.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[DragonWriter]

With all those factors working against switching broadband providers, will the market really work itself out?

You leave out a bigger factor -- many people have very limited choices of broadband providers to start with, and no one to change too.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[One Louder]

So the answer to extortion is extortion? Oh wait, because it is something you like, it is an explanation, not extortion.

If the ISPs insist that they need the right to be able to provide lower quality of service, I see no reason why Google shouldn't accomodate them by providing it.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[Korin43]

I don't think Google would be the one being hurt here. Google is a hugely important website, but what about the tiny almost useless sites that made the internet worth searching?

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[Archangel Michael]

So, what you are saying is that solutions around problems do not exist, because you cannot see the solution only the problem. Your viewpoint is typical of the mass group think that society uses.

My analogy requires DEDUCTIVE logic, and the presumption that solutions work around problems. Where there is no problem (ie low oil prices) there is no solution (ie alternative), because there is no need to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Yes, LINUX was a by-product of Unix, no one is disputing this. But it started out as NOTHING more than a sort of research project. The need to make it better was so great that people, not getting paid, continued to support and develop it to the point where it COULD replace the monopoly. The solution was in the developement because of a problem (M$) that existed. It gained traction as a ROUTE around M$.

My view is that if not LINUX than something else (BeOS, OS/2, who-knows-what). M$ Didn't force LINUX into existance, it forced a solution to the M$ Monopoly. LINUX was the solution but didn't have to be. Like I said, it could have been something else. We only see LINUX today because it suceeded inspite of the M$ Monopoly.

As for Oil and energy density/generation problem, how do you know that is the reason why? Perhaps someone would have figured out where Tesla was going with "free energy", perhaps something higher in energy density would have been developed, whatever. The problem is, we don't know, and everything else is ..... a plain old guess.

"The break up of standard oil didn't force the exsistance of a mysterious alternate fuel source to nto appear."

That is pure speculation on your part. You don't know that, you can't know that. I do know that we tend to only route around problems when they are severe enough.

Re:Will the market really sort itself out?

[themusicgod1]

For every problem, there is usually a route around it waiting to be discovered.

Of course, when you can go to jail for taking it thanks to monopoly influenced politics, there's not much point, and your "deductive" analogy then falls apart.

Uh... gee

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Like how GM bought up and destroyed the Trolleys?

[FatSean]

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.

Re:Surprising Policy Prescription

[stinerman]

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.

I think that unbundling the lines at the local level is a good idea. I've heard that after France did it, competition came in and lowered prices and increased speed offerings nearly overnight.

Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Finally, some sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I would normally agree with you, except for most broadband consumers, there is no free market. When only one broadband ISP controls access to your home, you are stuck with whatever crappy policies that ISP has. There are no market options available to correct this save no broadband at all. If we reverted back to the sharing requirement that use to be in effect for DSL (e.g. Speakeasy/Covad) and also applied this to cable, etc., I believe the legislation would be a mistake. However, the way it is now, in most places, some people will get screwed without some kind of law or incentive to stop the ISPs. A better use of legislation would be to bring real competition to the broadband market. But as long as the providers bitch about needing local monopolies to provide incentive to upgrade their service, I doubt we will see that.

-a

"Market Solutions"

[Irvu]

We all know that regulations beget more lobbyists. I'd rather let the market sort these things out.

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.

Corporate Standards

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Net neutrality, pfft

[Enrique1218]

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.

Re:we only have the internet because of forced neu

[iminplaya]

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!!!

They're still in Congress? What didn't they get? Seems to me that the people who continue to re-elect them are the ones who don't get it. Oh, and by the way, We are still under Ma Bell's thumb. It's just that she's been divorced and remarried so many times nobody remembers her name(s). But she's still the same old whore.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Finally, some sense

[DragonWriter]

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.

A nice, concise expression of the religious doctrine I like to call "free market fundamentalism", the faith, completely without support, that in the absence of regulation, every market will function ideally, born, apparently, of the naive belief that every real world market is an Econ 101 perfectly competitive market with no substantial barriers to entry.

re: Would a free market have ever gone to the moon

[King_TJ]

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.

Re:Transit or Peering?

[Wesley Felter]

are the local telcos (ie, the ones actually providing access to users) paying for transit or do they have peering arangements?

It depends on the size. The largest last-mile ISPs (e.g. AT&T) can probably negotiate settlement-free peering. Small ISPs buy transit.

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.

In transit, doesn't the smaller ISP always pay?

Thank God there's a legion of old men handling it

[SlappyBastard]

Because for a minute I thought someone who watches YouTube might get involved.

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).

EXACTLY!!!

[mrchaotica]

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!"

Re:Dark Fiber

[mrchaotica]

Why not?

Because the government won't allow them to access the right-of-way to install the cable (due to telco bribery), that's why!

I've realized something: the real problem here isn't actually "net neutrality" or lack thereof; that's a red herring. The real problem is actually the fact that the telcos want to keep their monopoly protection and common-carrier status, but get rid of all those pesky regulations that keep them from abusing their power even worse than they do now.

Re:Finally, some sense

[mrchaotica]

The way I see it is this: the telcos and cable companies should have a choice:

• Provide equal access to content from all providers without preference, or
• Open their lines to CLECs (INCLUDING remote terminals) at a reasonable cost AND provide universal service to anyone without regards to distance.

You know what would be both simpler and better? Ban all "common carriers" from serving content themselves, and only allow "common carriers" to own infrastructure. Now that's a solution!

Re:Finally, some sense

[E 99]

About one out of every five people in the U.S. do not have any real choices.

You don't get it. Not everyone needs choices for the free market to work! You're saying that 4 out of every 5 people in the US have a choice. But let's say only half the people have a choice, and that besides that everyone has a 2-year contract with their ISP. STILL, there would be more than enough market pressure to put an ISP out of business from doing something to provoke their existing and potential customers. Comcast and Verizon spend fortunes on marketing to get new signups. The chance that they would make a technological decision that they know would cause a public backlash, undermine their marketing expenditures, and hand half their new business to their competitor is ZERO.

OTOH, if the government gets its stink on this, it's Game Over. I can see now the new rules for "community service" web content, and equal time. And universal bandwidth and latency throttling so that everyone feels like they have a 1200 baud modem. That way it will be an Internet of the People, not just for the super rich. Minorities will of course get bandwidth bonuses, for justice for years of oppression. FINALLY, a fair, just, and progressive Internet. This is what America is all about! Seriously though, it's not cool to be a commie.

A possible solution - Strip common carrier status

[jeffc128ca]

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.

Naive Libertarianism

[Angst Badger]

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.

Exterminate VOIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality discussions center on bandwidth and access to popular sites. But I think one of the first victims of a telco/cableco controlled network will be VOIP.

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.

Re:The market? Please...

[nearlynero]

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.

No such thing as a bluff.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.)

Re:How Access Tiering will come to be

[aaarrrgggh]

If it is advertised this way, it is reasonably fair. The reality will be that the service is 256k UP, 5M DOWN, and 20M "Preferred Partner" access. As long as your needs fit in the 256/5 area, the 20M is just a bonus... a legitimate "value add." This is a speculative service that the telco provides, and is subsidized by their partners.

Unfortunately, the telcos need you to consume all of that 5M before the 20M has any value... Unless... they play with QOS and add latency to the 5M side, and maybe even limit that 5M by specific ports. Then, your games won't work on the 5M side, and maybe your company's VPN starts to act strange. Past experience suggests that the telcos will mess with the "common carrier" portion to create a need for the "preferred partner" portion.

Better Partner Up!

Re:Doesn't matter

[NutscrapeSucks]

The folks like yourself that think this is about google searches, myspace, and ebay don't get it. It's not about web content. It's about who you'll be buying your pay-per-view television content from, or where your phone service comes from.

AT&T wants to roll out 10mbs connections specifically for their own content. 1.5mbs for everything else. If Google wants in on the fast pipe, AT&T wants to make them pay. That's the issue.

Spin designed to cause apathy

[kozumik]

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.