The Real Issue With Net Neutrality

An anonymous reader writes "TechDirt brings into focus one of the largest problems in the net neutrality debate, not the issues themselves, rather it's the people involved and the lies they like to sling. An example of this is certainly the number of lobbyists that are being looked to as 'experts' and getting their opinions published as such. One specific example was a recent piece published in the Baltimore Sun by Mike McCurry, a lobbyist working for AT&T who claimed that with new legislation working for net neutrality Google wouldn't have to pay a dime. In response, TechDirt has suggested that McCurry should swap telco bills with Google, somehow I doubt it will happen."

Comments

There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

The Internet does not exist. It is a figment of the imagination of people in power and the laymen who listen to them. I come from a glorious history of the BBS days (I ran a fairly large multinode Chicagoland BBS for years) where I witnessed the "birth" of the consumer Internet -- thousands of interconnected mini-networks that created a larger one. Now it is millions of mini-networks that make up this thing we call the Net, but it still doesn't exist. There are thousands of Internets, and there is no real way to regulate them.

We have to realize that EVERY law that goes into existence does so for two reasons:

1. To try to fix some problem that exists TODAY.
2. To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.

These both go hand-in-hand. Laws don't regularly leave the books, so they stick around for generations, usually preventing new creations from makig our lives better. The power passes hands from one politician to the next, and the elite few know they can use that power to make their lives better at a very small expense to each individual of the masses. What do you care if a regulation costs you US$10 a year more? When 100 million taxpayers each pay that US$10 per year for a regulation or preferential treatment, someone is taking in US$1 billion because of it. It is in their interest to keep the laws on the books.

Net neutrality doesn't matter because the Internet as it is today doesn't matter. Over time, preferred networks will have to occur in some way, and that is OK. AOL had their own network, but it failed. Compuserve had a huge "Internet" for years before IP was the preferred transport, and it failed. Google has its own network of caches and archives, but it isn't what people want to browse (I rarely use Google's cache, unless a site is down or gone). Right now people will switch from ial-up to DSL to cable based on their desire to access information quickly. You can switch over in less than 2 weeks, sometimes days.

But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider. You can't blame competition for this -- you can blame government. Now some people want to give more power to the Federal government even though the Constitution says they can't have that power. It won't matter -- the politicians are producing large amounts of FUD (along with the businesses that rely on government's ability to create monopolies in markets) to scare the average consumer into believing the "Net" will fall apart if it doesn't remain neutral.

It won't happen. As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want. Right now, the municipalities that dictate which monopoly provider can give the residents access create HUGE problems for those residents. States that do the same also create a huge problem for their residents. Imagine if we pushed those problems to the national level -- we'd all lose the ability to work around monopoly-mandates created by government.

Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING. Let competition give us what we want. Competition crushed AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the U.S. Competition crushed the BBSes that hung around while ISPs gave users more information and quicker. Competition crushed the modem to be replaced by 8 different ways to connect to other computers. Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING."

Your faith in the God of capitalism is touching if misplaced.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[BalanceOfJudgement]

As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations

I frequently read your posts, and sometimes I wonder what you're really after.

The government has ALREADY created monopoly powers for internet companies - unless you want 45 different lines running down your street, you get one, maybe two providers.

The tradeoff that these natural monopolies provide is that they don't get to benefit from being a monopoly (i.e., regulation and price ceilings). It's a non-ideal solution for an unsolveable problem, but it's a necessary solution that is practical, much as the anti-regulation crowd may hate it.

Everyone I've seen rail against regulation on the grounds that "regulation never encourages competition" always seems to forget that Net Neutrality proponents are only trying to restore the very balance that DID exist, the balance that the FCC removed last year.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah. Competion make me cum too.

The problem is that competition in this case means that any yahoo with a business plan and a backhoe has to be given permission to dig up any street on any schedule. Anything else limits competition and makes this whole "competition will fix all problems" argument a cover for "we need to make sure we don't interfere with the entrenched players ability to control the market."

Oh yeah, and we need to bill AT&T for the BILLIONS we gave them to lay fibre. That would level the playing field real fast.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[spyrochaete]

Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING.

It's not necessary to be proactive about this. It will just happen. Like water, human interest will flow through the path of least resistance. That's why so many people download movies and music - the alternatives are more work and less satisfying. Where there is a crippled internet there will always be 1000 untethered darknets.

Industry, and later government, will adapt or die. For instance, look at your beloved hobby of old - BBSing is still exceptionally popular but it has adapted to modern times by hosting "nodes" on telnet ports instead of phone wires. As a result of this infrastructure keeping up with the times, old school networks like DOVEnet and FIDOnet, as well as interBBS door games like BRE and LORD are still going strong.

The people will act, if not speak, and the world will work its ass off to keep up with them. Music stores now sell blank tapes and CDs. The movie industry is ramping up to distribute its products legally via Bittorrent. TV shows are starting to use integrated advertising to combat Tivo.

Just keep living the good life today and big business will catch up in 5 years. Keep on muddling.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[IntelitaryMilligence]

Bool. This has nothing to do with that religion you call competition. I don't give a crap about what your average American Idle wanker wants. The net will not be decided by mob rule. Money doesn't make the net work. Design and communication do. How many P2P traders of documentation (like Rebuilding America's Defenses) give a crap about money? Tell me which "competitive" ISP is offering access to that document? Whose stock is going up because of it?

Your confusing the truck (P2P) with the cargo (PNAC's freudian slip). Net neutrality is entirely about the cargo not the truck. You can talk all you want about being the company that provides better P2P service. I agree no regulation. But when you talk about creating a pipe only for certain cargo then you are RESTRICTING the CHOICES people have.

I want access to information. Information is not a service. Transport, presentation,
interfaces, and organization are services.

I agree with not regulating how information is offered. I do not agree with opening the door to restricting access by way of flooding the market with crap and hoarding technological resources from others who might want to use them differently.

Taking away net neutrality is regulation. Think about it. Company X says only this and that content may go on that pipe. That's REGULATION. THAT IS ANTI COMPETITION.

Besides the Internet is not made of pipes. It can use any stretch of wire it finds no specific path has to made. I get my emails just fine, maybe they should stop outsourcing tech support at the Senator's office.

Do we really want the equivalent of entire highways only for trucks while the rest of us crawl on the highways? What is it about neo-feudalism that people find so appealing.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

The government has ALREADY created monopoly powers for internet companies - unless you want 45 different lines running down your street, you get one, maybe two providers.

Huh? Why is this a problem? 45 different lines won't occupy much more space than they already do -- plus I doubt we'd see this problem as I think we'd see companies dedicated to pulling lines to re-lease to others if we had more competition in the municipalities. To think that every company would want their own lines is unrealistic, just as every company doesn't do their own website hosting or handle their own business card printing in house or whatever. Companies that can offer services to others will always be around. I'd rather see 3 or 4 competitive line-leasers than 1. In my community, we already have about 8 ISPs over various mediums (and 2 WiFi ones).

The tradeoff that these natural monopolies provide is that they don't get to benefit from being a monopoly (i.e., regulation and price ceilings). It's a non-ideal solution for an unsolveable problem, but it's a necessary solution that is practical, much as the anti-regulation crowd may hate it.

Of course they get a benefit -- they get to set the prices without competition. They get to keep new technologies out of the market, as well. Cell phones were kept out of the market for decades because of Ma Bell's power over everyone else. DSL and Cable were kept out for a long time while old laws were replaced. It is a non-ideal solution because there is an ideal solution -- allow competition.

Everyone I've seen rail against regulation on the grounds that "regulation never encourages competition" always seems to forget that Net Neutrality proponents are only trying to restore the very balance that DID exist, the balance that the FCC removed last year.

It NEVER existed because the "net" was too young and companies were still trying to overcome technological barriers. The FCC is a great evil and arguably unconstitutional. No new law will create any balance or harmony, you have to be incredibly naive to believe that a new law will "balance" a market that is already very competitive and working just fine. Net neutrality, as I said in my OP, is FUD. It doesn't need to exist based on a law, it exists fine without any regulation.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING. Let competition give us what we want. Competition crushed AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the U.S. Competition crushed the BBSes that hung around while ISPs gave users more information and quicker. Competition crushed the modem to be replaced by 8 different ways to connect to other computers. Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.

I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills! Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?

Guys like you always spout off the same tired nonsense - "If company A charges me too much for broadband, then I'll go to company B!" What exactly do you when there is no company B in your small town?

There are things in life in which it is useful to have government regulation. There are things in which it is useful to not have government regulation. I feel sorry for you that you are yet another person too blind to see that. You are going to get your wish. It's clear that Net Nuetrality is dead and for better or worse (probably worse) we're going to have to live with that.

By the way, AOL and Prodigy are both still around. I don't know about Compuserve. In the case of AOL, I think it wasn't just competition that killed them but other factors.
1) Increasing technical knowledge by their customers who finally realized that there was more to the internet than AOL and its hand holding.
2) Increasing desire of Americans to move to broadband with the realization that AOL didn't really offer any value for the extra money if they already had broadband. It's one thing to pay AOL for a dial up connection. It's something else to pay for broadband AND then pay for AOL on top of that.
3) AOL's prices weren't very good compared to the competition.
4) AOL's very unpopular mail campaigns may have, in fact, turned off potential customers.
5) AOL's terrible reputation for customers being unable to cancel service surely was a huge negative. If you're a 22 year old graduate on your own for the first time are you going to sign up with a service that makes it essentially impossible to cancel? Probably not.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[PMuse]

We have to realize that EVERY law that goes into existence does so for two reasons:
1. To try to fix some problem that exists TODAY.
2. To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.

You missed: 0. Because some one thinks he can make $$$ from it.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In my community, we already have about 8 ISPs over various mediums (and 2 WiFi ones)."

Well this may be well and good for you, but what about where I live and not a single high speed service provider finds it worth the money to provide internet access. Eventually, some company might, but when there is only one provider for internet access, net neutrality really comes into play.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Red Flayer]

But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider.

And often those people would have no access to broadband if it weren't for regulated monopoly. In exchange for building out to West Dingleberry, the telco is granted the sole right to serve that area. Otherwise the risk outwieghs the potential profit.

As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want.

Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.

Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.

Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables? Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state... even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mi]

Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?

You should thank earlier efforts to regulate telephony, cable service, and Internet provision for this situation.

More regulation is not the answer... When I get mistreated by a service provider (any service), I don't want to call the district attorney or the regulation agency. I just want to be able to call their competitor.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[MindStalker]

Beutiful, you get the government to end its support of telecom monopolies and I'll stop supporting Net Neutrality.. Deal?

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

I frequently read your posts, and sometimes I wonder what you're really after.

Attention.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills!

Of course it doesn't -- but it can. I bet that most of the ills you speak of are completely non-existent.

Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?

So start your own provider. I live in a tiny town of about 2000-3000 people. I run my own mini-ISP with my ISP's approval (WiFi to about 32 neighbors now). I used to own property in a farm town in western Illinois, and I set up a very expensive digital line to provide service to about 15 houses out there. They each pay about US$70 for the line and it works great. I long left the area, but I've heard that two more companies have started to compete. In some towns, they can't compete because the town doesn't allow it.

If there is no competition, it is for two reasons: government says no, or there is no demand. Why supply in either case?

By the way, AOL and Prodigy are both still around.

Sure they are, as competitors to the rest. They were HUGE for years, though, and many people thought they'd be monopolies. Competition eased that concern -- not the law.

I'm no republican, in fact I detest the republicans more than the democrats 50% of the time (vice versa the other 50% of the time). I am a-political. If there is a demand, the market will provide a supply if it is not restricted from doing so.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[kahei]

Gosh, you're right, everything should be left up to large companies to decide! I'm sure they'll make a decision that's in our best interests!

Seriously, you convinced me. A body whose mandate is to make profit quarter by quarter is bound to act more in the public interest than a body whose mandate (however theoretical it may sometimes appear) is to serve the public!

You know what would be cool? If there were _no_ regulations and _nothing_ to stop whichever corporations are best able to exploit the planet and the people on it! That would rock... ..IN BIZARRO LIBERTARIAN WORLD!

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[xappax]

It's clear that you're a free-market advocate, and that's fine, but it seems like net neutrality is a significant and serious enough issue to warrant more than a regurgitation of a general political philosophy. The basic theme I got from your post was "it's foolish for the government to regulate the internet because competition will solve all of the problems".

I'm not saying you're wrong, exactly, just that bringing nothing to the table but a broad ideological theory isn't very helpful or convicing. If you can give some examples or scenarios of the terrible effects of a government-mandated neutrality clause, that might help shift the debate from a contest about whose ivory-tower ideology is better to what real-world solution will be best for everyone on the internet.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

*DING*DING*DING*DING*

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

And often those people would have no access to broadband if it weren't for regulated monopoly. In exchange for building out to West Dingleberry, the telco is granted the sole right to serve that area. Otherwise the risk outwieghs the potential profit.

There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.

Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables?

Every thing I listed that was crushed was replaced by more choice and lower cost. Regulation did not help this, it was the lack of regulation that gave people incentives to take risks. Some people failed, but the hardware and labor up to that point was bought by someone else to use.

Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state...

No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.

even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.

Again, untrue. Once local service regulations were reduced (and not removed), we saw incredible outreach for cell phone service and broadband access. It wasn't the regulations that gave us this growth, it was new technologies that were finally allowed to compete with the old and dead monopoly technologies that provided it.

I can (and have) driven all over the country and North America and I'm shocked at the cell reception I get compared to 5 years ago. This isn't regulation that provides for consumers, it is companies taking risks. In small towns, we seen tiny companies put up a cell phone tower to re-lease to the large providers so that they can offer their customers service.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[DarkDragonVKQ]

Just curious..but what would happen if that ISP you asked said no? My mind isn't working correctly right now (updating some site code) but when I read your post it sounded like you got permission to use your ISP's pipes to create a wifi/landline service. And then they would pay you (or whoever has it now) which then pays the ISP. Am I reading into that correctly? If so, doesn't that still mean the ISP is the only one in town? Considering that you built it off their pipes so they have overall control?

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

"If company A charges me too much for broadband, then I'll go to company B!" What exactly do you when there is no company B in your small town?

Well since currently regulation requires Company B to have to jump through all kinds of hoops if they're allowed into your small town to begin with, you're in trouble. But this is where "the market will pay exactly what something is worth" comes in. If Company A doesn't offer enough to justify what it's costing you, then you don't pay for it. If they want your business at that price, they'll have to offer more, or lower their price until you want to be their customer. Net neutrality is such a non-issue, it makes me sick every time I have to hear about it. The issue is Companies B, C, D, and E can't get into your small town because of government. Fix that problem with deregulation, and nobody is going to care about "net neutrality".

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[WindBourne]

I am all in favor of this, as long as we stop all the monopolies which have lead to oliglopolies. Once we prevent these and allow real competition, then unregulated business can happen.

The other choice (and perhaps a better one), is to minimize the monopoly. Basically allow a company to serve from a CO (or perhaps the green box) to the home. They will be regulated and will NOT be allowed to do anything else WRT content or overall network. While I am not a big fan of regulations, it can be seen that a small monopoly for the hardest part makes sense.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[WindBourne]

Yes, but the god of capitalis triumphs over the satan that exists in gov.

Sadly, that has been proven over and over, and yet we will continue to do it again.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Qzukk]

with my ISP

And herein lies the rub. What are you going to do when your mini-ISP's ISP kills all your clients' connections to Google? Switch to another ISP who... suprise! ultimately gets their internet connection from the same place you did and is currently having the same problem?

Regulation or no regulation, once the telcos and cable companies have crossed this line, it will be VERY expensive to fix it if they can't be forced to retreat on their own (and seriously, now that the statement of intent has been made, how will one ever know that they have retreated, or that they haven't already crossed the line?). In the meantime, we might as well go back to the old uucp days. I hear the telcos offer reasonably priced flat rate long distance these days...

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[ampmouse]

The reason you have no "Company B" is probably government regulation. Sure, I don't what anyone to dig up my street at any time, but how realistic is that? It's expensive to dig up streets, even without government regulation, so I doubt it would happen regularly. "Company A" probably has a government enforced monopoly on the right of ways. "Company A" is happy because they own the market, and you are happy because no one is digging up your street. If you really want a open market with competition, you have to allow anyone to dig up your street at any time, or have the customer install their own line to a location with easy access to multiple providers. Then there is option 3 which is have a government run ISP... I believe the less government the better, so that is not really an option (for me).

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If company A charges me too much for broadband, then I'll go to company B!" What exactly do you when there is no company B in your small town?

The same thing that you did before company A existed; you go without broadband. Either that, or figure out a way to start or help start some competition. Either way, company A has not made you any worse off.

Also, I wonder if, in a libertarian world where all land is privately owned, would broadband have developed the way it did? If individual property owners hired companies to lay cable for them, then each property owner would own his cable, and thus the property owners as a whole could force multiple providers to share the same network of cables in order to compete. That way, the huge capital cost of building a network of cables would only have to be paid once, but the network would not have a single provider.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

If nothing else will convince you, consider this. Do you really want a bunch of people in their 50s-70s who don't understand even the most basic of technologies involved with the internet to control it? Regardless of whatever flaws ISPs may have, at the very least they understand the technology, know how to use it, and are willing to take risks to get a greater profit. And remember that that profit comes from customers, who if given choices, will pick the service that will provide them the greatest service for the least price. In the free unregulated market, you can vote on a daily basis with your dollar. If you leave these decisions up to those who don't understand the technology or your needs, and rely heavily on lobbyists, how can you possibly get the most for that dollar?

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

The issue is Companies B, C, D, and E can't get into your small town because of government. Fix that problem with deregulation, and nobody is going to care about "net neutrality".

But the reality is that everybody's not talking about deregulation; if anything, the telcos are pushing for more monopoly powers. They want to not have to be neutral and be a monopoly at the same time.

The problem is that since any debate about stopping the monopolies is drowned out by "net neutrality," anyone arguing against it is actually arguing in favor of giving the monopolies free reign over us all. So if you don't like net neutrality, fine. But at least shut up about it entirely until after you've succeeded in removing the monopolies, okay?!

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[morgan_greywolf]

The Internet does not exist. It is a figment of the imagination of people in power and the laymen who listen to them. I come from a glorious history of the BBS days (I ran a fairly large multinode Chicagoland BBS for years) where I witnessed the "birth" of the consumer Internet -- thousands of interconnected mini-networks that created a larger one. Now it is millions of mini-networks that make up this thing we call the Net, but it still doesn't exist. There are thousands of Internets, and there is no real way to regulate them.

You are correct, of course. Just as FidoNet was (is?) a collection of "nets" (as store-and-forward networks go), so is the Internet a bigger and more elaborate collection of Nets. There is no central control. There is no Net. Everyone network is just hooked to everyone else's network. That's it.

BTW--slightly OT here, but I just knew there was a reason I liked you. Which one did you run? ExecPC?

Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING.

As if they had the power in the first place. The Commerce clause doesn't give them any more right to regulate the Internet than it does to the FCC to regulate the airwaves. But they just continually ignore the highest law in the land, referring to it as "archaic" and "out of date". The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves...

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[d3mifly]

Thank you! I'm so sick of the "rush to legislate" to fix and engineer us into a perfect society. It doesn't work. We need to value freedom and the market above all else. Even if we think evil corporation will do evil things. One persons evil is another's good thing - so who decides evil? that's when you fall into the trap.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Red Flayer]

No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.

Look again in 10 years. Also, whose fiber are they using? How did that fiber get there (who paid for it, and why were they able to afford to pay for it)?

Again, untrue. Once local service regulations were reduced (and not removed), we saw incredible outreach for cell phone service and broadband access. It wasn't the regulations that gave us this growth, it was new technologies that were finally allowed to compete with the old and dead monopoly technologies that provided it.

What happened prior to the big tech change? I'll freely admit that faced with new technology, a lot of outdated regulation needs to be revamped or removed. However, an unregulated market is rarely the answer for non-commodity goods in the long run.

There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.

Wildblue charges $80/mo for 1.5Mbps down / 256Kbps up (max), and they limit heavy users (like most telcos) which would prevent effective resale. Plus, $300 for the receiving equipment. Plus, how scalable is that? Wildblue (and others) would have to invest MAJOR capital to get more satellite space if they handled even 1% of the traffic out there. As of now, they are limiting themselves to hopefully being able to offer consistent 3Mbps down to businesses. A far, far cry from 1.5Gbps down, as you claim is around the corner (or would be w/o govt restrictions).

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[teflaime]

You almost had me convinced until you said that competition will give us what we want. We want better service at lower prices. Corporations want more money for less output. Mutally exclusive goals. Not that regulation will fix it; it is an intractible position where all sides are morally bankrupt.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

I'm arguing against net neutrality, but I'm not arguing in favor of giving monopolies free reign. They already have free reign. What I'm arguing for is to end this pointless debate about net neutrality, and then allow the telcos to come in and bust up the monopolies already in place by cable companies. Ta-da! No more monopolies, and if one of the MSOs suddenly stops being neutral and I happen to care about that, I can easily jump ship to another MSO that is neutral, or not neutral in a way that I don't object to.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

No he didn't. Money is power, therefore your reason #0 is identical to his reason #2.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dgatwood]

Not gonna work. The reason there are monopolies in the telecom industry is that for 99% of the country (square-footage-wise), a second company would simply go out of business. Hell, here in the Silicon Valley, we had a choice in local phone companies for exactly a year. Nobody chose it because SBC wouldn't allow a VCLEC and a DCLEC on the same line.. Then SBC bought the other choice. So much for your free market. Not that someone couldn't come in and put in a new wire infrastructure, but that's never going to happen. It costs WAY too much money. If a second company can't even survive in a big city using leased access to lines, there's no WAY that a second company could make it with the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost to lay down new wires. And that's in a major metro area.

Back home in Tennessee, a competing cable company came in. They drastically undercut the existing company and drove rates down for a while. At the end of two or three years, they concluded that they would not be able to make their investment back, and they sold the infrastructure to the incumbent cable company, who then proceeded to jack up rates well beyond where they had been before to cover their losses.

The problem is that a monopoly on wire services is not only the norm, it is nearly unavoidable even in cities, forget rural areas. The only real choice you have is whether that monopoly is A. unregulated (in which the consumer gets royally screwed), B. highly regulated (in which they can at least be forced to lease the lines to competitors to some degree, but in which the balance will still always strongly favor the incumbent over any competition), or C. government owned (in which line leasing can be done in a fair way that actually promotes competition). What web have now is B. We've tried A. Neither of them work, as should be clear by now to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. The option that the free market folks seem to want (unregulated competition) simply is not a real option because the natural state of the telco market is, in fact, a monopoly, and the market will thus always gravitate towards a monopoly on its own barring government intervention.

As long as the cost required to string a new line to a piece of property will not be paid for in a single-digit number of years, the practical laws of business prevent competition from developing. The only way to solve this legitimately is to remove those initial costs from the equation, either technologically or financially, and history has shown that the areas with the cheapest, most powerful, and most prevalent broadband are those in which the government has put fiber in the ground and leased it. Thus, I'll stop supporting net neutrality when the government agrees to buy and maintain all of the wire/fiber infrastructure that currently belongs to the telcos on a nationwide basis and agrees to lease it in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory fashion to multiple providers.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[skarphace]

45 different lines won't occupy much more space than they already do -- plus I doubt we'd see this problem as I think we'd see companies dedicated to pulling lines to re-lease to others if we had more competition in the municipalities...

Think about this, there are 3 providers on most poles out there. Electric, cableTV, and phone. Now add 45 new sets to the pole, hope the technicians can identify which ones are theirs, hope the poles can support the weight, and deal with that nasty assed eyesore. With 45 sets of lines on the poles, you probably won't even be able to see the house across the street.

As for re-leasing the lines, this is already available in most states. And guess what, the prices they can charge are regulated and that's the only reason these re-leasers can even stay in business. You think Verizon will keep their prices low for Cavalier? hah

Of course they get a benefit -- they get to set the prices without competition.

Thanks to deregulation.

It NEVER existed because the "net" was too young and companies were still trying to overcome technological barriers.

That's because the 'net' came into it's own after deregulation. And no, deregulation can not be given credit to spurring it's growth.

While I do agree that regulation on the logical Internet should not be and is kind of impossible... however, it may just be necessary to regulate the network providers. Otherwise they will exercise their monopolies and burry us with exorbinate fees.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dk.r*nger]

And herein lies the rub. What are you going to do when your mini-ISP's ISP kills all your clients' connections to Google? Switch to another ISP who... suprise! ultimately gets their internet connection from the same place you did and is currently having the same problem?

You think big.

You talk to the other mini-ISPs across the country, and form the Free Net Foundation. You raise some money (remember, you've already got 1000s of customers in these mini-ISPs), set up a new backbone (I've heard that Google owns some fiber..), and off you go.

Telecom and cable monopoly lies in one, and only one place: Last mile access. The market for FWA and fiber is open, flexible and not bogged down by monopolies.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[xappax]

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly what I was complaining about in the GP's post. All I'm hearing is theory, theory, theory. I /agree/ with the general principle that we should avoid allowing people who don't understand technology very well to make decisions about it. I /agree/ that "the government that governs least governs best" - at least in theory.

But there are other theories on the other side that are just as strong. You know, like "information wants to be free" or the idea that nobody, not corporations or governments, should get to control or discriminate what information is exchanged on the internet.

The point is that it's all just theory, and being a pragmatist I tend to believe that people only resort to blustering about abstractions when they don't have a solid argument based in practice. My question is this:

What /practical/ problems (as in, actual effects that would have consequences in the real world) can be reasonably forseen if the government requires ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally? I don't need to hear about the general ills of government regulation, just this particular one.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[MindStalker]

I've always been a fan of C. Dispite personally being pro free market. Most roads are operated by the government for this reason. There are some community owned and private last mile roads as well as private (toll) expressways. But I wouldn't have a problem with this in the internet but currently most of the internet roads were built with tax payer money but still owned by local companies. This is the worse situation. No community planner would ever envisions doing this to our roads.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dgatwood]

There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.

Wouldn't matter if they had infinite bandwidth. Satellite internet is still a joke. Satellite links with large bandwidth have been around for decades. There's a reason why satellite internet is not used in lieu of running lines even for transatlantic and transpacific internet communications except as temporary installations in developing nations until cables can be laid down. The internet was not designed for half second round trip packet latency, and most protocols don't work well over that medium, including DNS.

With a satellite hop, no matter how much bandwidth you have, every little request still takes a minimum of a half second before you start seeing data, not counting any latency in the satellite equipment itself or the latency from the other end of the satellite hop to your destination. What's to keep someone from reselling satellite internet in a local community? The only people who would buy it would be people downloading stuff with bittorrent and similar. For many uses (including typical web browsing), dialup can actually be faster.

No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.

I call bullshit. My home town in Tennessee doesn't lock out competitors. They still have one cable ISP and zero telco ISPs. That's right. Zero. The local phone company doesn't think it's worth rolling it out even though they own the lines. As for cell phones, you are correct that cell service is improving. The problem is that the infrastructure costs are still so steep that every cell phone ISP in most parts of the country still charges by the kilobyte for service at a relatively slow speed. And if you tell me that we should remove FCC bandwidth regulations, I'm just going to laugh at you. Without those regulations, the spectrum would be such a mess that nothing would be able to function reliably in metro areas, and in rural areas, you still probably would see zero providers of high speed connections.

What you say is ONLY true in major metro areas. As soon as you get into rural areas, a monopoly will ALWAYS be the norm, and even if competition is allowed to enter, it will not succeed. I've seen it happen repeatedly in the South. When you have two or three miles between each house, the cost of running wires is prohibitive, and wireless still has absolute range limitations of about 25 miles due to the curvature of the earth. Satellite has impractical latency. The bottom line is that unless you magically invent subspace communications, there is NO WAY we are going to see new technology solve this problem. It will always cost more money to service those areas than the short-term and even medium-term payoff from doing so, which means that no competitor in their right minds would attempt it.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Sir.Cracked]

It's not the ISP that is going to be charging their extortion tax. It's the long haul telcos. So, it won't matter if I start my own ISP, I still have to hook into ATT, or some other major telco. And that's why the lack of net nutrality sucks. I'm already paying (as an ISP) ATT big bucks for my T3's or whatever pipe I need.

That bandwidth is PAID FOR. Repeatedly.

Google pays for the bits that go to and from their pipe. So, If I send a packet to google, I pay to send the packet (admitedly, only fractions of a penny for a single packet, but you'll have that), Google pays to recieve and reply to that packet, and then I pay to recieve that reply (every bit going over my line requires bandwidth, and therefore I have paid for that bandwidth, even if not paying per bit or minute etc).

The packet both ways uses up bandwidth on two connections that are both paid for. The consumer pays the ISP, the ISP pays the Telco, and so on. So, that comunication has already been paid for. And now, the telco wants MORE money just to keep the packets going at the speed they are at today.

This is just pure greed. Period. And not one person who advocates doing away with net nutrality has brought up one argument to explain why the Telco should get paid a third to possibly a FIFTH time for the same message sequence. If anyone can explain why, I'm all ears.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

You almost had me convinced until you said that competition will give us what we want. We want better service at lower prices. Corporations want more money for less output. Mutally exclusive goals. Not that regulation will fix it; it is an intractible position where all sides are morally bankrupt.

You're ignoring what competition really is -- it isn't corporations or unions or markets or groups of anything; it is individuals looking to get more out of something they put into.

When you go to a gas station to buy gas, you take dollars with you. The gas station owner wants to sell gas for more dollars than the gas is worth to him. You want to buy gas that is worth more to you than the dollars you give up -- you mutually exchange these products/services for a mutual gain. After the transaction, you BOTH profit.

Competition means that people have choices as to who they'll barter with. Imagine if 100 gas stations only had 1 consumer to serve in total -- a consumption monopoly. What would that one consumer do? He'd buy from the cheapest person who would sell him what he wants. But that's a consumption monopoly, so the consumer could also put EVERYONE out of business by witholding his dollars. The best market is one where competition is available on both ends -- multiple consumers competing with each other (increasing the demand for goods and increasing the supply of dollars) as well as multiple providers competing with each other (increasing the supply of goods and decreasing the cost in dollars).

Corporations are no different than two individual bartering -- a corporation is a group of individuals ALL bartering with one another for personal gain. When the corporation has government power, now it can control the competition in the market -- it is the government power that is evil.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

Firstly, in a free unregulated market, the corporations don't control things. It's a direct democracy where every dollar you spend is a vote. If you're not spending your money, the corporations won't exist for very long (except when the government bails out failing businesses, like the airline industry, something I don't agree with either).

Secondly, the most practical problem with government regulation in my mind is that I'd rather the government be spending its time, money, and energy (wait, I take that back, MY time, money, and energy) on things that actually matter. Regulation's cost is not just the money they put into doing it, but also the things that that money didn't go into, and therefore we never got. Regulation means more expensive health care. Regulation means more people living on the streets with no jobs and no hope. Regulation means a government seemingly unable to deal with growing problems around the world. Would you rather your congressman or congresswoman occupy themselves with making laws they don't understand about how your internet packets are treated, or would you rather they try to make sure people have jobs, food, medicine, and a place to live?

If you don't like that explaination much, wanting something a little more specific and immediate, how about poor-quality VoIP? If we continue to let monopolies have free-reign in their own regions, devoid of competition from other broadband providers, then you're going to keep having relatively low-bandwidth broadband. Instead of 30Mbps like you might get if a fiber service was allowed into your area, you're stuck on 6Mbps. And as more people are using more bandwidth-intensive internet services, each being treated exactly the same, that VoIP call you're making is going to start getting choppy instead of your non-essential website download going a tiny bit slower. And of course businesses are going to be upset that suddenly their contract for QoS is illegal and they can't conduct their business properly.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

BTW--slightly OT here, but I just knew there was a reason I liked you. Which one did you run? ExecPC?

Actually, I provisioned an X.25 packet switching connection before I left the pre-Internet business :) So technically I had very nice net access before the big boys. My first ISP as a consumer was Chicago's InterAccess (one of the first large local ISPs). I also did try ExecPC for a while.

When I ran my FidoNet node (I wish I could recall the number), I had something called a CallPak because my suburb of Chicago had a competitive telephone company (Centel) and they let me make any call up to Band D for free (unlimited calls for a set price). Ameritech didn't have this program. Because of this I could bring in data from a fairly long distance for no cost, which is why my BBS grew in leaps and bounds with the FidoNet days. That was pretty awesome and financed my X.25, which was very short-lived because my users didn't understand the Internet (which we were NOT a part of yet, theoretically), so it was a bigger cost than it created.

As if they had the power in the first place. The Commerce clause doesn't give them any more right to regulate the Internet than it does to the FCC to regulate the airwaves. But they just continually ignore the highest law in the land, referring to it as "archaic" and "out of date". The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves...

If only the consumers realized this and just stopped voting entirely. That power came from the mad majority just throwing it away.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

They already have free reign.

No they don't; they're supposed to be "common carriers" which means they can't discriminate based on content (for example, by charging more for some packets because they came from Google). The monopoly ISPs are trying to abolish that; most everyone else is trying to keep it.

and then allow the telcos to come in and bust up the monopolies already in place by cable companies.

What are you talking about?! The telcos won't do that; half the time they're the monopolies in the first place! At most, all that would happen is that they'd collude with the cable company to form a duopoly and the end users would still be screwed because both of them would suck (this is the case in metro Atlanta; we get to "choose" between BellSouth and Comcast -- whoop-de-do).

Besides, my point is that your scenario wouldn't even have a chance to happen because if the telco (and cable -- they're on the same side) lobbyists win we'll lose net neutrality WITHOUT getting rid of the government-supported monopolies!

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

Maybe I just have a different definition of "free reign", but mine goes something like "monopolies can do whatever they want because nobody is competing with them".

And maybe I also have a different definition of "monopoly", but mine goes something like "a company that has a lack of competition in a market".

So, if you let in the telcos to compete with cable operators who in many cases fit the above definition of monopoly, then by definition, there will no longer be a monopoly. Thus, telcos will bust up monopolies if given the chance to enter the market.

Now, at least where I've lived, telcos don't have monopolies on high-speed internet or television service. Maybe it's different where you are. And I want to be clear, I'm not talking about DSL. DSL is weaksauce compared to fiber and doesn't have television services. But anyway, presumably the same ability for telcos to compete with cable companies would also mean non-telcos (cable companies?) to compete with telco monopolies. So, either way, monopolies get busted.

Now, as for collusion, that would be illegal under existing law, so if you're worried about that, there's still no need to add more laws.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[houghi]

I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills! Where exactly is this competition of which you speak?

The free market took care of the competition.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

Maybe I just have a different definition of "free reign", but mine goes something like "monopolies can do whatever they want because nobody is competing with them".

No, that's correct -- and that's what will happen without net neutrality.

So, if you let in the telcos to compete with cable operators who in many cases fit the above definition of monopoly, then by definition, there will no longer be a monopoly. Thus, telcos will bust up monopolies if given the chance to enter the market.

This is entirely myopic and naive. First of all, half the time the telcos are the monopoly (when one exists) instead of the cable operators. You just as well could say "thus, the cable operators would bust up [the telco's] monopoly" instead. Second, and more important, all that will happen is that the cable company and telco would create a cartel instead.

And third, not having net neutrality will not suddenly allow new players to enter the market! It isn't going to magically cause any governments to suddenly allow new players to bury lines, and there's no real issue stopping telcos from offering "better than DSL" stuff now. The only reason it's not being done is because -- despite the billions in subsidies they've been given for the purpose -- they claim they can't afford to do it. Basically, they're being greedy (wanting to preserve monopoly profits instead of competitive profits) and are holding the infrastructure hostage in an attempt to get their way.

Now, as for collusion, that would be illegal under existing law, so if you're worried about that, there's still no need to add more laws.

Right, just like how the RIAA and MPAA are figments of everybody's imagination, too! Face it, anti-trust laws are dead -- Microsoft made that abundantly clear.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

"I just want to be able to call their competitor"

Me too. Sure wish there were some.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dankh]

Just an example, and sorry for my bad english.
In France there was a debate about selling La Poste (the post company 100% owned by the state) and many companies like FedEx, DHL, UPS and others were interested, but all these wanted to buy only the deliveries to the big cities, and let the state continue managing the small villages with less than X (imagine here a small number) orders by week. Ok let's have a good market competition where there are good profits and no postman for my grandma who lives in the small town because she wants to send me just one letter per month and not 10 packages.
Sometimes regulation and state intervention is not so bad, in France the post service is all the same and good whatever you live, not only in towns with interesting business profile. (BTW: they didn't sell the company).

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

"These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations."

Uh huh. And the latency is dictated by the speed of light, rendering the connection useless for a substantial number of users.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

You go ahead and worship your god the market. I don't want to be see the day when it runs wild, unfettered by the rules of society (which government approximately facilitates). Left to run completely free the market would kill most of us. (You want a free market, look to the black market).

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[sgt_doom]

Excellent post (and BTW, I'm not in the habit of complementing Republicans!). Speaking of telecoms, there's an excellent book by Nomi Prins which covers the telecom situation, Other People's Money.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dada21]

When you live far away from a metropolis, you should not require that the people in the metropolis pay for your desire to be away from them.

They should not subsidize your telephone service to be cheap -- you picked to live away, you should pay your fair share. They should not subsidize for your mail service. Maybe people in rural areas could pay UPS/Fedex to come visit once a week to pick up and drop off all the packages for that region. The price for society that wants to live close to the action would go down, and the rural areas would get what they want -- isolation.

I find it ridiculous that people think the mail service is good because it seems to work when they don't realize that MOST public mail is paid for by advertising to the mailbox. Do you really think that big advertisers won't subsidize the mail directly if the competitive mail industry stopped supporting rural areas? I don't think so. And even if they didn't, that is part of the risk that moving away from a metropolis brings with it -- added isolation.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[xappax]

Well, most of that was once again just a re-hashing of the libertarian platform, but towards the end you did make an interesting point, and I appreciate it. Regulating net-neutrality will mean that your ISP cannot prioritize VoIP packets over say HTTP packets.
Of course, you, the end user, can prioritize anything you want on your private equipment. If VoIP is "mission critical", just configure your router with QoS to prioritize it, so HTTP traffic doesn't clobber your phone calls. Concerned about latency? Buy a T1, a business DSL line, or some other type of connection with low latency. What ISPs would like to do (I think) is tell you "Okay, your DSL subscription allows you 100 MB of low-latency traffic for VoIP, and the rest will be high-latency." This might be nice since you wouldn't have to buy a dedicated low-latency line just for VoIP, and would be impossible if ISPs had to treat all traffic the same.

This is the only drawback that I've heard of yet, and while I agree that it's an unfortunate inconvenience, I don't think that making a mediocre improvement in VoIP quality is worth setting the internet up for potentially industry-crumbling exploitation and regulation (yes, I said regulation) /by/ monopolistic ISPs. Perhaps there are some (currently one) benefits to allowing AT&T and Bell total power over QoS, but I still don't see how they even begin to outweigh the very serious threats to both freedom of speech and the thriving electronic free markets that require a fair environment to compete properly in.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I think you're right, come to think of it...

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[BalanceOfJudgement]

It is a non-ideal solution because there is an ideal solution -- allow competition.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192794&cid=158 27216

What he said.

You know, I used to believe that free competition would solve everything too. Then I opened my eyes and took stock of how REAL people behave, not the ideal person necessary to make laissez-faire competition work. I tried really hard for a long time to find anything I could to support the theory, but in the end I had to recognize that humans are simply not that noble. That's why regulation exists in the first place - not because people and governments were trying to control what companies would do in the *future*, but because of what they had done in the *past*.

The FCC is a great evil and arguably unconstitutional.

Agreed 150%. Although, I wasn't commenting on the Constitutionality of the FCC, only recognizing how their behavior affects the playing field, given the realistic knowledge that they're here and probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

It doesn't need to exist based on a law, it exists fine without any regulation.

The amount of control Telcos are attempting to exert over the internet seems to suggest a flaw in your theory.. sure it would exist 'fine' for those in power, but for disenfranchised humans all over the world who might be hurt by that behavior, I wouldn't call it 'fine.'

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

"Do you really want a bunch of people in their 50s-70s who don't understand even the most basic of technologies involved with the internet to control it?"

How's this different than what we have now? Oh, you're talking about the government, not the telco executives. You're also assuming that those two groups are distinct.

"Regardless of whatever flaws ISPs may have,"

There's that funny plural again. You say ISPs, as if there are many options.

"and are willing to take risks to get a greater profit"

You can't possibly be serious. We're talking about TELCOS. The only way they know how to make money is to have somebody making a law that makes it impossible for them to not make money.

"who if given choices"

Uh huh. Lots of choices. Let them eat cake!

"In the free unregulated market"

Right, because that's REALLY what the telcos want. A free, unregulated market. Do you seriously, really, for true believe that they have your interests at heart?

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

"Firstly, in a free unregulated market, the corporations don't control things"

There's your fundamentally flawed assumption. In a free and unregulated (telco) market, the corporations control THE MARKET. That's all they need to control.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for some reason feel the need to toss my 2 cents in on your why aol decreased list.

1 - possibly
2 - The first part is correct. Its important to remember that a lot people don't actually think before they do something, they react. So if someone needs internet access for email they call some one and order it. If they only have heard the word AOL before, then they call AOL. So unless a friend says 'hey get on the AOL to chat with me LOL' then they don't have the motivation to pay for it.
3 - True, I think this is a huge motivator.
4 - It only turned off people that didn't need them. It may of been a waste of money and resources.
5 - Maybe but doubtful, sure some people have been turned off by friends who have had to deal with the policy of making it difficult but I think that general populous awareness on the issue just doesn't exist.

In addition to these reasons another part where AOL has a problem is they depend on fresh blood. When there was a rapid growth in people trying to get the internet there was a huge pool of people to reel in. Now that Internet access is pitched to people from numerous vendors (in highly populated areas) they just dont have enough fresh bodies to offset the natural attrition rate.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Anonymous Coward]

Without government intervention there would never have been anything remotely resembling the telecommunications infrastructure that we have today. There are more than enough landowners that do not want anything crossing their land that it would have been impossible to implement. Current cities could not have been "strung up" without easements and future subdivisions would not be wired because they wouldn't know why they would want to be.

You seem to forget that government is just the cooperation of a bunch of people. You turn it into an "us vs. them" by not participating.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[teflaime]

Yours is idyllic view that seems to have little to do with reality. In truth, if you look at the pricing, there is little or no competition. It's all collusion to get the most out of the consumer. You are also overlooking that corporations do control the government. Most legislators are bought and paid for by corporate campaign contributions. Look at both individual and soft money contributions.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Mo Bedda]

You talk to the other mini-ISPs across the country, and form the Free Net Foundation. You raise some money (remember, you've already got 1000s of customers in these mini-ISPs), set up a new backbone (I've heard that Google owns some fiber..), and off you go.

The difficulty there is that you will not be able to compete. Not only has the infrastructure of the big carriers already been subsidized by the government, but they have other protected markets to milk should they need to undercut your Internet pricing. Mini-ISPs still largely depend on local carriers Telecom and cable monopoly lies in one, and only one place: Last mile access. The market for FWA and fiber is open, flexible and not bogged down by monopolies.

Last I read, 70% of the U.S. backbone is now owned by AT&T and Verizon. It would be very expensive and time consuming attempting to build a network which could route around that efficiently. The market seems to be consolidating rather than opening up. And, the industry has been consolidating from the last mile out. The local carriers (Verizon and SBC) ended up owning the long haul providers (AT&T and MCI), because they were able to leverage their physical monopolies to pay for moving into other markets.

Your idea makes me feel good. I just don't think economics favors it.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[The_Wilschon]

I am a-political.

Bull. If you are a-political, then stop ranting on and on about political matters! You might be against political parties, but any fool can see that you are not a-political. Of all the ludicrous things I have ever read on slashdot, this comes pretty close to the top.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Kool Moe]

You suppose that everyone lives where they do because they want to and have the means to change their circumstance at whim.
Until that is actually true, your argument has little merit.
KM

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[gsurbey]

Beutiful, you get the government to end its support of telecom monopolies and I'll stop supporting Net Neutrality.. Deal?

what a tangled web we weave...

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[kwark]

"If a second company can't even survive in a big city using leased access to lines, there's no WAY that a second company could make it with the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost to lay down new wires."

Last year a fibre network was installed in my neighbourhood, the costs were 500EUR per household for about 6000 homes, a mere 3 million for a network that supports up to 80mbit internetconnections, both analog and digital (HD)TV and phone.

"A. unregulated (in which the consumer gets royally screwed), B. highly regulated (in which they can at least be forced to lease the lines to competitors to some degree, but in which the balance will still always strongly favor the incumbent over any competition), or C. government owned (in which line leasing can be done in a fair way that actually promotes competition). What web have now is B. We've tried A. Neither of them work, as should be clear by now to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention."

Strange but over here (NL) we have situation B. It works very well thank you very much.

There are many DSL providers, either using the ex-monopolists own DSL network, a competing one or their own. Almost everywhere cable internet is available and I'll just ignore UMTS/GPRS providers.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mkw87]

Google pays for the bits that go to and from their pipe.

I thought we made it clear to everyone, its tubes.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Eunuchswear]

Well here in France we have

B. highly regulated (in which they can at least be forced to lease the lines to competitors to some degree, but in which the balance will still always strongly favor the incumbent over any competition)

But I don't see your but in which the balance will still always strongly favor the incumbent over any competition at all. Poor old FT ("the historical operator") are getting totaly screwed. How is the incumbent favoured? Anyone can use their lines at a regulated price, charge lower prices to the consumer than FT and provide more interesting services.

Your problem is that the regulators are useless or corrupt.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Dannon]

I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills!

If you think what we have now is a free market, you're way off. That one choice you've got in your small town? Odds are it's a state-sanctioned monopoly. I'd also consider it safe to guess that the state has delegated some of its own powers to this monopoly. Powers such as eminent domain or price-fixing. It's quite likely that this monopoly has its hands in tax law, too, encouraging your legislators to set up license fees and levies against prospective competition, while bargaining for tax breaks.

With the rules set up to favor the "one choice", is it so hard to see why there aren't more choices?

And for all the lip service Republicans pay to the free market, they're as bad as anyone in perpetuating this mercantilism-in-free-market-clothing system we've got now. Not that the Democrats are any better. They thrive on the same status quo, while paying lip service to a different ideal.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

Their interest is in making money. I have no illusions about that. But as a customer, it's my money they're after, and they'll have to earn it. And if they can't earn it, I'll spend it somewhere else. Oh wait, because of government interference, I can't spend it somewhere else. Thanks, regulations. You really saved the day for me by forcing me to only have one choice. Anyway, it's clear that I'm not going to convince you. It's not your fault you can't understand how a free market works, because of government regulation you've never seen it in action.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

"It's not your fault you can't understand how a free market works, because of government regulation you've never seen it in action."

I've also never seen the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny, and I'm not going to rely on either of those fictional entities to prevent corporate hegemony.

If we had effective anti-trust regulation, I would be much more sanguine about allowing a free-for-all. Since we don't, and there's nothing preventing the telcos and the cable companies (assuming there's a meaningful distinction between them now) from simply dividing the spoils and charging whatever they feel like, I'll take regulation.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

I don't think I'm a libertarian. They seem sort of crazy to me and I've never voted for one. But I suppose if by "libertarian" you mean "capitalist", then I guess that's my platform on this issue.

You talk about private equipment and business connections, but what's to say that those aren't immune from net neutrality legislation? I don't trust congress to understand the distinction, quite frankly. Nor even if that distinction was clear do I think it's a good idea. VoIP is just an example of a service that requires lower latency, but who can say what's down the road? I don't think that mid-term election issue legislation could keep up with changing technology. And as somebody has already said, cell phones and related technologies were only able to take off after the loosening of regulations. If we put net neutrality on the books, who is to say what new technology will be delayed as a result? Video streaming? Web conferences? Here's a thought, instead of paying $5 a gallon at the pump, work from home with a cheaper faster internet connection.

I don't think that Google should pay twice for their bandwidth, nor do I think that the market would stand for it. I doubt Google would fork over extra money, and I doubt customers wouldn't complain about degraded service. People do call their ISPs about connection problems now, and it costs the ISP to have to answer those phones. If you get over the FUD spread on both sides of the non-issue, it comes down to a simple choice. Do you want the government to control your tubes and dump trucks, or would you rather have the opportunity to use your hard-earned money where you want? Me, I want fiber optic lines running into my home with enough bandwith so that service-degradation won't ever be a necessity. I'd rather the government worry about other kinds of tubes.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

They can control how they behave within the market, what services they offer, etc. But hey, so does your grocery store and your plumber. And if they behave in a way that customers don't like, and the services they offer aren't very good, they'll go out of business pretty quick, will they not? There is nothing fundamentally flawed about the assumption that the customer controls the market. You can see it proven on a daily basis, all around the world, in pretty much every industry. The only times and places you don't see customers controlling the market is where a monopoly exists or government regulation prevents competitive actions. With regulatory-enforced monopolies in the ISP business, we've got a problem. If you remove the barriers to competition, you will see a return to normalcy, with better internet for everyone. What's happening now is not normal, and is not how it would be wihout regulation.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

If you can't see the difference between the market for plumbers, and the market for telecommunications services, I question your ability to make intelligent comparisons.

Magically turning off regulation will not cause last-mile networks to spontaneously generate in the ground. Those networks are obscenely expensive to build, which is why the original build-out was subsidized by us taxpayers. The payback for the taxpayers was supposed to be reasonable prices from the telcos, which hasn't happened.

Did you completely sleep through that part where AT&T was allegedly broken up into a big pile of colluding CLECs, and then glommed back together into AT&T? What is your prototype for a competitive market in last-mile networks?

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

First of all, I was clear that in cases of telco monopolies, cable operators could bust those up as well. But again, I don't know of any telcos that have regional monopolies on television services. And it's cable franchising laws that are keeping many new television services (along with high-speed fiber internet) from expanding as quickly as it could. Verizon FiOS is the perfect example of this. There is one town in my state that can get their service. It has nothing to do with the expense of laying fiber, Verizon would love to pay the money to bring it to my area, because people are itching to drop Comcast, and Verizon would make their money back pretty fast. But it takes six months to a year, or even more if they have to literally sue a municipality for unreasonable demands, to negotiate a franchise everywhere. That is what's holding up the "better than DSL". As for the RIAA and MPAA, I'd say the problem is more a matter of government not understanding technology (sound familiar?) rather than the law being dead. You want the same people passing the DMCA to start telling ISPs how to deal with data packets? You expect more government regulation to turn out for the best? Now who's being naive...

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

They've already divided the spoils. The government helped them do it and is helping them keep their little regional monopolies, that's the problem. That's the only problem. Get rid of that government protection, and these companies will be able to actually compete with each other. Why would they want to do this? Because they want more money, and the only way you get more money is by getting more customers. That means expanding your coverage, producing a better service, and it's already starting to happen. Verizon is trying to expand their FiOS service as quickly as they can negotiate thousands of franchises. Maybe you're happy with your regional monopoly's services, but I can't wait for my municipality to finally have some competition. AT&T is also trying to get into the television game, but it's taking time for them too. I for one don't like barriers in the way of cheaper and faster service, but maybe you're happy with the status quo.

There's nothing fictional about the free market, you can see it working fine in other industries. Government regulation is what screwed up the ISPs to begin with.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[camryl]

There are thousands of Internets, and there is no real way to regulate them.

There are thousands of humans, and there is no real way to regulate them!

(Sorry, cheap shot, I know.)

Now some people want to give more power to the Federal government even though the Constitution says they can't have that power.

*scratches head* Explain to me again which Consitutional clause bans federal regulation of the internet?

As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want.

No, it won't. It will change to whatever best benefits the corporate shareholders without pissing off the consumers *too* much. Considering what low expectations consumers hold re technology (BSOD, anyone?), it'll take a *lot* to piss off the masses.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[Moofie]

Other industries are not the same as last-mile telco networks. I'm not at ALL satisfied with the status quo...we've got a perfect storm of corporate greed and government regulation. However, I do not share your faith that somehow, magically, the market will prevail.

There are a few natural monopolies. This is one of them. It needs to be returned to the public trust. (Electrical utilities work pretty good, don't they? Would that high-speed internet was as reliable. Yes, I'm excluding California, which has their own set of home-made stupidities.)

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

The only difference between telecom and plumbing is that the government doesn't make it extremely difficult for a new plumber to set up a business in your region.

What makes last-mile networks to generate is a desire to make more money off of that network. Don't underestimate a company's desire to make more money. And maybe you just don't see it because it's happening slowly, but companies like Verizon are putting out fiber. What's slowing them up is the franchises they have to negotiate with every town before they can do it. If you're complaining about reasonable prices, maybe you should blame the lack of competition- competition stifled by the government you're so eager to get more involved.

There are other companies besides AT&T that can offer services. Take a look at the law to find out why they aren't offering you those services.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

Why aren't other industries the same as last-mile telco networks? The only thing I see that makes them different is the level of government interference.

Electrical utilities don't as well as they should. Maybe better than some third world countries, but demand seems to be outstripping supply and problems are rarely fixed quickly. There are a number of things I'd like to see done, but none of it terribly relevant to this discussion.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

First of all, I was clear that in cases of telco monopolies, cable operators could bust those up as well.

Really? I think I would have noticed it, if you actually did say it.

But again, I don't know of any telcos that have regional monopolies on television services.

No, the telcos just have monopolies on phone service instead. Same difference!

Verizon FiOS is the perfect example of this. There is one town in my state that can get their service. It has nothing to do with the expense of laying fiber, Verizon would love to pay the money to bring it to my area, because people are itching to drop Comcast, and Verizon would make their money back pretty fast.

First of all, unless you work for Verizon (which would explain your opinion on this...), you have no way of knowing what "Verizon would love" to do. Second of all, you can bet that even if it were available, Verizon would throttle the connection to exactly the minimum required to call it "better than cable," and charge just as much (after all, this is the same company that breaks Bluetooth on their cellphones so that people are forced to buy ringtones etc. from their overpriced "V-Cast" service instead). Third, Verizon is not a new player anyhow! True competition would mean many companies, not just "Verizon vs. Comcast!" Now, do you see anyone else other than the already-a-huge-monopoly telco trying to enter the market?

Now, here's my own anecdote: Where I live, there are exactly two choices: Bellsouth or Comcast. Bellsouth only offers "DSL", at speeds up to 6Mbps (which, "coincidentally," was until recently the maximum speed Comcast offered for cable internet). And this is despite the fact that Bellsouth already has fiber in the ground! Bellsouth could probably offer 10Mbps right now, but they don't. Why? Because they still only have to compete with Comcast! Even though it's "not a monopoly," which would make you assume would cause everything to be fine-and-dandy, it's still not a "free market." And it never will be.

As for the RIAA and MPAA, I'd say the problem is more a matter of government not understanding technology (sound familiar?) rather than the law being dead.

Among other things, the RIAA colludes with/bribes/whatever radio stations in order to prevent them from playing music not endorsed by the RIAA. Technology has nothing to do with the government's failure to break up the cartel. In fact, it's just the opposite: the Bush administration recently relaxed rules that prevent the same company from owning all the media serving a given area -- that's why Clear Channel (which, although not part of the RIAA, is part of the cartel) is being allowed to buy up all the radio stations.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrxak]

Really? I think I would have noticed it, if you actually did say it.

Here it is:

But anyway, presumably the same ability for telcos to compete with cable companies would also mean non-telcos (cable companies?) to compete with telco monopolies. So, either way, monopolies get busted.

Next you said...

No, the telcos just have monopolies on phone service instead. Same difference!

Since I was talking about television service monopolies, it's not exactly the "same difference". Also, there are at least three local telephone service operators where I live, in fact we just switched to get a lower price. And there are numerous long distance carriers. The cable television market is a lot more monopolistic than telephone, and the government interferes a lot more with television than they do phones. It's video franchising laws that are keeping the fiber out. That's why I don't get 30Mbps.

The reason I know that Verizon wants my business is three-fold. For one thing, they've set up a VHO in my state, within range of my town, and are negotiating franchises throughout the state. Secondly, Verizon is reporting that they've expanded their FiOS service extensively since intitial roll-out. It only makes sense that they'll continue. They're clearly going after marketshare. And third, Verizon is a business. Businesses want to make money. They will make money by providing me with service. It's simple business logic.

It's obvious that you haven't been following Cable/FiOS news at all, or you'd know that your claims that they would throttle service are unfounded. In fact, they recently announced that they are upping their speeds in a few places that already get their service. I don't remember exactly, but I believe it's the NY/CT area that will be getting faster speeds. I also read recently that they are going to start switching to GPON from BPON, which would add bandwidth capability to their network. The fastest cable speed I've heard of was from Cablevision, running 15Mbps. 30Mbps sorta blows that out of the water, don't you think?

Your anecdote is rather interesting. But you're in a better situation than what I have. I have 6Mbps on a good day with Comcast, but it's usually 3-4. If I was to get DSL, it'd be about 1.5Mbps tops. But honestly, I don't believe DSL can be considered a competitor. It tried to raise speeds to challenge Comcast, but Comcast raised their speed, and then DSL simply became the cheaper-but-slower alternative. I'd like to see Cablevision or Time Warner Cable and Verizon enter my area and provide actual competition.

Among other things, the RIAA colludes with/bribes/whatever radio stations in order to prevent them from playing music not endorsed by the RIAA.

You're not going to make me sound like I'm defending the RIAA/MPAA, are you? I'm not. What I'd rather have is the government going after actual problems than ones that are make-believe/issue-of-the-month. I'd rather see people writing letters to their representatives in government to repeal the DMCA or investigate RIAA illegal behaviors than to tell them to take a hard stand on some "net neutrality" concept.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dgatwood]

Strange but over here (NL) we have situation B. It works very well thank you very much.

There's a logical fallacy there. You are taking a non-representative sample and attempting to use it as a representative one. The United States and the Netherlands face very, very different issues when it comes to telecommunications, mainly due to radically different population densities.

The Netherlands aren't rural by any stretch of the imagination... at least not in the same way that the southern parts of the U.S. are rural. Your population has an average of over 1,000 people per square mile across the country. That means your average population density is comparable to Nashville, TN. That's considered a major city in the southern U.S.

In fact, in the U.S., only New Jersey and Rhode Island have comparable population densities. Massachusetts and Connecticut fall at about two thirds that density. The fifth and sixth closest states, Maryland and New York, come in at half your density. It goes down from there. The average population of the state of Alaska, by contrast, is 1.1 people per square mile. Wyoming is 5.1. Montana is 6.2. So the population density of the lowest density U.S. states ranges from 1/200th to 1/1000th of the population density of the Netherlands. The U.S. average is about 49.4 people per square mile.

In other words, a worst case estimate for wiring every home in Alaska would be almost two-thirds of a million dollars per household. That's an inflated estimate, of course, because the population is -somewhat- clustered, but it would be a heck of a lot more than $640/household, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the U.S. average cost were measured in tens of thousands of dollars per household. Even if it were only $5,000 per household (unlikely when you include long haul lines across mountain chains), if someone wanted to wire the whole U.S. with a new phone network, it would still take 17 years to recover the costs on average (assuming the average cost of local phone service in the U.S. is about $25/month). And that assumes that you have 100% of the households switching to the new network. Assuming that you can only reasonably expect half (on average), you're at 34 years to break even. Most American businesses won't invest in something unless they can expect to be profitable in 3-5 years.

Thus, in effect, your example suggests that it should work in most American cities. In many American cities, it does, in fact work. But my whole point was that it doesn't always work in cities, and that in rural parts of the U.S., it never works and can never work. Thus, your argument does not in any way refute what I said.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[dgatwood]

No, our problem is that the government here isn't allowed to dictate pricing beyond requiring that it be "reasonable". Any law going beyond that would probably be struck down as unconstitutional restraint of trade.

The government in France has a lot more ability to manipulate France Télécom, given its history as a government-owned monopoly. As of January, the French government owned 46% of FT. That puts it squarely in category "C." in my book.... The government in France can simply do things that the U.S. government could never get away with when regulating private enterprise.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[PMuse]

Money and "power over the masses" are neither completely coextensive nor completely fungible (although they do overlap significantly).

While money can be used fairly simply to exercise political/legal power, that kind of power can not be used nearly as easily to acquire money. (For example, a person with money who wants a law can buy advertising to sway public opinion or contribute to political campaigns. An office-holder must be much more careful about accepting money for votes or passing laws to enrich himself.)

More importantly, the O.P.'s reason 2 ("To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.") only dealt with people who want power for power's sake. It said nothing about those who want money for money's sake. Not all of them care whether "power over the masses" is involved in getting them their money or not.

Not recognizing the differences between the desire for money the desire for power leads to a limited understanding of the legislative dynamic.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[mrchaotica]

Ah, that makes sense.

Re:There is no "net" to be "neutral" with.

[kwark]

My main point was the fibreoptics network in metropolitan areas not costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

And the population density has not effect on a regulation agency like http://www.opta.nl/asp/en/

If the ex-monopolist supplies broadband to any area, that means it's broadband competitors can also supply to that area. The ex-monopolist also may not sell services at a loss.

Reading your post I guess the major problem is:
"Most American businesses won't invest in something unless they can expect to be profitable in 3-5 years."

you are getting ahead of yourself....

[krell]

"Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper"

The DVD is in its prime right now. For that matter, CD sales are still brisk (even now) and there's a lot of dead trees turning into newspapers.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dada21]

The DVD is in its prime right now.

You mean "peaking." Blockbuster and NetFlix offices are running around freaking out as we push our net connections to 1Gb/s -- more than fast enough to display HD video real time to the home. While sales numbers may keep climbing, I would venture a guess (an industry-educated guess, at that) that the DVD is already replaced with XViD and fast connections. Two more "evolutionary" steps for video and HD-DVD will be forgotten, too.

For that matter, CD sales are still brisk (even now)

I'm already helping bands sell their music at shows straight-to-iPod. A US$100 device (basically a memory stick, a button and an iPod cable) lets bands make infinite margins since they have zero distribution cost (no CDs, no printing costs, etc). It won't be long for CD to be forgotten, either.

and there's a lot of dead trees turning into newspapers.

Massive layouts at every newspaper, the resurgence of limited-distribution zines online, and the blogosphere would disagree with you in terms of the next 2 years.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[SoCalChris]

Blockbuster and NetFlix offices are running around freaking out as we push our net connections to 1Gb/s -- more than fast enough to display HD video real time to the home. While sales numbers may keep climbing, I would venture a guess (an industry-educated guess, at that) that the DVD is already replaced with XViD and fast connections.

Don't forget that a good part of the country still does not have broadband available. Video streaming in is impossible for many places, not to mention streaming in HD. Physical media isn't going anywhere, for quite a while.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dada21]

Don't forget that a good part of the country still does not have broadband available. Video streaming in is impossible for many places, not to mention streaming in HD. Physical media isn't going anywhere, for quite a while.

Really? I see you as being wrong. Check out this image. For those VERY few white spots on the map, you have Satellite broadband which is available in 99.9% of the US.

According to various trade journal publications, the days of 1.5Mb/s are over, soon to be replaced with 1.5Gb/s bandwidth almost everywhere -- except where the municipality or the state prevents it.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

According to various trade journal publications, the days of 1.5Mb/s are over, soon to be replaced with 1.5Gb/s bandwidth almost everywhere -- except where the municipality or the state prevents it.

According to the trade journal publications I read, the days of 1.5Gb/s bandwidth are over. Anarcho-capitalist IT geeks are working on multiple competing 1500Gb/s bandwidth networks, beamed to every square inch on earth, and costing less per day than a cup of coffee.

If you didn't know about this, you're obviously not leet enough to read the trade journal publications I read.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

According to various trade journal publications, the days of 1.5Mb/s are over, soon to be replaced with 1.5Gb/s bandwidth almost everywhere -- except where the municipality or the state prevents it.Source?

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[DrBdan]

I'm already helping bands sell their music at shows straight-to-iPod. A US$100 device (basically a memory stick, a button and an iPod cable) lets bands make infinite margins since they have zero distribution cost (no CDs, no printing costs, etc). It won't be long for CD to be forgotten, either.

Do you find that a lot of people actually bring an iPod to shows? That seems like a bizarre idea to me since in my mind I'm going to a show to see live music, what do I need to listen to my iPod for? Maybe there is a market but it seems rather strange to me. I would be worried about losing it or possibly breaking it if the show gets rowdy (which many a great show should)

On a (sorta) related note, technically any amount of sales divided by zero distribution cost equals undefined margins, not infinite :)

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dgatwood]

The scary part of that map is that the green areas are areas in which there is still no viable competition. One telco plus one cable modem provider does not competition make. That means for maybe 3% of the country, there is a true broadband marketplace, and the other 97% still gets stuck with a bill for $50/month for 384/128k. Yes, I'm exaggerating a little, but only a little....

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[krell]

Even though one has peaked and the other two have started to decline, the statement "The competition crushed" is still getting way ahead of yourself. "Crushed" is past tense. Right now, the CD and the DVD far outsell their competition: something that would not be the case if they were "crushed" already. I do not know the stats for newspapers.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[SoCalChris]

According to your image, I live in an area with 1-3 high speed providers available. The one that is available offers an 84kbps connection over 802.11b, which is hardly enough bandwidth for streaming video in any resolution, let alone a resolution that I would want to watch full length movies on. The connection that they provide is often unreliable. They won't improve the connection, because they don't have any competition for us to go to instead. The phone company does not offer DSL anywhere near us, and there is no cable tv company here.

Satellite is available, but I doubt I would be able to watch most of a 30 minute tv show before they throttled my connection down for using too much bandwidth.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say that map is not accurate at all. According to that map, I live right near the border of 4-6 providers and 1-3 providers. However, there is not a single provider except for satellite broadband, which, according to their website, charges 50 dollars a month for 1.5 Mb access. This still is not nearly good enough for decent broadband let alone HD video.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

That map may show very few whitespots, but it is NOT very representative of availability. We have 3 high speed providers in my zipcode, ONLY cover a tiny (town) portion of the total area. Wildblue/Satallite is not at this point close to viable for quality video. It's marginal for even websurfing, especially sonsidering the bandwidth caps (7.5g, so maybe 12 hours of good quality video per month)

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Amouth]

heheh.. according to the image it is from the FCC.. no wonder it doesn't make sence to the people who know what goes on in the areas..

on a nother note.. the whole satellite throttling thing is annoying... i know someone who has it and was using it.. when it started to get Really slow he called them.. the tech blamed it on bad weather.. (by the way it was sunny no clouds to be seen.) once he pointed this out.. the connection was fine again.. atleast for another 15min until he got off the phone

they are all lieing bastards.. unless you live where there is true compettion then they will screw you at every chance they get.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

Please quote a trade journal that says that 1.5gbps is anywhere in the near future. Even Verizon's next-generation FIOS fiber-optic service has 45mbps at the high end, and even if you take into account IPTV, there aren't residential technologies to push that kind of bandwidth. Not even close.

Dave

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[SoCalChris]

And on another note, I highly doubt the accuracy of that map, considering that they show Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park both have high speed internet available in them.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[teflaime]

Very few spots? There's massive white space on your broadband map...not to mention the distinct unreliable of most rural broadband providers, and the relatively poor speeds those rural areas still get. And that satellite broadband you were touting defaults to 512Mb/s, which is barely good enough to browse static web pages. And lets don't forget, the cost associated with even minimally acceptable broadband is still beyond the means of huge segments of the American populace. You don't see a lot of people living below the poverty line laying out $50/mo to get broadband.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I see you as being wrong. Check out this image. For those VERY few white spots on the map, you have Satellite broadband which is available in 99.9% of the US.

Really? Ignoring the scale problems with Alaska in that image (Alaska is one half the size of the continental US), ignoring the fact that WildBlue only provides satellite broadband to the continental US only, and ignoring the fact that there are obvious errors with the data that image provides and the data is old (from 2000), the whitespace in that image is still a good part of the country.

But, of course, Alaska is freaking huge. There's actually more area of the US without broadband than area with. And the Slashdot mod who keeps modding you up should knock it off, your posts are full of misinformation and are hardly "Informative".

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[wezelboy]

1Gb/s? If you live in Korea or Japan, sure. But in the US? Not for a while. Last mile providers have us over a barrel and they know it. They don't want to be forced to upgrade all their switching gear to provide everybody with that kind of bandwidth.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, that map was made by a Texan with an inferiority complex. He put Alaska right under Texas, and he made it slightly smaller.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dmatson]

The data is five and a half years old, and from an era when you could theoretically get DSL in major metro areas from a number of different providers, all of which were essentially crushed by the telcos who made it practically impossible to use their phone lines. Monopoly power, indeed.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Richard Steiner]

Wow, that map is seriously misleading. I live in a suburb of Atlanta which is shown as orange (4-6 providers), but the only two providers I'm aware of in our area are Comcast (cable) and BellSouth (DSL). That's two.

The same situation existed when I lived five miles away in a different city (different cable company, same number of choices: two). That sure ain't four. :-(

The map also shows most of the Twin Cities metro as orange, but I know for a fact that my old townhouse only had Qwest DSL and RoadRunner available, and there are LOTS of places that have cablemodem but no DSL at all due to distance from the CO or old POTS infrastructure that doesn't support a DSL connection.

I think the map was produced by an extreme optimist. :-)

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I know myself, and I will never, never, buy something that exists without physical media and I don't want the hassle (not to mention much poorer archival life) of media that I back up a purchase to on my own.

If I buy a movie, I want a tape cassette, a disc, something, anything, that gives the impression that it will last a long time. I don't want to lose my iPod and have all my music go with it. I don't want to have to back up TB of movies when I replace my computer. I don't want to have to move 9GB of movie to my laptop if I'm travelling to a place without a high-speed connection (no, I'm not going to pay $10-$20 to use the wireless network at an airport just to watch a movie).

Physical media is not going anywhere. It remains the easiest and safest means of storing something like that. There's a reason that books still sell and that eBooks have been essentially a flop.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dpreston]

Hate to be a consumer whore (and how), but what's the name of that iPod product?

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dada21]

Yet.

The FSAN/ITU-t G983 standard offers approximately 650Mbit/s or half what I quoted. This is an already two provisions at this speed available for the market, although current state regulations are limiting the effectiveness of rolling it out. APON, as far as I know, will support this speed without major concern although there are overhead considerations. I'm not sure which trade journal I got the information from, but if you really need to know just e-mail me and I'll look it up next time I'm in the office (this or next week).

We've also been informed that FSAN/ITU-t G984 standard quadruples this speed to approximately 2.5Gbit/s, and is also a "real life" system, not just in the labs. I'm fairly sure that GPON falls within the G984 standard, but I don't have my sources in front of me and I'm spouting from memory. I'm sure a quick Google search would work except I'm on a GPRS connection today (my EDGE modem is at home, oops) so it would be a waste of time. If it isn't GPON that serves 2.5Gbit/s, then it is over 1.5Gbit/s for sure.

Look up ZONU's ONU 2C device -- I know (and have seen) that it can support 1.2-1.5Gbit/s or somewhere in that region.

Lastly, I know that the IEEE Ethernet protocol is mostly dead in terms of ultra-high bandwidth to the home/business. The GEM protocol supports considerably higher speeds, upwards of 3Gbit/s if I recall correctly. We just have to wait for FSAN/ITU-t to standardize it, and it will be quickly replaced with whatever IEEE is working on in the labs (again from memory, I believe they're on the verge of a very near term 10Gbit/s standard for FTTF broadband).

This is the problem with trade journals -- they're all print form and impossible to quote. Drop me an e-mail and we'll talk more, especially if you need some source reference. I would not doubt at all that Google will pull up a few secondary sources that at least quote who they're picking the information up in.

My apologies if I am off by even 50% on the numbers, but I've seen the future and it is not 1.5Mbit/s -- it is at least an order of magnitude more and it is very very close to being available if only the local regulations were lifted on rolling out new lines.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[jefu]

My town has very limited DSL service at 1.5Mbbs - and even that seems to be subject to serious throttling - if I try to download something like a linux distro iso the first couple megabytes go by quickly, then it slows to what seems like bits per second (I recently tried to download a vmware image at something like 400Mb. it started by saying it would take something like 5 hours, then after about a half hour it was saying 500 hours, then a while later 5000 hours. When I reset the DSL connection and tried again, it did exactly the same thing.)

The town was thinking about putting in fiber to everyone's home, but the local monopoly (centurytel) somehow talked the mayor into killing the idea. Then we had someone who was going to put in some wireless to a good part of the town (supported by local businesses but opposed by the mayor), but his reserve unit got sent to Iraq.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dada21]

Actually, we developed the system ourselves in-house. Our development PC was an ancient laptop with 64MB of ram, no hard drive, and a bootable OS lite version of Windows 98 with iTunes.

We're waiting for our SOC to be finalized (system-on-a-chip). I'm not patenting the device, I just hope to sell the SOC to OEMs who want to get to market quicker. I think it could be a huge product for more than bands, especially to reach out to the "convention" market of businessmen who would carry iPods if they could get "free" samples of a public speaker's works at a speaking engagement.

The basic idea is simple: the SOC provides a USB-interface on one end, a SD-RAM interface on the other, and a button in-between (we also have a version that requires no button at all). Plug the iPod into the interface, push the button, and it copies the MP3s (and video should work) to the iPod in guest mode, disconnects, and you do the next one. Our hope was to have something at Christmas of last year, but the SOC development was a bit expensive and no one wanted to foot the bill.

I really wanted a version that would let people just plug their iPod into one of a dozen cables and have it automatically dump and cut, but I am still waiting for the hardware to be finalized.

Drop me an e-mail and I'll give you more details. By the way, I "invented" this creation, but I won't patent it as I don't believe in IP laws.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[cayenne8]

"I would venture a guess (an industry-educated guess, at that) that the DVD is already replaced with XViD and fast connections."

I dunno...I honestly don't know anybody around me...and these ARE tech people, that have ever used Xvid...I have only one friend that even knows what the term means. Most people I know..just rent/buy DVD's...but, I'm in a bit of an older crowd grant you...

"It won't be long for CD to be forgotten, either."

I dunno...I prefer a more permanet medium to keep my 'originals' of my music and video. I just don't trust all my tunes on a harddrive, and have it disappear on me. I would rather have the CD, rip it to computer, iPod, etc...and put the original back on a safe shelf.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

The key to what I said was "residential technologies." Of course you can *get* a fiber 1.5gbps link today -- heck, you can get an OC192 at 10-12Gbps. Sure, you can even get it "just about anywhere" -- if you want to pay $7500 per month and a massive installation charge.

But the *only* major provider even close to rolling out fiber *to the home* is Verizon, and they're using G.983 -- 622mbps down, 155mbps up. Even then, they're using most of that bandwidth to provide IPTV services, not to give you raw Internet throughput -- I'm not aware of any plans for them to push broadband tiers over 45mbps.

Now, you might be saying, hey, I was close, 622mbps is still a lot more than 1.5mbps, and it's going to your home. Guess what? That coaxial cable carrying digital cable and HD channels into your home is pushing 2gbps. But the cable companies are using only a fraction of that space for Internet connectivity, putting the rest into action for video-on-demand, HD cable, and extended tiers of service -- just like the phone companies intend to.

So, you're wrong when you look at it either way. Residential 1.5gbps broadband Internet service isn't even close to being on the market. On the other hand, if you're not talking about Internet access, 2gbps of content to the home is available in the *present* on modern cable systems. And if you think fiber to the home is held up on municipal right-of-way, and not the astronomical cost to implement, well, that's your own opinion.

Dave

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[dada21]

The key to what I said was "residential technologies." Of course you can *get* a fiber 1.5gbps link today -- heck, you can get an OC192 at 10-12Gbps. Sure, you can even get it "just about anywhere" -- if you want to pay $7500 per month and a massive installation charge.

You're thinking in very 2004 terms, technologically. The main impediment is competition at the moment -- we're still waiting for competitive systems to keep pushing the envelope. My home network is currently getting about 600Kbit/s without a cap (likely more, I get 600K downloads in utorrent every day). I can provision a 1Mbit/s line for just a little more. I've already used a 2Mbit/s line in a neighboring town (Deerfield, Illinois) that should be to the residences later this year. Just 2 years ago I was happy to get 50Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 10Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 4Kbit/s, and 2 years before that 2Kbit/s was my speed. Times have changed, and competitive technologies are what changed it.

But the *only* major provider even close to rolling out fiber *to the home* is Verizon, and they're using G.983 -- 622mbps down, 155mbps up. Even then, they're using most of that bandwidth to provide IPTV services, not to give you raw Internet throughput -- I'm not aware of any plans for them to push broadband tiers over 45mbps.

The main impediment here is the idea of broadcasting rather than narrowcasting. I think the growing popularity of BitTorrent shows that narrowcasting is the future -- most of the major distributors are still focusing on broadcasting and this is why broadband tiers max out at 45Mbit (or realistically much lower). When broadcasting is replaced by narrowcasting (and it will be, very quickly in fact), we'll see things switch very quickly. The analog market is already dying (radio and TV) and Tivo and Torrent are both helping to kill off broadcasting entirely. The distribution companies will move to a narrowcast on-demand format, which will need more IP traffic space than digital video space. We also see that a XViD movie looks darn good, and it occupies significantly less space than the same VoD or broadband video does.

This is also where net neutrality could be an impediment to transitioning from broad to narrow-casting: companies that already have broadvideo will want to prioritize their narrowvideo transmissions over the IP portion of the line, but they might be restricted from doing so if their narrowvideo distribution company is considered a seperate company. Ever consider that problem with net neutrality as a law?

Now, you might be saying, hey, I was close, 622mbps is still a lot more than 1.5mbps, and it's going to your home. Guess what? That coaxial cable carrying digital cable and HD channels into your home is pushing 2gbps. But the cable companies are using only a fraction of that space for Internet connectivity, putting the rest into action for video-on-demand, HD cable, and extended tiers of service -- just like the phone companies intend to.

Telephone connectivity won't need more than 10KBit/s, though. That still leaves a huge amount of space when narrowcasting VoD takes off, as it already is starting to. Of course, much of that 2Gbit/s speed is shared since it is broadcast (the backbone is the limit in this case), but there are already cheaper provisions for sending significantly more than 40Gbit/s through the backbone and those costs are coming down. It might be costly for the current media providers but new providers would have a huge leg up if they got into that market (or if they could).

And if you think fiber to the home is held up on municipal right-of-way, and not the astronomical cost to implement, well, that's your own opinion.

I disagree, but I unfortunately don't have my ammunition handy. There is still a large problem with FCC regulations that convolute other regulations that the FCC has worked to rearrange (I won't say remove). There is still a huge problem in the municipal a

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the map is that its 6 years old now, and since then, the FCC has deregulated the phone system by no longer forcing phone companies to lease lines to competitors at cost. Houston, shown there with somewhere around 4-7 or more depending, lost nearly all of the competing DSL providers overnight (our office still has covad DSL, who we pay $20 more than for a similar speed product from SBC, yet SBC has fucked up our phone system so many times we believe the $20 is worth not doing business with them for DSL) within months.

Now, it's true that wireless coverage is expanding and we may have gotten back towards those numbers here, but I'm not impressed. We bought a laptop with a verizon card for the purpose of giving mobile demonstrations of our web applications and we are significantly underwhelmed by the latency of the connection, sometimes well over one second, not exactly impressive when you're trying to convince potential users that the web application can be as fast as their locally installed one with the right internet connection. I shudder to think of what people using this connection for gaming would be going through, but at least it's not satellite.

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how much are you gonna be paying MS or Apple to use Win98 and iTunes on these SOC devices when you begin to sell them? What's that? You don't care about their IP rights because of your anarchocapitalist beliefs? Good luck getting that past a judge...

Re:you are getting ahead of yourself....

[araemo]

"This is also where net neutrality could be an impediment to transitioning from broad to narrow-casting: companies that already have broadvideo will want to prioritize their narrowvideo transmissions over the IP portion of the line, but they might be restricted from doing so if their narrowvideo distribution company is considered a seperate company. Ever consider that problem with net neutrality as a law?"

I don't buy that. Nothing is forcing the phone companies to send 'narrowcasted' video over the same IP network as the internet traffic travels on.

"Net neutrality" is being spun as 500 things it isn't, and a few fundamentally different versions are being championed and panned.

The only "neutrality" we need, is that content delivered through the internet is treated equally, as long as it is generated/requested in good faith. Yes, that leaves a LOT of wiggle room, intentionally. That allows phone companies to block DoSes while forcing them to allow google/yahoo/whoever to keep using the internet as intended.

Even if that wiggle room is removed, it allows several things, 90% of which are things I already fully expect...

"Net neutrality" should really be called "internet neutrality", because noone is trying to tell them what they can do with their private network completely internally. I don't think any IPTV provider who provides TV over their own lines will be sending that TV over the public IP space - which means it is essentially a seperate network from the internet, even if it shares the same physical lines. Even if somehow a stupid law gets passed that requires all IP traffic, regardless of scope/origin/destination/etc to be treated equally.. What is stopping the phone companies from just talking to their set top box through MPLS instead of IP? If anyone should have MPLS experience, it's the major phone companies. The concern people have isn't forcing phone companies to give you all 45Mbit or 622Mbit of line bandwidth, it's forcing them to actually give you all of what they promised for what you want. Internet neutrality would be a way to make sure, that if you're paying for 45Mbit/s downstream, that you can use that 45Mbit, as long as the server you are connected to is capable of supplying 45Mbit to your ISP, etc... and not letting your ISP limit that bandwidth because google/yahoo/itunes/msn hasn't paid your specific ISP a bribe.

I have no issue with them prioritizing internal traffic however they want. As an example, if verizon runs 622Mbit of fiber connectivity to my house, and sells me 'fiber' TV(x-hundred channels) and 'fiber' internet(45+Mbit/s).. if they have put aside over 600 Mbit of their connectiivty aside for the 'fiber TV', so that I only have 22 Mbit of internet bandwidth, I don't NEED net neturality to sue them for false advertising.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't be more right.

What?!

[chipotlehero]

During the course of a political debate people are lying?!

William Randolph Hearst must be rolling (more specifically ROFLING) in his grave.

Re:What?!

[StringBlade]

Wouldn't that be RIGLing?

Ted Stevens

[Rorian]

So.. was Ted Stevens one of those "experts" they're talking about?

Re:Ted Stevens

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing politicians try to understand technology is

a. funny

b. sad

c. funny and sad

I can't wait until the far future when someone or a robot with a logical grasp of networked communications is in charge of things that have to do with networked communications. Unfortunately I am of the opinion that in todays climate if you logical enough to understand networks than your too logical for politics which is mostly based on emotions of crowds.
 
that or as some poster said yesterday, everyone should get involved in politics if they have a problem with it, than every pasty geek and other non-politico citizen will be in congress and we can have a gov't larger than all the private sector citizens put together. than we'll all be in charge, that will work. right?

Re:Ted Stevens

[Anonymous Coward]

No the Internet is a series of computers (truck) and pipelines (tubes), without computers than the pipeline has no purpose. get your facts.

FWIW

[Otter]

An interesting point I saw recently (in Forbes, I think) is that this issue is perfect for politicians to keep fighting out. There's an enormous pile of money from lobbyists on both sides, a handful of nerds and Google suckups are the only votes to lose on one side and there are none to lose on the other. So why not keep it going as long and as loudly as possible?

As long as I'm posting -- is this Ted Stevens "tubes" stuff not becoming as annoying as flying spaghetti and chair throwing references? It's not like more than a handful of those smarmy dweebs could actually explain to you how IP or Ethernet really does work.

Re:FWIW

[TopShelf]

You can be certain that it won't be settled until well after the election cycle is through this year. There is so much cash involved in this fight that both parties won't stop until they've topped off every soft-money fund they can. At that level, it's only seen as a battle between one group of huge corporations and another group of huge corporations. The general consumer has no say whatsoever in this.

Re:FWIW

[SanityInAnarchy]

I could explain it, but more importantly, have you actually read Ted Stevens' statement? It's not just the "tubes" reference, that's part of a much larger completely moronic rant. He obviously has no fucking clue what he's talking about. Fortunately, you seem to, so you should realize that pretty quickly from the actual statement.

The rules are simple -- don't act like a moron, and you won't be immortalized as one. Ted Stevens, Jerry Taylor, and Steve Ballmer deserve every bit of ridicule they get, and more. Never forget Jerry Taylor or Tuttle, OK.

Re:FWIW

[Billosaur]

The general consumer has no say whatsoever in this.

Too true. Ok, so you don't like Comcast's stand on neutrality; are going to go to Verizon? Bell South? The consumer is a chicken in a lair of wolves.

Net Neutrality boils down to a clash of the titans: pipe providers vs. content providers. Both have buckets of cash and its doubtful that this grudge match is going to resolve much. You know that in a non-neutral world, Google will simply run its own fiber everywhere and thumb its nose at the telecoms.

Re:FWIW

[mrchaotica]

You know that in a non-neutral world, Google will simply run its own fiber everywhere and thumb its nose at the telecoms.

Except for the many places that will let the (no longer neutral) telco keep its monopoly, and prohibit Google from laying that fiber. Everyone there will be entirely fucked over.

Re:FWIW

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like more than a handful of those smarmy dweebs could actually explain to you how IP or Ethernet really does work.

Sure we can. Networking is all about tubes, we use the seven tube model to explain how these tubes interconnect. The hierarchy runs from the physical tube all the way to the application level tube. You really need to learn this stuff yourself before calling people names, you've probably never even heard of the MAT (Media Access Tube) layer. Dude, get off my internets!

Re:FWIW

[Otter]

I could explain it, but more importantly, have you actually read Ted Stevens' statement? It's not just the "tubes" reference, that's part of a much larger completely moronic rant.

I have, and it absolutely is. It was good for a laugh at the time, but like all tedious Internet comedy, it was run into the ground within minutes but will be dragged out for years.

Speaking of Internet comedy, could somebody with points please mod up the AC comment about the Seven Tube Model?

Re:FWIW

[six11]

As long as I'm posting -- is this Ted Stevens "tubes" stuff not becoming as annoying as flying spaghetti and chair throwing references? It's not like more than a handful of those smarmy dweebs could actually explain to you how IP or Ethernet really does work.

Maybe it is losing its entertainment value. So from that perspective, I suppose it is getting annoying. However, entertainment value isn't the metric that we should really be looking at. The fact of the matter is that Stevens is one of the people who is in a position to draft and vote on legislation concerning the series of tubes. And from his statements on the senate floor seem to indicate, the guy knows nothing about the industry that he is proposing to regulate.

It's quite possible to take your comment differently than you meant it, so this might not apply to you. I see a trend that the large majority of people let their opinions and beliefs be shaped by entertainment as opposed to objective fact. For example, the situation in Iraq continues to be completely out of control, but the American public is getting bored by it and have lost interest in following events. Yesterday I pointed a friend of mine to an article about the sad state of electronic voting machines and election fraud. His response was: "Meh. I read about that months ago.". He was essentially acting as though I had introduced him to a band that he already knew about and cooly dismissed them as so 2005.

Linus was right. We're moving into the Entertainment Age.

Re:FWIW

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if people on Slashdot can or cannot explain the actual workings of IP or Ethernet (and I would hazard a guess that most would be able to supply a much better explanation than Stevens anyways - you don't need to quote the RFC to explain how it works to a layman). The real scary part is that this guy is the Chair for the comittee in charge of Internet Policy in the U.S.A (I'm Canadian, although with recent trends, the current government may just follow this American "initiative").

The "tubes" stuff is just the place where Stevens gets most excited and it seems like he displays his ignorance the most (especially with the completely irrelevant "dump truck" analogy). The stuff he refers to later about not receiving emails (or "internets" as he calls them) instantly is a far more interesting display of his complete ignorance of the topic he decided to lecture other politicians on.

Re:FWIW

[DamnStupidElf]

As long as I'm posting -- is this Ted Stevens "tubes" stuff not becoming as annoying as flying spaghetti and chair throwing references? It's not like more than a handful of those smarmy dweebs could actually explain to you how IP or Ethernet really does work.

The more public derision heaped upon ignorant public "leaders", the better. If the chairman of the committee dealing directly with technical communication issues can't even conjure forth a proper metaphor, he desires all the insults he gets. Personally, I emailed my unfortunate senator to explain how the Internet actually works, but of course I didn't get a reply... Probably because everything he said was such an obvious double-faced lie that he doesn't dare to respond directly to either side. He claimed that "commercial interests" were ruining the Internet while being obviously beholden to numerous commercial interests himself.

Re:FWIW

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nerds'?

What other derogatory terms do you routinely use to denote people who are different from you (and in this case, cleverer and more capable)? Queers? Niggers? Wogs?

Are you excluding 'nerds' from your social circle and pretending that they have no social skills when the reality is that you can't rise to communicate outside your own?

Ironic that Slashdot itself in "non neutral".

[Rotten168]

If you pay more and subscribe, you get more services! It's criminal! ;)

Re:Ironic that Slashdot itself in "non neutral".

[Billosaur]

If you pay more and subscribe, you get more services! It's criminal! ;)

Services? What are these "services" of which you speak? Other than getting to nip a few ads, see upcoming stories so I can pre-prepare my rants, and the extra karma point, there aren't many services I enjoy as a subscriber that I can't live without. I subscribe to support Slashdot and help keep it running. Plus I write the contribution off on my taxes... oh wait...

Re:Ironic that Slashdot itself in "non neutral".

[Bryansix]

But you don't get those services at the cost of the main content that you did not pay for. Now if you paid to subscribe to Slashdot and suddenly the front page loaded more slowly and you couldn't connect to MSN at all then you would be on to something.

Re:Ironic that Slashdot itself in "non neutral".

[smoker2]

Now if you paid to subscribe to Slashdot and suddenly the front page loaded more slowly and you couldn't connect to MSN at all then you would be on to something.

I can't connect to MSN at all....

I'm sorry, I just can't.

What the lobbyist really means

[netwiz]

Is that Google won't have to pay above and beyond their already astronomical bandwidth costs. Bloodsucking parasites...

Re:What the lobbyist really means

[TooMuchToDo]

Google doesn't have very high bandwidth costs from my understanding. They peer with EVERYONE. I'm three-four hops from them on my Speakeasy DSL connection in Chicago.

Me -> Speakeasy Exchange -> Google Router in Chicago -> Google Web Server in SJ, CA

Re:What the lobbyist really means

[tinkerghost]

Is that Google won't have to pay above and beyond their already astronomical bandwidth costs.

Remember, the Telco line is that Google is making a fortune using their networks & they are getting nothing out of it. They are currently hoping people ignore/don't know that while you pay for your connection, the site you connect to is also paying - again the whole double dip thing.

The telcos got over $5B in tax credits/subsidies in order to improve the network - they promised 40Mbps. Now they say that unless they can get more money by charging for priority and bandwidth, they can't improve the network. I know that $5B only runs so much fiber ($1M/mile in urban areas), but since up to 70% of fiber is unlit (2005 data) I don't think the problem is running more fiber.

Personnally, I think that the next time some telco asshat says they don't make any money from Google, Google should have a press conference with a printed hardcopy of it's entire montly bandwidth bill. I figure opening the backdrop curtain to reviel a dumptruck of paper being poured onto the stage should get the idea across.

Re:What the lobbyist really means

[Jobe_br]

I am not an expert (IANAE) - but I would guess, off hand, that the "peering" you refer to is costing Google a pretty dime, especially if they peer with everyone. Google peering with Speakeasy is not the same as Sprint peering with BellSouth - the latter peering is saying "I'll carry your traffic, if you carry my traffic, deal?" - the former (Google's "peering") is saying "I'm going to put this router right here, please direct any traffic to these Google IPs to this router, instead of into the 'cloud'. Then Google routes it over its own network (I guess, from what you indicated from your trace). Google would still need to be paying for that.

Cheers.

Re:What the lobbyist really means

[TooMuchToDo]

While true there is a cost involved, it's much less then:

A) Being bent over a barrel by any top tier providers
B) Buying transit from only a couple of providers

Google doing their own peering with everyone is relatively cheap, perhaps not bandwidth wise, but in the fact that no one organization can get in their way and say "Play/pay our way or leave".

It can actually be cheaper to peer with the world instead of getting transit, depending on how much bandwidth you use. YouTube is doing so (per their presenation at NANOG this year).

-brandon

Re:What the lobbyist really means

[Jobe_br]

Certainly, having multiple peering arrangements means that no one provider can squeeze you too much, at least not your "basic" connection costs. As I understand it, though, this isn't so much about who you're buying your OC48 from, but rather, what backbone does your traffic travel over. So, for Google, since their traffic traverses every major backbone (Spring, BellSouth, AT&T, Verizon, etc.), they'd basically need to pay extortion fees for each of 'em ... otherwise, their traffic might be optimized on Sprint, but once it hits the AT&T network, its back to normal traffic. Kinda sucks, eh?

Anyways, even with their peering arrangements, they're still paying Speakeasy, AT&T, etc. the cost of an OC12 or whatever connection they have ... maybe its a little less than if Fortune 500 company X just orders an OC12 for their HQ building, but its still a lot of $$.

Cheers.

can a wired net be old hat?

[mugnyte]

  Municipalities are pushing wireless access. Home networking is hot. Wireless access is unibquitous. Add it up. Soon enough, links from one cloud to another will start to happen. When enough content exists within those hops to let users surf for longer and longer time periods before hopping to a big-pipe ISP, you're going to see this mess move on. The largest middleman of the internet to get cut is...the backbone!

    To read the (some of) local newspapers in my hometown (oregonlive), I may be able to go from the city to them. I want more wireless hosting, or perhaps mirrors. It seems this is the only path towards skipping these monopoly wires. Then, they'll have to again offer better price/value points than this garbage bill.

Re:can a wired net be old hat?

[orielbean]

But I thought one of the admirable things of the internet was cutting out the inter-library loan. I can connect to the Japan cloud, Brasil cloud, and Massachusetts cloud with the same amount of ease. The fact remains that these ISPs keep the backbones humming and the fiber lit - and that is also why we can download huge torrents and stream videos from Youtube and MMORPG with huge graphics and lowered lags. Your town clouds all subsist on those backbones.

One of the ways out of the monopoly market of ISPs comes from towns and cities taking back the maintenance and infrastructure of the backbones that pass through them.

I live in suburban Mass, where cable selection is nil - the company comes in, takes over the wires and upkeep, and gets to have the monopolies. In the cities, where the government controls the wires, the companies have to compete and the consumer gets a deal.

I have no idea about the tug of war btw private industry vs public utility being "better". That is a different debate, but at least we can all agree monopoly abuse always stifles competition and innovation.

Re:can a wired net be old hat?

[evilviper]

Soon enough, links from one cloud to another will start to happen.

I can see this happening in some areas, but certainly not ALL of them.

Who in Oklahoma is going to pay to build the huge towers needed for carrying the signal across the state? In other areas, you may be able to get a sliver of property on the tops of mountains, and have reasonably short distances between dense population centers to connect, but in most of the US, I don't see this happening in a non-profit way. Forget about intercontinental links.

Then there's jamming... Since 802.11 uses unlicensed spectrum, anyone interested in severing your connection can park a van with a 2.4GHz transmitter wherever they want, for as long as they want, and you can't do anything to stop them (other than a concerted effort by everyone to use highly-directional antennas).

How about routing? Who's going to pay for the (entrusted) routers to manage this mess of every-node-is-a-hop massive routing table? The only alternative would be every individual computer keeping the FULL routing table of every node in the world, keeping track of every node that goes offline or comes online, and hoping none of that changes once you've sent your packet on it's way.

How about latency? Even assuming ideal routing, you can just forget about gaming and VoIP calls if you've got 500 hops between the endpoints. It would practically require a return to the BBS days, and eliminate many benefits of the current internet.
.

I think a far more practical solution is to get a bunch of people together, and start-up your own (modest) telco.

Are you a professional writer and/or...

[Anonymous Coward]

software company owner?

I've seen your posts and your discussions about running a software company and compensating your developers. But when I do a credit check on "Adam Dada", I get nothing. Yet, there are a couple of :"A Dada" out there, but none of them are registered principles of software companies - cleaners and other retail establishments. Dada is a pretty common name - go figure!

I'm not trying to be too nosy, it's just that it seems that you have enough free time to make, as far as I'm concerned, some quite insightful comments. I've followed your links and read somemore of your stuff.

Unless, your businesses are registered with some other priniciples, (I don't see your software company) it looks like you're a writer by trade.

I'm curious because I'd like to have a similar lifestyle - if you're for real. I don't mean any insult, it's just that; well, you know better than I considering you've been on the 'Net MUCH longer than me, you can be whomever you want online.

Yours Truly;

Gandolf

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[Red Flayer]

I lost about US$300,000 on that business last year.

You sure about that? In a response to one of my posts earlier this year, that $300,000 figure was much lower... an order of magnitude lower, IIRC. If I was a subscriber, I'd check my post history (and/or yours) for the specific post.

Any subscribers care to dig through our post histories?

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[dada21]

You sure about that? In a response to one of my posts earlier this year, that $300,000 figure was much lower... an order of magnitude lower, IIRC. If I was a subscriber, I'd check my post history (and/or yours) for the specific post.

We closed up shop in Q4 of 2005 (or were forced to, actually). My original figures were US$40,000 of debt that wasn't easily payable. 12 different attempts to liquidate our inventory (which I believe was about US$200,000) failed, so we had to use a liquidation company which ended up losing us about US$160,000 (the final numbers are still pending). We had leases to pay out (which I didn't realize would be as costly but we were unable to negotiate) as well as tax liabilities which we're still auditing. My original figure of US$40,000 grew to US$100,000 quickly and seems to have settled around the US$300K mark as of last Friday. According to my lawyer, it may come down about 30% depending on settlements and some outstanding income, which I'm hoping is true because it still is a year or two of income out the window.

That is the unfortunately aspect of business failure -- as time goes on, losses grow. We were expecting a Christmas profit of about that loss figure (around US$300,000) which was going to help us open 5 more retail stores. I'm not one to factor "future income" lost as a real lost, but I'd peg that figure at around a clean million over the next year had we not had the issues we had (and the State which kept us from fixing the problem).

I've received a very small deal from a publisher to go through the 4 years of our history -- how we grew so fast, how we fell so fast, and what it was that we should have done to protect ourselves. Hopefully I can get the entire story (with back up facts) done after we've actually closed the books completely and legally without anyone still dangling. I hate having ex-customers and suppliers hurt over our mistakes. The odd thing is that the loss actually gave me a little more room to sell my services because I had now had both sides of the business cycle: profit and failure. Life is funny.

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[Karma Farmer]

There are those who want to "mimic" my lifestyle, but they don't see how it is done.

You live in a trailer park in south milwaukee and drive a used toyota corolla. Who, exactly, do you think wants to "mimic" your lifestyle? Junis?

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[jafiwam]

Wow.

Haven't seen masturbation like this on Slashdot in a while.

What, is Fark.com down or something?

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[dada21]

You live in a trailer park in south milwaukee and drive a used toyota corolla.

Actually, I now own 6 mobile homes in my area (halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago) and am expanding that holding to at least 20 throughout the country in the next few months in hopes of a pending bubble collapse that will leave a lot of families needing a place to move to. The mobile home idea came directly from Gary North's article on opportunities and living expenses last year (the article I link to is a more recent recap of his 2004 opinion that I can't seem to find right now).

Last year the lady and I drove new cars (Land Rover, Volkswagen and a Lexus) and lived in a large house and had a few vacation homes. Liquidating these unneeded assets have expanded our ability to do what we want (travel, spend time with our church, etc) rather than worry about how we'll pay the bills each month.

Who, exactly, do you think wants to "mimic" your lifestyle? Junis?

I'm not sure who Junis is, but considering that I've helped a few dozen people downside their lives and increase their happiness and free time in the last year (through example alone), I think far more people would wish they made adaptations like I did.

There were years when I made a strong 6 figures and had really zero to show for it. Now I can make 1/2 my previous income but my monthly living expenses are about 90% lower. If you're working 50-60 hours a week and have no money to travel, raise kids, spend time with friends and family and do the things you want to do, you may not realize how profitable it can be to downsize extravagently. Owning a US$400,000 house in Chicago was not as amazing as I thought it was (especially since most of my friends owned similar homes on 95% debt). Owning 20 US$20,000 trailers throughout the country that I can live in when I am on a work contract really makes my life easier. Try it sometime.

As for the Toyota Corolla, that has been a long standing joke between friends here and in real life. We're a 4 vehicle family (SUV, Toyota beater, car to drive customers around in and a joy ride vehicle). We're still trying to downsize all those vehicles to two.

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[houghi]

We're still trying to downsize all those vehicles to two.

Try ebay or something similar. Very easy to sell the extra two cars. If the grocery store is withing 30 minutes bicling, buy a bicicle and us that.

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some searches that will bring up a little "proof" that I am real:

You're missing one important point: nobody gives a shit about you and your stories.

Re:Are you a professional writer and/or...

[Anonymous Coward]

We were expecting a Christmas profit of about that loss figure (around US$300,000) which was going to help us open 5 more retail stores.

So, you projected huge revenues which would have let you open another 5 stores, but you ended up with losses nearing 1/3 of a million. Sounds like somebody didn't have a realistic business plan if things were able to turn around so suddenly.

When did he learn to lie so well

[Geccie]

Wow - this guy sure shed his morals since leaving the Whitehouse. I wonder where and from whom he learned to lie so well.
yes, I realize the other side is no better!

As many have stated - we already pay for the infrastructure. Its just passed on to us from the ISP.

Geccie

Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

In response, TechDirt has suggested that McCurry should swap telco bills with Google, somehow I doubt it will happen."

What was this piece of rhethoric supposed to expose? I doubt, TechDirt would want to swap their bills with Google either — with or without net-neutrality...

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[DMNT]

I have four words for you - and they aren't "I love this company"

Read the f*ing article!

I quote the article [McCurry:]"The "neutral" proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use, and consumers who may only use their computers to send e-mail and play Solitaire get to foot the bill."

The whole issue is about companies will to triple charging: they already charge the end users, there's the service that gets charged for its bandwidth. Now they want to charge the service by the end user ISP.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

I quote the article [McCurry:]"The "neutral" proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use, and consumers who may only use their computers to send e-mail and play Solitaire get to foot the bill."

Thank you for the clarification... I still doubt, anyone would want to swap their telco bills with Google — with or without net neutrality, their bill is very large anyway.

The whole issue is about companies will to triple charging: they already charge the end users, there's the service that gets charged for its bandwidth. Now they want to charge the service by the end user ISP.

Your grammar is very hard to parse. But, frankly, I don't see, why it should be the government's business to decide, who gets to charge whom and how much — unless there is a threat of a monopoly breaking anti-trust laws, that is. The law, which are on the books for about a century now. No need for new ones.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[DrJimbo]

mi said:

Thank you for the clarification... I still doubt, anyone would want to swap their telco bills with Google with or without net neutrality, their bill is very large anyway.

That was exactly the point. McCurry implied Google was getting free Internet access from the telcos and TechDirt implied that McCurry probably wouldn't want to swap phone bills with Google. If McCurry's claims were literally true and Google wasn't paying anything for Internet access then he would want to switch with them since free is cheaper than whatever he is currently paying.

mi said:

I don't see, why it should be the government's business to decide, who gets to charge whom and how much unless there is a threat of a monopoly breaking anti-trust laws, that is. The law, which are on the books for about a century now. No need for new ones.

The telco's are supposed to already be regulated by the FCC (part of the executive branch of the government) because they are already monopolies. The current administration is trying to dismantle as much regulation as it can get away with. These efforts recently did away with enforcing regulations that had been keep the Net "neutral".

In theory at least, our government is composed of three official branches which are supposed to balance power through a system of checks and balances. If the Legislature feels that the Executive is abusing its power by being way too lax in enforcing the existing laws and regulations then the proper way for them to deal with that situation is to pass new, more explicit, laws even though there are already laws on the books that have been working just great for the past 100 years. This is how our government is supposed to function.

To put it in other words: we didn't have a friggin' Internet 100 years ago so laws that were meant to regulate the steel, gas, and railroad industries may need to be updated in order to be applied correctly to a type of monopoly that wasn't even imagined 100 years ago.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

McCurry implied Google was getting free Internet access from the telcos and TechDirt implied that McCurry probably wouldn't want to swap phone bills with Google.

Of course, McCurry meant, they don't get charged extra — they pay their fixed prices for the pipes, I suppose. And, I suspect, they get a pretty good "bulk" discount. Google is free to shop around for a better deal — and should only complain, if it has evidence of a trust-like conspiracy to keep prices high.

The telco's are supposed to already be regulated by the FCC (part of the executive branch of the government) because they are already monopolies. The current administration is trying to dismantle as much regulation as it can get away with.

One can order telephone service from a cable provider, and many switch to cellular-only plans. Bigger companies can get "fiber to premises" from different competitors (Lightpath, for example, starts at only $2K/month). So, even though the traditional telcos still own the copper wires running to most homes, they are not in fact a monopoly any more. Consequently, the government is correct in no longer viewing them as monopolies and reducing/eliminating the regulation.

To put it in other words: we didn't have a friggin' Internet 100 years ago so laws that were meant to regulate the steel, gas, and railroad industries may need to be updated in order to be applied correctly to a type of monopoly that wasn't even imagined 100 years ago.

I'm yet to see evidence of any abuse, that the existing laws could not preclude.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mrchaotica]

But, frankly, I don't see, why it should be the government's business to decide, who gets to charge whom and how much

Here's what he was trying to say, in hopefully easier-to-understand language:

[For simplification purposes, we'll assume a 2 ISP case, with peering.]

Okay, so now here's how the Internet works: End users pay ISP A for their connection to the Internet. Google pays ISP B for its connection to the Internet. In both cases, the fees cover the costs of both inbound and outbound traffic over that ISP's network. Now, to get the information from one ISP to the other, the ISPs have what's known as a "peering agreement." All this means is that, instead of charging each other usage fees (which, since they're equal, would make $zero net difference anyway), they simply agree to forward each other's packets for "free."

In other words, each end of a connection pays for it's half of the network across which they are connected. Get it?

Well, this is net neutrality. What the ISPs want instead is to have all this, but for ISP A to be able to charge Google also (in addition to it already being charged by ISP B), in order to get its traffic across to the end users. Keep in mind that end users are already paying for that connection -- the ISP is trying to charge for the same connection twice.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

Well, this is net neutrality. What the ISPs want instead is to have all this, but for ISP A to be able to charge Google also (in addition to it already being charged by ISP B), in order to get its traffic across to the end users. Keep in mind that end users are already paying for that connection -- the ISP is trying to charge for the same connection twice.

As long as there is competition (ISP C, D, E, ...) — and there is — there is no need for government intervention. Increasing the competition by eliminating the monopoly status granted to the still-existing monopolies in certain regions should be the aim — not maintaining the regional monopolies and regulating them, however appealing the idea may look to the big-government totalitarians.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[DrJimbo]

mi said:

Google is free to shop around for a better deal and should only complain, if it has evidence of a trust-like conspiracy to keep prices high.

You seem to continually miss peoples' points. You certainly seem to know very little about how our current form of government is supposed to operate. If Google was suing in a court of law, then certainly, they usually (but not always), they would need to wait until harm occurred before suing.

But the logic behind waiting until actual harm occurs before taking any action eludes me. Wouldn't this same logic dictate that if you a driving a car towards a brick wall that you should wait until after hitting the wall before applying the brakes? Or, better yet, if a car is heading towards you, your logic implies one should wait until you are actually hurt before jumping out of the way or shouting out.

mi said:

I'm yet to see evidence of any abuse, that the existing laws could not preclude.

You seem to be intentionally dim-witted and illogical today, perhaps to goad those with whom you disagree.

The main concern of the advocates of network neutrality is that telcos should not be able to charge for the use of their networks based on content and where that content is coming from. It would be like someone running a toll road charging one trucking company more than another and then getting kickbacks from the company that gets charged less. I see this as 100% monopolistic and I don't think it should be allowed to happen.

If we agree that this behavior is wrong then let's pass laws to stop it before it happens. On the other hand, if you see nothing wrong with this behavior and don't want it outlawed, then say so directly so we can discuss its merits pro and con.

But to suggest we should delay a discussion of the merits until after the telcos have changed their infrastructure and have started charging based on content, makes no sense whatsoever.

Your nonsensical arguments and reasoning make it appear that you are not confident in the merits of your side of the argument and so you would prefer to just throw a lot of sand in the air in hopes of confusing everyone.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mrchaotica]

As long as there is competition (ISP C, D, E, ...) -- and there is -- there is no need for government intervention.

I don't believe that there is competition, in a lot of places. Do you have any evidence for the existence of these competitors?

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

Do you have any evidence for the existence of these competitors?

Of course, I do. When our office was moving into a new downtown building, 2 or 3 providers were competing for our business. At home, I have a choice of SpeakEasy's DSL (and a bunch of others — via Covad's lines), or RoadRunner's cable, or Verizon's DSL (and a bunch of others via Verizon's lines).

RCN's Lightpath would run fiber to premises for $2-3K per month — in case one wants to set up something like Google's "server farm".

May be, there are places, where the competition is less abundant, but increasing it should be the aim — not maintaining the existing monopolies.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mrchaotica]

increasing it should be the aim -- not maintaining the existing monopolies.

I don't have a problem with that... but in the meantime we need net neutrality.

Re:Swap telco bills? WTF?

[mi]

I don't have a problem with that... but in the meantime we need net neutrality.

I don't see how. Things are fine as they are... AOL and Compuserve had their own (non-neutral) networks years ago — and both have perished over that. Free market works better than regulation.

The lay have no way to truly know

[w33t]

How can normal, non-technical people hope to have a chance of understanding our new world of today and the laws being applied to it?

I have spent the last few months speaking (sometimes drunkenly) at great lengths about the net neutrality concept - a concept, which quite frankly, I had taken for granted (I didn't really realize the net was neutral, it's just how it has to work). Many of my friends had fallen for the idea that a tiered internet would simply mean better and faster access to video and music. After all, didn't they pay more for "premium" channels on TV?

My one friend, so adamant - largly because he is naturally agumentative - finally began to realize how easily those in power (and today information is power - has it even not been?) can manipulate the ignorant. He realized this only after he asked me to look at his computer to see why his comcast was so slow (and why his vonage was cutting-out).

I ran a simple trace route and noticed that it appeared requests to local IPs were being routed through dallas and new york from his home in Sacramento. I told him I didn't think this was the best way to reduce the latency he was getting from his long distance calls and online gaming. I hypothesize that by comcast routing some clients through these innefecient routes they were somehow load-balancing the demand on their network (of course, new york, dallas, and chicago could just be fancy names for comcast's local california routers - but it seems a dubious naming scheme for local devices).

Without me, his technical friend, he would simply continue to accept his connection as is - and in fact may begin to attribute his degraded service to the FUD of the internet "falling apart".

There are so few of us who can fully (or at least somewhat) grasp what the debate really means - how can the vast majority of non-technical, voting citizens possibly make informed decisions about this?

Re:The lay have no way to truly know

[blindbug]

How can normal, non-technical people hope to have a chance of understanding our new world of today and the laws being applied to it?

Quite frankly, in many cases, they can't. The government (lobbyists) further exacerbate the FUD by choosing slick names like 'Net Neutrality' to make it even harder for grampy to determine which side they are on. This is what the lobbyists want. They make it extremely hard to decide which side you are on, they control the media and the content, allowing them to lead the flock exactly where they want them. Sure a few sheep will get out of line, but in a 'democracy' you only need majority control...

Re:The lay have no way to truly know

[c0ppert0p]

I'd simply like to have an informed decision made by someone in Congress or the Senate. Ted Stevans is just another reminder of truly stupid those people are, (he really does sound like he's retarded). If the lay person took the time to learn how things worked, even one thing, it may make a difference.

Re:The lay have no way to truly know

[Anonymous Coward]

How can normal, non-technical people hope to have a chance of understanding our new world of today and the laws being applied to it?

Probably the same way technical friends can hope to have a chance of understanding our new world of today [*] and how Internet routing and peering work.

I ran a simple trace route and noticed that it appeared requests to local IPs were being routed through dallas and new york from his home in Sacramento. I told him I didn't think this was the best way to reduce the latency he was getting from his long distance calls and online gaming. I hypothesize that by comcast routing some clients through these innefecient routes they were somehow load-balancing the demand on their network

Oh. It seems we have a long way to go. Ask yourself, why would Comcast desire to consume bandwidth on expensive cross-country circuits if they had the option of getting the traffic out of their network sooner (locally) instead? Could it be that Comcast was routing your friend's traffic cross-country because that's where they peer with the destination's ISP? You could start by taking a look at the Wikipedia article on hot potato routing.

[*] Not to mention our old world of tomorrow and our current world of yesterday.

Re:The lay have no way to truly know

[w33t]

Lowest number of hops + high latency = cold potato. From wikipedia:Some content networks favor the use of cold-potato routing (MED exchange/honoring) in order to deliver content from replicated server farms closer to the end-user.

You are right, that would be the model I would choose if I owned a cable tv company and was delivering on demand movies over my network.

So it seems that comcast doesn't play well with the other networks and prefers to keep it's packets to itself.

Sounds like they are indeed first on the tiered internet boat.

Doesn't it seem that comcast as an ISP should peer in california for requests originating in california with all the major networks - but hey, that's the first and only comcast connection I've attempted to troubleshoot, so maybe indeed all comcast packets from Sacramento to google and local california game server's ISPs route through new york.

and yes, I understand that in times of bandwidth saturation that dynamic routing alogritms may indeed decide to take your packets half way around the world (and that othewise you would get nice low-latency communication). But this was 4am on a saturday, and his connection had historically been awful.

Maybe his neighbors watch a lot of on demand movies.

Re:The lay have no way to truly know

[Anonymous Coward]

Lowest number of hops + high latency = cold potato.

Not really. You still try to route the packet along a shortest path (more accurately, a short path -- determining the single shortest path is more-or-less impossible in the interdomain world). But with cold potato, you try to keep as much of that path on your network rather than your peer's, on the theory that you're going to provide better service to your customer that way. The way you know where to drop the packet into your peer's network is through use of MEDs, as your wikipedia quote indicated -- the MED is a way for your peer network to tell you "this is the peering point that gets you closest to the address I'm advertising to you". Or at least, that's the closest I can get in layman's terms.

By contrast, in hot potato you try to get the packet out of your network as fast as possible (you get rid of it "like a hot potato" -- get it?). But the packet still is following an approximation of a shortest path.

Big ISPs peer with each other at lots of points and you would indeed expect California traffic to stay approximately local when going between two large ISPs. But they may peer with a small ISP at one or a handful of points. You didn't mention -- what was the ISP of the target address you tracerouted to?

There's also the possibility of some transient outage at the West Coast peering point (assuming there is one between your friend and the target).

and yes, I understand that in times of bandwidth saturation that dynamic routing alogritms may indeed decide to take your packets half way around the world

That's a common misconception. They don't. At most, a human network manager may decide to change metrics or traffic engineering label switched paths in order to rebalance traffic if there's a long-term traffic spike. You may want to read up on dynamic routing instability in the ARPANET for why dynamic rebalancing is avoided like the black death.

By the way, if they really are delivering traffic to a google California address via NY, I agree there's something broken. But I bet it's just that -- breakage, not eeeevil. You could try reporting the problem (if you can figure out how to talk to a person with a brain at Comcast, heh).

Never change a running system

[Elektroschock]

It is intresting to read sourcewatch. You may find out a lot about these lobbyists. And it is important to take part in lobbying yourself. It is real fun to beat them. If Telcos do not respect net neutrality users will switch to other service.

Re:Never change a running system

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF other service is there numbnuts? Carrier pigeons?

All internet data goes through "telcos". Get a clue.

Re:Never change a running system

[Elektroschock]

No. The internet is nothing more than computers + TCP/IP connected to each other.

And with wireless mesh networks we do not need traditional internet providers anymore.

Telcos are not the only communication cable providers.

The existing monopoly is the problem here

[jhines]

Cable companies had to sign franchise agreements with each and every municipality in the US, to provide the service in the first place. In return, they got a monopoly on the service, usually at a cost of a local access channel or something.

The phone companies want "net neutrality" so they can run video in, without having to do this themselves.

AT&T is running TV ads saying this would mean competition, and thus lower video costs (cable bill) to the consumer.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[mrxak]

Exactly. If you think about it, there are literally thousands of municipalities across the country. Each one (except in the case of a few states passing state-wide franchising laws) must be individually negotiated with, and at all points the current monopoly in your area can lobby against it. It's an extremely expensive proposition to even get permission to compete, and in some cases permission is not being given (there's some lawsuits going around now as a result of unreasonable demands- I saw one case where a county wanted something like 65 public access channels). A lot of these telcos have some really interesting ideas for television and can offer much faster speeds than cable, but they just can't bring it to market because the government is stopping them. It's not a net neutrality issue, it's a government-sponsored monopoly issue.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[mrchaotica]

AT&T is running TV ads saying this would mean competition, and thus lower video costs (cable bill) to the consumer.

And that is a blatant lie, since, as you said, they've still got their monopoly. In reality, since the monopolies aren't going to lose their advantage, we need net neutrality to keep them from fucking us over.

The only "competition" AT&T wants is pitting MS and Google against each other to bid up the extortion fees for being the "preferred" video provider.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[teflaime]

AT&T is running TV ads saying this would mean competition, and thus lower video costs (cable bill) to the consumer.

That would be true if, say, AT&T were planning on delivering the service to all the areas that cable currently delivers a similar service to. But the truth is that the phone companies have already stated that they would be redlinging giant sections of the country where they deem to the citizens too poor to be worth their effort. So, it wouldn't really reduce costs to anyone, because those of us who do'nt live in the areas that the phone companies were planning on serving would have to subsidize the rich people who would get the price breaks when the cable companies found a way to slash the prices they charge to drive out the phone companies in the first place.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[Mo Bedda]

The phone companies want "net neutrality" so they can run video in, without having to do this themselves.

I believe you have this only half right. The phone companies do not want "net neutrality". They want to run video in, but the cable companies also want to offer VoIP services. So, both cable and telecom industries are working in favor of the current telecom bill, and working together to block net neutrality provisions, which the current telecom bill does not contain. I think both industries (built largely around monopolies) are will to accept that technology will force them to compete with eachother; but they would both like to shutdown the free market in Internet services. Neither cable companies nor telecom companies want to see Microsoft or Google offering free phone service or free video on demand.

I haven't seen the AT&T ads you are referring to. But I think either you are mis-interpreting them, or AT&T is mis-representing their position. At least as it involves the current telecom bill, AT&T has certainly not been on the side of net neutrality.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[Moofie]

"AT&T is running TV ads saying this would mean competition"

Marking the first time in recorded history that AT&T actually wanted competition.

Actually, they don't, they just want to be the monopoly again.

Re:The existing monopoly is the problem here

[Moridin42]

I guess I don't understand the incentive for companies to artificially degrade throughput. For every packet they route around their system to slow down, they can't route some other packet. So they need more infrastructure to handle the same amount of data. On the other hand, if they store it somewhere.. well.. they've got to have some massive storage. If they dump the packet onto another provider, the other provider isn't going to want to hold on to it either. And if you do it often enough, maybe the second provider doesn't want to handle your traffic at all.

The only reasonable reason I can think for this sort of arrangement would be in an attempt to shift some (less important stuff that doesn't need to travel now) peak traffic to off-peak hours. This would allow for companies to maintain less transport infrastructure (since you've diminished the peak requirements some) but it would come at the cost of storage infrastructure. If this is more profitable, why isn't it already being done?

If the current transport infrastructure can't handle the demands of the traffic, then when everybody is paying for 'priority' the infrastructure still won't be able to handle the demands of the traffic. I'm not buying an argument that says the priority payments are going to pay for the extra infrastructure either. If it wasn't already profitable to own the infrastructure, why do people own it? And if the current infrastructure can handle the traffic, and is profitable without government intervention, why would any customers pay for service they're already recieving? Why would businesses incur costs when they can't make more money than they're already making? (If they could make more money, they'd be doing it.)

If I were to provide a service with the pay-for-priority sort of service, I'd have to cut you a discount on the non-priority traffic to remain competitive. I'd be offering two services. One that is basicially what you're used to and another that is worse than what you're used to. Either the discount I offer would eliminate the extra reveneue* from priority (if it didn't, no one would use your service) or, more likely, I'd offer you service at the normal price and give you less of a discount on non-priority traffic. Still.. if this was feasible, why don't we already see it?

*Actually, this isn't quite true. If you, as a service provider, handle a lot of non-priority traffic the discount may make my bandwidth offerings more attractive than other companies'. Its just that with so much traffic (web, streaming media, multiplayer gama data, etc) I can't really place someone with a mostly non-priority traffic load.

How refreshingly Libertarian!

[mi]

And an FP to boot...

You even pre-empted the usual totalitarian response about the virtues of government oversight.

Mad props and all!

Re:Potatoes are a series of tubers

[SanityInAnarchy]

Does it count that the company execs have explicitly stated that they would like to do this?

You get to shut the fuck up, or at least not post anonymously. Or when I have more time, I'll carefully rip apart the pile of crap you linked to. "If it had been left to the government..." Yes, but it was done with BOTH the corporations AND government support. Take government funds, suffer goverment regulations. Fair's fair.

Re:Potatoes are a series of tubers

[Anonymous Coward]

OH NOES!!!!!1!!@@! The Big Bad Evil Corporations are going to take my intarweb away!!!!

Re:Potatoes are a series of tubers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but you could be right.

Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary justification for not having "Network Neutrality" is so that vendors can differentiate content based on how "important" it is. This is often called "Quality of Service" and measures for requesting this sort of stuff is quite established (RFC 1349), and maturing (RFC 2474). These specifications define a portion of each Internet packet that specifies how "important" the packet is, it's so-called "Traffic Class" (IPv6) or "Type of Service" (IPv4). Not only is differentiation of packets based on this service-level a good idea, it has been standardized.

What is important in Network Neutrality legislation is to ensure that Internet providers do not discriminate based on: (a) the type of content sent, or (b) the sender and/or receiver. What sort of discrimination should be permitted, however, is a differentiation of "quality of service" depending on what the sender/receiver has paid for: with the same rates applying across all of their customers. Hence, the legislation in this area should permit technical advancement in mechanism to partition service based on quality -- but not innovations which extract monopoly rent from particularly lucrative customers and/or content types (or unfavored customers and/or content types).

A good analogy is sending first-class mail via USPS, the price is the same no matter where the destination is and regardless of what the letter in the envelope says. The "common carrier" doesn't open up letters to see if there is a check/cash inside, and charge a 1% fee for sending monetary instruments. The USPS doesn't differentiate between Joe or Martha in line, play political favoritism, or deliver particular customer's mail faster than others, etc. What USPS does differentiate on is the size of the content sent (ie, number of letters) and on the speed of delivery -- you can get 2nd day overnight, etc. The point is, all businesses and content are equal from the point of view of the mail carrier. So too should the transmission of internet packets be neutral to the sender/receiver and the actual message sent.

By fighting that all packets are equal is a losing (and wrong headed) battle. What is important is that we fight for democracy on the Internet: Vonage should get the same quality of service per dollar as AT&T VoIP services and even completely unrelated content, such as Google searches. What is being sent and by whom should be forbidden from the price/quality curve - but there should be a curve.

Re:Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/Course/Section3/7.htm

Type of Service: 8 bits (2nd 8-bit octet in every internet packet)

The Type of Service provides an indication of the abstract parameters of the quality of service desired. These parameters are to be used to guide the selection of the actual service parameters when transmitting a datagram through a particular network. Several networks offer service precedence, which somehow treats high precedence traffic as more important than other traffic (generally by accepting only traffic above a certain precedence at time of high load). The major choice is a three way tradeoff between low-delay, high-reliability, and high-throughput.

      Bits 0-2: Precedence.
      Bit 3: 0 = Normal Delay, 1 = Low Delay.
      Bit 4: 0 = Normal Throughput, 1 = High Throughput.
      Bit 5: 0 = Normal Relibility, 1 = High Relibility.
      Bit 6-7: Reserved for Future Use.

Precedence
    111 - Network Control 011 - Flash
    110 - Internetwork Control 010 - Immediate
    101 - CRITIC/ECP 001 - Priority
    100 - Flash Override 000 - Routine

The use of the Delay, Throughput, and Reliability indications may increase the cost (in some sense) of the service. In many networks better performance for one of these parameters is coupled with worse performance on another. Except for very unusual cases at most two of these three indications should be set.

The type of service is used to specify the treatment of the datagram during its transmission through the internet system. Example mappings of the internet type of service to the actual service provided on networks such as AUTODIN II, ARPANET, SATNET, and PRNET is given in "Service Mappings" [8].

The Network Control precedence designation is intended to be used within a network only. The actual use and control of that designation is up to each network. The Internetwork Control designation is intended for use by gateway control originators only. If the actual use of these precedence designations is of concern to a particular network, it is the responsibility of that network to control the access to, and use of, those precedence designations.

McCurry's Favors

[Doc Ruby]

Google is worth $117B, just like McCurry's boss AT&T. He won't be swapping his phonebill for Google's. But I bet he'd still rather pay his $0 Google bill than his phonebill, even if it's from AT&T.

Do your part!

[lord_mike]

Here is a list of senators and their positions on Net Neutrality...

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=senatetallybyvote

You can call toll free through the Capitol switchboard at 888-355-3588.

Ted Stevens is trying to force a vote on Thursday, so there is little time! Each phone call is considered to be worth about a 1,000 votes the general election, so your phone call will make a difference!

The follwing three senators are crucial:

- Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas
- Ben Nelson of Nebraska
- Joe Lieberman of Connecticut

You can make a difference!!! Call now!

Thanks,

Mike

Re:Do your part!

[bjdevil66]

Thanks for that information. I wonder how this would go over if the Senate was Democrat controlled... It wouldn't surprise me if Ted Stevens (and the anti-Net Neutrality lobby) is trying to get this issue killed before this November, when the Republicans most likely lose control of the Senate, if not all of Congress.

Network neutrality simplified

[MobyDisk]

I wrote a quickie article in an attempt to simplify network neutrality for the lay person.
(I linked to the Google cache 'cuz my server won't take the load and Coral Cache seems to be down)

Re:Network neutrality simplified

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you got it all wrong. The internets are a system of tubes not a big truck.

Re:Network neutrality simplified

[Anonymous Coward]

Your article isn't bad, but it is misleading with regard to packet prioritization, which already happens today. Some of the vendors have also been wanting to charge for various prioritization levels, to partition the internet based on speed of delivery. This isn't such a bad thing: provided that the same pricing is available to everyone no matter what they are sending. In other words, if an backbone carrier wishes to start charging for "first class" packets, then they should have a fixed rate - their rate can change as they wish, it just should be fixed and not dependent upon the customer or the content type.

Re:Network neutrality simplified

[MobyDisk]

I wish you weren't AC so I could chat about it.

I almost agree with you about packet prioritization. This system exists today with packages: I can pay for 2 week delivery, 3 day delivery, 2 day, or overnight. But there is no limit as to how many UPS deliver trucks can be on the road, so it makes sense.

But with a network, the network can get flooded with high-priority packets in such a way that the lower-priority packets never get through. From a computer science standpoint, this would be a bad scheduling/prioritization algorithm. From a business perspective, it means you coerce all your clients into paying the higher price because there is no other way to get any service at all. At which point, they aren't higher than anyone else anymore, so they have to pay yet another fee for the NEXT prioritization level... etc, etc. It would allow the phone companies to extort too easily.

Maybe I'm being too unrealistic though. What's your take on the above scenario?

another question

[krell]

"I'm already helping bands sell their music at shows straight-to-iPod."

Do you really mean iPod? Or to MP3? Will these bands have to have listeners buy iPods just to hear them? Is this $100 device just an iPod Shuffle? That is what it sounds like you are describing.

The problem with let the market decide argument...

[nhz]

is that there is almost no competitive market to allow the market to provide the service customers want. Most big markets in the US have a duopoly, where 2 companies (DSL and cable) control almost all of the broadband internet market share. And do not tell me there are wireless MANs, broadband over power, satellite broadband, and other options for customers. The majority of U.S. residents do not have these ISPs available as options.

I would agree that there should be no legislation to force any net neutrality on telcos, but these companies are expressing their INTENT to discriminate against specific content providers. And when both your dsl and cable company discriminate in a similar fashion, by having tiered services, how can you choose to take your business elsewhere?

Put yourself in the shoes of the executives at the telco companies. If you want to maximize your company's profits, the best thing to do might be to create an artificial shortage of bandwidth for everyone once ANY company is willing to pay for premium routing service. Now consider the point of view of the content providers. You might want to be the first company willing to pay AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc. for premium routing service so that you have a competitive advantage in terms of performance. Of course, you will only want to pay for premium service if there is a performance benefit compared to non-premium service, hence discrimination is key for opening this new revenue source.

Yes, letting the market decide instead of forcing legislation is the best option in a truly competitive environment, but we do not have such competition in the U.S.

w/out early efforts they couldnt call anybody!

[Anonymous Coward]

The earlier efforts to regulate telephony are the only reason many of the masses of Americans who don't live in large towns can pick up the phone to call anybody.

The build-out patterns of ISDN and DSL from providers show you exactly how limited telephone availability would have been if earlier regulatory efforts hadn't interefered.

Try learning a little history before repeating it.

Re:w/out early efforts they couldnt call anybody!

[mi]

The earlier efforts to regulate telephony are the only reason many of the masses of Americans who don't live in large towns can pick up the phone to call anybody.

This is foolish. The radio technology could've solved that "last 10 miles" problem", if the government had not created the land-line monopolies, for example.

The build-out patterns of ISDN and DSL from providers show you exactly how limited telephone availability would have been if earlier regulatory efforts hadn't interefered.

And? What exactly is wrong?

Try learning a little history before repeating it.

I would very much like to avoid this piece of history being repeated.

Now we get to see how AT&T and the like operat

[TheNoxx]

There are very few times when one is able to see a telecommunications corporation operating in all its vicious glory without any restraint, and this is the very prime example. When legislation and untold millions of dollars are on the line, there is nothing held sacred for those fucks. Outright and flagrantly bullshit lies and slander become a standard of the company's propaganda milieu.

It's almost like watching one of those slumbering elephants rampage through a peaceful, prosperous village to keep them from farming on its favorite grazing spot. With any luck, someone's got a high-powered rifle to take it down.

Consider the source...

[SpyderPSU]

You've got to consider the source...Mike McCurry

FTA:

Mike McCurry (born 27 October 1954) is best known as the former press secretary for Bill Clinton's administration. He is a Washington-based communications consultant and is associated with the firm Public Strategies Washington, Inc. and the internet technology firm, Grassroots Enterprise Inc.

...

McCurry is a partner at the influential Washington, D.C. based lobbying firm Public Strategies. In 2006 he has been lobbying on behalf of major network carriers, in part through a coalition www.handsoff.org, for the removal of internet regulations in the controversial network neutrality debate. Organizations, including www.savetheinternet.com claim that Mike McCurry and the "handsoff" campaign are using deceptive and manipulative arguments to support their position.

Re:Consider the source...

[Domstersch]

You've got to consider the source...

Do I really have to? I always thought that an argument was to be accepted or rejected on the basis of its merits, regardless of who supports or gives the argument.

The quote you give mentions that some consider McCurry's arguments to be 'deceptive and manipulative' - that's a fine analysis. It's an example of evaluating the arguments themselves and deciding that they're a load of crap. So why, prithee, must we 'consider the source'?

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonus points for sarcasm.

with respect to the google bandwidth bill

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is Google planning to build a global fiber-optic network from scratch? And, if so, why?"

http://news.com.com/Google+wants+dark+fiber/2100-1 034_3-5537392.html

"Granted, when you operate an Internet company with Google's size, reach, and product portfolio, it's a no-brainer that lots and lots of bandwidth is required."

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=ligh treading&doc_id=65454

Why would a fast connection replace a DVD?

[Richard Steiner]

It isn't just some movie that I want to watch, but I want all the materials associated with it (the bonus stuff found on a typical DVD) along with the sense of ownership that DVD's currently give me.

While being able to watch streaming video is nice, such streaming only suppliments DVDs (in my view) and doesn't directly replace them.

Keep Going.

[twitter]

OK, I considered the source, so what? He's someone who wants the internet to work like it works now. Is there something you want to add based on other things he's done?

Re:Keep Going.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there something you want to add

Um, he already did:

Organizations, including www.savetheinternet.com claim that Mike McCurry and the "handsoff" campaign are using deceptive and manipulative arguments to support their position.

What part of this do you not understand? Isn't this an example of "dishonesty" you constantly accuse Microsoft (sorry, "M$"), Apple, Sun, IBM, the *AA, all your "big dumb companies" and everyone else that "stalks you" on teh interwebs? When is "dishonesty" acceptable? When it comes from someone you agree with? That's a great moral argument.

Re:Keep Going.

[J053]

OK, I considered the source, so what? He's someone who wants the internet to work like it works now. Is there something you want to add based on other things he's done?

No, he's someone who wants to change the way the Internet works. The argument that Google and others are getting a free ride is laughable - Google pays for their Internet connection, just like you pay for yours and I pay for mine. The telcos want to charge Google an extra fee to not degrade their traffic to the telco's customers.

Look at who McCurry really works for: (from the Sun article) "Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf are co-chairs of Hands Off the Internet, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of technology, media and nonprofit organizations."

So, who is "Hands Off the Internet"? Among others:

• Actiontec (a VOIP equipment provider)
• The America Channel (telco video programming)
• Alcatel (telco equipment manufacturer)
• AT&T
• BellSouth
• Cingular

... and something called "NetCompetition.org" Who are they?

• American Cable Association
• Cellular Telecommunications Association
• National Cable and Telecommunications Association
• US Telecom Association
• AT&T
• BellSouth
• Cingular
• Comcast
• Qwest
• Sprint
• Time Warner Cable
• Verizon
• Verizon Wireless
• WCA International

See a pattern here?

Re:Keep Going.

[Anonymous Coward]

willy, after the oh-so-ever-petulant tone with which you posted this flamebait, I'd love to see your response to this. please, tell the OP "how it is". I'd love to see that. Thanks!

Net neutrality issue ridiculous, lobbying worse

[Oz0ne]

I posted about it in my blog here: http://www.makesitgood.net/2006/08/01/net-neutrali ty-vs-government-monopolies/

The long and short of it, I explain the issues to some of the non savvy, and outline that it's ridiculous, and the real problem is the super wealthy and powerful shoving government around... or rather that the government listens more to the money than to the issues.

Real Issue

[giorgosts]

Net Neutrality means that as IP services mature, the telecoms will loose income that they get from traditional sources, ie telephony, mobile telephony, video telehony, conferecing, (even telesurgery) etc., UNLESS they can somehow degrade the quality in favor of their own services. But, on the other hand, fast and reliable IP services are not a basic human right like water. They have to be heavily funded by private companies, and they are saying that they are not dumb enough to do it to loose money. So I think its not like Internet Companies Vs Telcos, its more like Telcos against the World. We want fast and cheap communications and they don't like giving it.

Can someone explain?

[citizenklaw]

How all of this net neutrality shite will function on ISP's outside of the US? Or ISP's in the rest of the planet have to enter all of the telco's pipes to reach a site? I haven't really read elsewhere about this.

Are ISP's outside of the US watching from the fences? Imposing QOS policies in US based routers is relatively easy, are the telcos going to extort foreign ISP's as well?

Dial-up only here in the green area

[Rick17JJ]

I am in the green area on your map and have not yet been able to get high-speed Internet access. I live slightly beyond the end of the local cable-TV system. DSL is not yet available in my neighborhood either. The last time I checked, a hill blocked my being able to receive wireless Internet from a local internet provider at 256K - 1MB speeds. I could get a Starband satellite dish for Internet but that is significantly more than I am willing to pay. It is still dial-up only here.

The telephone lines in my neighborhood are only good for 26.4K. We don't yet have 28.8K, 32K or 56K. A QWest repairman told me that, unoffically, he had heard that sometime in the next year our neighborhood will be upgraded and DSL will then be available.

I am in Arizona, but am not out in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside I can see a fancy gated community and their golf course nearby. I can also see an airport, a hospital, a large hotel, a casino and a private university. This is not somewhere out in the boondocks.

Far more than two providers in most of US

[billstewart]

Most of the US has far more than two broadband providers.

Usually there's only one cable TV company, and usually they're the only ones who sell cable modem service on it, though sometimes they're more open than that, and sometimes RCN or another overbuilder put in a second cable system. (In much of the country, the telco is trying to get into the wired-TV business, as well as reselling satellite TV, and that's what's really driving much of this debate, other than political opportunism by carpetbaggers like MoveOn*.) Most US cable modem service has never been open - they went paranoid about users running servers from home for reasons that weren't very good then and make less sense now. And cable TV service was largely deployed on a town-by-town basis, driven by issues of what town councilman's brother got the installation or repaving contracts rather than by deep understanding of the futures of telecommunication, so the current large aggregators were buying a really random collection of stuff and most of them still understand pay-per-view much better than they understand the Internet.

Usually there's only one wireline telco, but that doesn't mean there's only one source of Internet broadband service using those wires. Most of the telcos will sell service in at least three forms:

• Layer 1 - Dry copper, which a company like Covad or New Edge rents, runs DSLAMs on, and sells connections to multiple ISPs as well as their own internet access.
• Layer 2 - Telco-provided DSLAM with ATM PVC across a concentrator network to an ISP-provider router, potentially to hundreds of different ISPs. Sometimes they insist on selling phone service along with ADSL, sometimes they'll sell naked DSL.
• Layer 3 - Telco provides DSLAM with ATM PVC to a router which they run (either running it directly or farmed out to a single partner ISP.)
• Layer 3.5 - PPoE to an ISP over Layer 3 service instead of over native ATM, or sometimes other router-based aggregation approaches.

I use Layer 2 service, through my ISP Sonic.net - not only do they offer static IP addresses, but they don't have any annoying contractual terms against running servers from home, using multiple home PCs, sharing wireless with people, or much of anything except of course banning spamming. I don't think they currently support TOS or DSCP or other QoS markings to allow me to prioritize voice (or de-prioritize BitTorrent, which is what I really need from QoS), but it would be nice if they did. Speakeasy is a better-known national ISP with similar service terms, but there are lots of others, some wide open like Sonic and Speakeasy, others as paranoid and anti-user as the cable companies.

* I really like MoveOn, and I think George Bush is a Chaotic Evil threat to America's freedom and traditional values, but this time they were not only wrong, but pretty clueless about the technologies they were ranting about. That's not to say that several telco honchos weren't also either clueless about the technologies or at least unwilling to talk to the public about what they were actually selling rather than about the regulatory environment in which they were selling it, or that usually clueful netheads like Dave Isenberg weren't saying boneheaded things when they should have known better, but MoveOn was way out of their league here.

Paying ISPs for price vs. quality

[billstewart]

If you want to choose ISPs based on price alone, you're stuck with whatever service terms the lowest-priced-ISP-of-the-week offers. If you're within DSL range of your telco in the US, you've got hundreds of choices of ISPs, but only one is the cheapest, and it's probably a 3-month-promo deal offered by the telco. So what? If you want better service, there are lots of alternatives that don't cost more than a few bucks more. And if you want a static IP address, the telco probably *isn't* one of the cheapest dozen choices.

If you're not in DSL range, it's a different game, of course - cable modem companies are pretty aggressively clueless, and most places only have one choice, though some of them wholesale service to other ISPs. Maybe you've got cellphone data service for a reasonable price. Of you can buy a T1 line from a bunch of different ISPs, though that'll cost you more.

Tier 1 Longhaul Internet Market is *Cheap*

[billstewart]

You clearly don't understand the Tier 1 longhaul ISP market. In the US, there are about 2 dozen major providers, including some telcos and many non-telcos, who form what passes for a backbone, and then a lot more Tier 2 providers who are still big enough to sell your little ISP a T3. The backbone ISP bandwidth market has been in free-fall for years - prices keep dropping, and nobody really knows what a megabit of bandwidth is worth but it hasn't hit bottom yet.

On the other hand, most ISPs aren't supporting features like QoS or Multicast between carriers, though they might pass the packet markings around transparently. On your home broadband connection, you'd probably like VOIP to get highest priority, most traffic to get middle priority, and BitTorrent to get lowest priority. It's hard to make that work well without some end-to-end coordination (though you've probably noticed that Skype works fine without it, as long as you're not stomping it with BitTorrent or other large downloads.)

The main thing the telcos are really trying to sell is TV service - either FTTH or newer DSL flavors support enough bandwidth for about 15 Mbps of TV plus whatever Internet bandwidth you've got today, but a telco central office won't *begin* to have enough bandwidth to handle 10,000 users of unicast TV at once, and even a multicast downlink only supports so many channels per telco office (e.g. about 100 channels of HDTV on a GigE, or split that with regular-def TV.)

Re:Tier 1 Longhaul Internet Market is *Cheap*

[Sir.Cracked]

What you are talking about is prioritization by service. What they are talking about is prioritization of service PROVIDER. They don't care if it's Google webpage or google video. They just care if Google has paid their extortion tax this month or not.

Prioritization of service is an entirely different animal and an entirely different argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that VOIP packets can't be routed differently than FTP packets or HTTP packets. That's not the issue.

The issue is when packets from redhat.com are passed more slowly because redhat hasn't paid for their speed "upgrade" to whatever Tier1 the packet happens to pass through. Nevermind that their connection and yours both have plenty of room. It's an artificial bottleneck created simply to generate revenue, when in truth both parties have already paid for their connection.

Much ado about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that one of the arguments (the most convincing one i heard at any rate) for a tiered internet was that so "priority traffic" could get through more easily, so, for instance, you VOIP packets could be given priority over data downloads to give better sound quality. This would only come at a premium. But wait, that reminds me of something i heard of before, a premium service for better quality calls. Ah, i remember, its called a PHONE. Duh. This really came home after half an hour of crappy quality in an international Voip-to-mobile call. Skype credit ran out, called on normal mobile, and guess, what, by paying extra for it (call about 4 times as expensive) i got much better sound quality unimpeded by other internet traffic. I don't really understand the obsession with VOIP calls, after all it's just a way of circumventing the telcos overcharging for normal phone calls.

Government Monopolies blocking progress

[billstewart]

I used to work for The Bell System, back before divestiture, but this is my own opinion, not that of Theodore Vail or his successors...

It's not just the land-line telco monopoly that blocked development of radio-based telephony to rural areas - it was also the radio monopolies. (Roosevelt got lots of credit for trust-busting, but in reality he locked up quasi-monopoly control over huge parts of US industry in ways that have plagued us ever since. And the telco and radio-licensing monopolies got along quite well, thank you, because it let them avoid having to compete with each other.) It's not clear when effective radio telephony would have been developed - it was obviously easier after we got computer technology, but there are things that could have been built back in vacuum-tube days that never occurred to anybody because there wasn't an application for them, and the limited ham-radio market wasn't enough to bring costs down.

You might have ended up with rural communities on the equivalent of huge party lines or CB radio with phone patches, which would have been socially _different_ from telco service - but that could have been ok.

Re:Now we get to see how AT&T and the like ope

[tipsymonkey]

It is so interesting to see how large companies can be for something and have all the employees be totally against. I currently work for one of the large companies pushing for a tiered internet. Check out our CEO's interview . I love working here, I know many people that love work here but we all hate the company's push.
What are we supposed to do? I can't just quit my job because I have a moral objection to the company's roadmap. It is not realistic to quit. I need to pay rent! I mean in the end, the company gets more money, so in some way I get more money. Right? Well that's what I tell myself at least.

Re:The problem with let the market decide argument

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's have even MORE legislation so that the market can be LESS free, thus requiring MORE legislation to fix the round of problems the last round caused! Brilliant!

Creation of an artificial market

[snakecoder]

This is all AT&T wants to do. They say "we lay down all this cable now we want to recoup our costs". Imagine how this would have been applied back in the day when they were improving phone lines. They would hold back the quality of your phone call unless you paid them an extra bribe^H^H^H^H^H fee above and beyond what you pay just to have a phone so you can get calls. With this artificial market, they can create bidding wars in which nothing is gained for the consumer. Another example is caller ID and call blocking. Both services (used to) cost consumers. The end result of both services being used is that nothing changes, yet they make more money.

I would be all for it if it wasn't for the fact that they are a government approved monopoly. When they start paying rent to the taxpayer for all the lines they run over governement land, then hell yes, forget net neutrality.

Re:Potatoes are a series of tubers

[sgt_doom]

You know, if you were one of those sex-slave prostitutes in the North Marianas, or one of those Coca-Cola Company gunned-down workers in South America, you just might not feel that way.....

New way of thinking (redux)

[nerfbot04]

To all of you who came into IP post 1989. IP isn't the end all be all. It's just what everyone settled on. move on, kick this shit to the curb, and fawk the carriers. They've invested countless bundles of moneys to make sure that they can tier your IP services. So, move IP to the fringe, declassify it and build another transport system that uses a generic and transparent subset of the IP protocol. Just to use the telephony service as a transport. Hell what business to they really have to classify data. It's yours afterall. Hell, copyright all of your data, and put the screws to the carriers when they repackage YOUR data. Seems to me that there are alot of other ways to internetwork data networks. IP/Sec over udp is good start. Mix in some onion routing, and shim in a network layer... Think oustide the box. I can assure you that others have, and I don't want to wait 20 years for another round of DARPA handouts.

Mesh networks

[quokkapox]

When enough content exists within those hops to let users surf for longer and longer time periods before hopping to a big-pipe ISP, you're going to see this mess move on. The largest middleman of the internet to get cut is...the backbone!

That's why we need wireless hardware that has a built-in 1TB hard disk and talks freely to nearby unrelated wireless hardware. Instead of fetching http://slashdot.org/ from the central server each time, you can get it from one of your neighbors. Routers that hash, cache, and share chunks of data independently and anonymously are essential for decentralized Internet progress.

Anyone who is trying to predict what the Internet will really look like ten years from now is insane.

whitehouse.gov and net neutrality

[freaker_TuC]

Ask yourself the following question:

How would the whitehouse and all the government sites feel if they have to pay their extortion fee to be as reachable as they where before through the Internet?

If it behaves like a public utility....

[jerunamuck]

Let's face it, network access is become a public utility. So why are the carriers exempt compliance with public utility law?

Part of the reason for all the big money lobbying is that the carriers recognise that loop hole and are looking for legislation favorable to milking a cash cow. I say bull puckey!

Is it just me or does the Internet look more and more like a broadcast media than it did 2 years ago. 6,360,000 search results to choose from but there is still nothing to watch on IP. A tiered Internet is not about improving the quality of your IP Phone call, it's about controlling the content so it's like TV and Radio.

Come November I'm looking to clean House (and Senate) of all the carpetbaggers.
Legislators with a record of voting for Big Business profits can polish their resume as far as I'm concerned.

As a network software developer I sick of having to patch my code to work around yet another limitation imposed by the carriers and ISPs. How many of you readers can still use port 25 to send mail? darn few if my ORTS database is any indication. That's got nothing to do with SPAM control. It's about indexing your mail content for marketing purposes. (imho)