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

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....

[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....

[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. :-)

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

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: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: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.