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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."
Whoever spends the most money on lobbying will win.
Here is the Complete article, not a summary...as linked to above: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/012/348yjwfo.asp
...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
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
... 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
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
"This wouldn't even be an issue if the ISPs were not government-sanctioned monopolies"
Umm, they're not, with the exception of ISPs who are an arm of a telco -- and even in that case, the ISP subsidiary is not a government-regulated monopoly.
The telcos, whose fiber they are using, are government-regulated monopolies.
Perhaps you misunderstand what the whole point of regulated monopolies are, why they came about, and what the current problem is with how they are regulated.
The government regulates, and allows these companies to exist:
(1) To provide universal service. There is no economic incentive to lay cable out to Bumblewatsit, so in order to make sure the telco monopolies do, they force them.
(2) because of cost of entry. There is a natural monopoly in telco because of the cost of cabling and other infrastructure.
(3) Largely because telephone service is considered a necessary utility, government wants everyone on equal footing when it comes down to acquiring service.
So what's the problem? It's not the monopolies themselves, they are the most efficient way of delivering these services -- the government needs to ensure that the consumer is not gouged, however. The problem is that government regulation has fallen short of its mark, and the telcos (who are in their strong position in terms of internet service due to their monopolies granted for telephone service) are taking full advantage of the pay-to-play government we have now.
if you actually look at any individual telecommunications market, and see real competition
OK, look at my market. Cablevision (OO). Verizon DSL. Dialup, from many providers. This isn't about the ISPs, this is about who owns the fiber they transmit over, and the monopolies that exist in the throughput fiber market.
So, go ahead and open it up for competition. Who is going to lay the thousands and thousands of miles of fiber on speculation that they can compete?
Not only that, but by opening up the market, you've just limited your ability to regulate that market. So what you'd get is people in dense markets getting options, while people in scarce markets getting dick-all.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
My parents have a choice of internet providers. They can choose the Cable company... or they can get dial-up access. That's it. About one out of every five people in the U.S. do not have any real choices. Saying "the free market should work out this problem" is fine in theory, but in practice, it fails miserably because we do not have, have never had, and likely never will have a free market in information services. The barriers to entry are too high for the relatively small ROI.
You can tell that most of the people giving these opinions have never lived anywhere in the South, where over half the population lives in rural areas, and where broadband availability is spotty, at best. An awful lot of hard-working Americans depend on the government to protect them from abusive monopolies like the telcos. That's what net neutrality is really about---ensuring that users have the freedom to choose where on the internet they go without getting inferior service because their ISP is playing extortion games. The ISPs have already said that they hope to do this. This isn't hypothetical. This is in the planning stages.
Back in the early days of telephone, the government did something really smart. It passed laws that said that the phone services had to make phone service available to any customer no matter how far out in the weeds they lived. It wasn't always pretty---indeed, it often included using parts of fences, etc. as sections of the connection---but everyone had equal access to the technology. Government intervention could do the same for data services, but the big boys don't want that. They want to be able to charge companies for preferential access to their customers while simultaneously locking their customers into their service by limiting competition in the marketplace, through distance limitations (only servicing the customers they can cover at a minimal expense), through not providing DSL service on all of their COs or cable modem service in all their served cities, and through trying to block CLECs from being able to provide data services on their lines. In short, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
The way I see it is this: the telcos and cable companies should have a choice:
Make the law such that the company can choose which to do. Then, the free market might stand a chance of working this out....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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
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 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
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
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.
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?
Two things:
1) Net neutrality doesn't imply that no prioritization of packets is happening, only that no prioritization is done based on the origin of those packets. E.g. Verizon et al can prioritize voice or video streams coming across their network over web traffic, but it can't prioritize Google web packets over MSN web packets, or Skype voice packets over Vonage voice packets, etc. So you can still buy QoS for various services over your connection, but you can't pay more to prioritize your particular traffic over their network, as opposed to your competitors' traffic, except inasmuch as you're paying for a faster connection than your competitors are.
Which brings us to the second point...
2) If you need a guaranteed quality of service between two particular points, you'll need to buy high-end connections at both ends anyway, net neutrality or none. If you've got a high-bandwidth line with QoS for video traffic, and I've got my dinky home DSL connection with no such QoS (other than what my ISP might apply standard), I'm not going to get the full quality of your full-screen streaming video feed.
So you can still buy two high-speed uplinks to the network and even prioritize certain kinds of traffic over those connections to get a high-speed video conference going. And you can buy a faster connection on your end if you need to send out traffic faster. But you can't bribe the network to give your traffic higher priority than your competitors to me, the typical home user.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
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.
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?
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.
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
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!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Need to my vision tested.
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.
This is true with some markets -- even many markets -- but not with all markets by any stretch of the imagination. I would suggest reviewing your university Economics text. Economies of scale are not significant in all markets -- some markets actually experience diseconomies of scale (usually related to bureaucratic overhead, which increases with organization size), no scaling effect, or some combination of these.
In actuality, all of this is far more complex than it seems. DragonWriter (the OP) hit the nail on the head exactly -- perfectly competitive markets with non-existant or very low barriers to entry regulate themselves beautifully but in the real world many markets are not of this type, something that Libertarians seem to constantly overlook -- not out of malice, I think, but out of a desire to see the world in simplified and elegant terms (a prejudice I fully understand, and one I think geeks in particular are easily seduced by). In reality things are very messy and not at all as simple as they should be.
My personal view is that in cases where the market is likely to regulate itself, it should be allowed to regulate itself. However, in this case, we are looking at a market with extremely high barriers to entry (to become a telco you have to lay your own fiber, be in bed with the government, etc) and one which is essentially non-competitive (most areas are served by only one or perhaps two providers). This market is inherently oligopolistic, and will not self-regulate. Price fixing is easy and there is great incentive for the companies to do it. Barriers to entry are high so you and I cannot realistically express our dissatisfaction with the status quo by starting a new telco to compete with the existing one (notice my use of the singular here).
It is clear, in this instance, that the market will not regulate itself.
Economists disagree on how to best serve the economy in this situation, but regulation is a widely accepted (and proven) method. It has drawbacks, certainly (government inefficiency, possible legislative loopholes, etc) but is overall far preferable to the alternative.
Some markets are not free markets by their nature -- in this situation, for the magic of western economics to work, the playing field must be artificially evened.
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
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!
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.
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"?
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
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.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
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.
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?