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Tech Manufacturers Rally Against Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader writes "Producers of networking hardware such as Motorola, Corning, and Tyco have come out against Net Neutrality. They support the current senate communications bill, and urge immediate action. 'Don't be confused by these spurious complaints about Net neutrality,' Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc., said. 'Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.'" From the article: "Supporters say the Senate measure, which was approved by a committee vote in June but has since gotten hung up chiefly over Net neutrality, is crucial because it would make it easier for new video service providers--such as telephone companies hoping to roll out IPTV--to enter the market, increase competition for cable, and thus spur lower prices. Among other benefits, they say, it would also permit municipalities to offer their own broadband services."
Oh for goodness sake...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
From the summary:
Wait, so telcos are rallying for a bill that would allow municipal broadband? I find that hard to believe.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
Net Neutrality, while a wonderful principle, is a poor reason to invite the Feds to regulate the Internet. That always leads to preservation of the status quo, at any cost.
This is exactly the uphill battle we /.ers have. Get to work people and educate the public.
It seems to me that telcos would also need a lot of new hardware, supporting more traffic shaping and QoS. I wonder if the tech manufacturers have anything that might help them with that...
You wanna talk about solutions in search of problems?
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
Basically what this all boils down to is that the phone/cable companies want to make more money for offering us "new" services (that are basically services that they offer now, but *over the Internet*). Of course, by extension, the equipment manufacturers will reap profits by selling everyone new hardware.
The whole tiered Internet thing is based on the fact that they want to differentiate these "new" services from what we think of as the Internet right now (e-mail, web pages, etc.). They want to break up the current pricing structures so that they can charge more for certain bits.
They last thing that telcos/cable-cos want is to become generic bit pipes. If moving bits around becomes just another commoditized service (like deregulated electric in some places), then they'll have to compete on price and customer service. Competing on price impacts profits, and competing on customer service...well, I've been a customer of GTE/Verizon, Southwestern Bell, and AT&T at different times and if I were them, I'd be scared of competing based on customer satisfaction.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc.
Like I'm gonna trust that guy - with all the spam he's been sending me.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
Why is it that efforts big companies claim will encourage competition and lower prices usually do the opposite? Hmm... It's a mystery!
I don't know, that link probably contains information that is beyond parent's level of apparent comprehension. Better start him out with more fundamental information and let him work his way up.
The Internet
"Net Neuttrality" is a conspiracy to attack Google
The manufacturers of networking hardware are looking to create a market for their fun new experiments in packet prioritizing. Who wants to compete on pure speed and reliability? How boring...
Nothing to see here, move along.
Net neutrality is when you don't throttle packets based on their remote destination or source. Hardware manufacturers want to sell devices which support fine grained throttling rules, so obviously they are in favor of a tiered internet. From that alone it should be obvious that net neutrality is good for consumers: Hardware manufacturers stand to make more money without net neutrality. Wanna guess who's going to pay the bill? The internet is a success because it is a "dumb network" with the "intelligence" strictly in the communication endpoints. It is cheaper to build a net which is fast enough to carry all traffic than to upgrade routers so that they can throttle "unwanted" traffic.
I'll get to work, but since my opinion is that "net neutrality" IS a solution in search of a problem, you might consider my efforts to be counterproductive.
The commercial internet has existed now for over a decade, and the tools to allow carriers to shape traffic at will have existed that entire time. And yet, no one has attempted the kind of favoritism that "net neutrality" is concerned could happen.
It seems to me that market forces have been and will be sufficient to guarantee that the net is as neutral as the people want it to be.
"Net Neutrality" is about control of the future of media - who can deliver what to the masses, with the power to exclude and/or dampen alternative points of view. Simply following long established history of swaying public opinion through control of media.
Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.
Well DUH! The whole point of the debate is to prevent bad things from happening, not to stop something bad that's already happening. Do these people really understand the issue?
Perhaps we can make it a little easier to understand for him. Remember, it's not a truck you can just dump things on. It's a series of tubes!
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Come to think of it, even that might be too high-level. How 'bout...
The Internet Made Simple
(C'mon someone was going to do it eventually...)
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
The name, I mean. Who can get excited about being neutral? The Swiss?
We should start to use "Network Equality" or "Data Non-Discrimination" instead.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Net Neutrality brought about in response to the major ISPs wanting to charge hosts to get their traffic to the consumer at the highest speed possible, thus making it improbable that hosts who don't pay would get good transfer rates?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
The momentum to ensure the internet remain a neutral medium has completely died out by this point. Meanwhile, the corps that would benefit from the internet being non-neutral are moving deeper and deeper into a well-funded PR push that just gets more sophisticated and more dishonest all the time. The public, always light on technical issues, is now reaching the point where they don't know what "net neutrality" is, except that it's bad.
Google, if you're listening, you're losing big time here.
were you looking for links. Here's one that is good and has some funny videos on it.
Can I bum a sig?
Stupid senate introducing stupid things like Net Neutrality, Broadcast Flags, etc.
Not so easily done by large businesses and organizations who are already locked in, but on an individual basis we can refuse to purchase and use products by Tyco, Corning and Motorola in addition to writing and voicing disgust at their actions.
Can somebody provide a list of subsidiaries and popular products made by these companies please? Are their computer and other electronics hardware vendors that build their motherboards/nics/modems/etc. without any Motorola parts?
~psybre
Authority questions you. Return the favor. -- d474
What they're trying to do is errect what is essentially trade barriers, it'll allow the telcos to charge more for the free trade service that we currently enjoy. It's indicative of a lack of competition in the market. Does the US have the equivalent of the competition commission? Perhaps the telcos should be required to unbundle their exchanges.
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundlin
Looks like they are. In which case it's up to ISPs, entrepeneurs, co-operatives to grab the oportunity and start taking business away from the incumbents.
Deleted
The telcos see a new source of revenue: charging Google, Yahoo, etc. to deliver "their" packets. Of course they plan to go after this revenue.
Market forces only work where there is a functioning market. For high-speed Internet, there are no functioning markets -- why do you think Internet access is far more expensive in the US than in many other countries? We have an oligopoly in high speed Internet access in most cities across the US.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Sell crazy next door, sister, we're full up here.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
God forbid someone evaluate two different situations and make a decision that in one case it may be preferable to do one thing and in another it may not be preferable to do that same thing. How dare they. People should make hard and fast rules and apply them to everything in their life.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
"I love how people who would normally hate government regulation of the Internet are stepping and screaming for it over net neutrality."
The "Physical Internet" as supplied to people is almost COMPLETELY government regulated. You either access via telco (POTS) with a modem... through a government regulated telco, or via broadband cable... again government granted easements, or DSL... through the aformentioned telco... or fibre... with government granted easements.
About the ONLY way you can get the "internet" without government regulation is if you have a two-way satellite link. And it required government involvment to get the satellite there to make it possible.
And what do you get in exchange for dealing with these natural monopolies, granted by the government? Net neutrality.
If the government wants to do content regulation (the above deals with access), there are checks and measures. Losing net neutrality? Means that the companies who have been granted the monopolies can also regulate content.
You had better be careful of what power is granted to these companies.
YMMV
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
No. Too advanced. He should research this first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duh
The funny thing to me is that the biggest part of the argument against net neutrality is the telecoms claiming that they're not going to violate Net Neutrality, so there's no need to pass a law. Since they haven't yet started violating net neutrality, goes the argument, it would be really wasteful and needless to illegalize something they're not doing... yet.
It's kind of like the Bush Administration insisting "We don't torture! But if you passed a law banning torture, it would be really bad!"
I can't help but wonder. If this bill doesn't pass, and in a few years we start seeing telecoms demanding payment from Youtube, or prioritizing their own iPTV packets over Youtube until the latter is no longer usable... what will the argument be then? Will we see people jumping back up and going "see, that stuff we were warning about a couple years back, it's happening now"? Will the people who argued it wasn't going to happen shrug and go, oh, you're right, let's pass a net neutrality law now? I doubt it. More likely the entire subject, the public's attention on it long since exhausted, will be quietly dropped.
Because though at the beginning of the debate I didn't really believe a bill like this was strictly necessary because I saw no signs anyone was intending to violate net neutrality left to their own devices, I no longer expect this to be the case. I think we can expect if this bill does not pass, it is only a matter of time before the internet's current neutral nature is being violated by one program or other at nearly every major ISP. The campaign against net neutrality is just going at this too intensely and too fiercely for this to be just a philosophical objection. They would not fight quite this hard or in quite this manner if they weren't planning to roll out products that this law would block; and the idea the lobbyists' objection is really to the precedent set by one more law passed on an already-heavily-regulated telecommunications industry is just not credible, given the telecoms' essentially complete silence on previous legislation like COPA, the DMCA, laws concerning recordkeeping required by social networking and "adult" sites alike, laws concerning internet gambling...
Yeah, imagine, adjusting ones opinions based on the facts of the debate. They oppose the government doing things they think are bad, then the next thing you know, they want the government to do things they think are good. How can one respect oneself if one changes one's answer just because it's a different question? "Yes" or "No", just pick one and stick with it already!
Out of curiosity, which ballot spot do you vote for? I'm strictly a second- candidate-from-the-top voter myself. Can't wait to see what order they put them in this time so I'll know who I support.
Damn straight! This is the real catch behind all of this. How nicely it all works out for them: Greed in the immediate leads to tyranically control in the future. Think about this. The World Wide Web is unprecedendent in it's ability to distribute information --grassroots information that the powerful might not like, reports on products, government activities, 9/11 videos, etc. etc. Their campigns of disinformation are only so effective and I would suspect are becoming less and less so e every day. So it's imperative that the get significant control back over these communication channels. Tiered service is their ticket to 1984.
:T:R:A:N:S:
'Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.'
That sounds like a very spiffy, interesting quote. I bet that vice president came up with that himself...or maybe it was Steve Jobbs
That's because most Government regulation is only good for restricting freedoms and increasing profit margins of large corporations by screwing Joe Six-pack (that poor guy). This regulation, in turn would solidify the freedom we currently enjoy while helping out poor Joe.
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
Uhm, everyone got concerned when [I]n a Nov. 7 interview with BusinessWeek Online, AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. declared: "What [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that." Whitacre and AT&T argue that they need flexibility to exact a toll from Web services that hog bandwidth."
e utrality-and-the-co_b_19056.html
This is a good read on the subject and my source for the quote. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-ed-markey/net-n
'Don't be confused by these spurious complaints about Net neutrality,' Tim Regan, a vice president with fiber optic cable manufacturer Corning Inc., said. 'Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.'"
Translation: don't be confused by trivial things like facts and details regarding the case. Instead, please be confused by our utterly content-free, shaded, and spun vague assertions!
I think it's interesting that most of the anti-net-neutrality statements don't contain any substance. Those that do certainly don't rebut concerns brought up by net-neutrality advocates. They've clearly chosen to try to win over the public and the senate via obfuscation rather than argument. That *alone* should tell you something.
Tweet, tweet.
The best idea is no regulation. Let the market decide. If people start trying to double up on charges or limit my access, then I'll change ISPs. The Feds need to stay out of this.
Can someone please explain how that will even begin to help a Telco deliver TV?
Linux Works
What a crock!
Motorola and Corning have Verizon as a huge customer. Of course they don't want Net Neutrality if Verizon doesn't!!!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
FYI:
A basic form of "net neutrality" already exists in the US because of regulation. Some groups want to destroy this legislation and are willing to lie / misinform people to get this to happen. But only a fool thinks market forces would prevent companies from exercising rights they are spending money to gain.
Unintended consequences.
Congress (or merely the FCC) passes a law (or regulation) which promotes net-neutrality.
Six months later, Apple approaches Earthlink (for example) with a deal. Normal Earthlink DSL subscribers pay for certain amounts of bandwidth, the limits being enforced in software at the DSLAM end. Apple suggests that to make the iTV practical for Earthlink subscribers, they'll pay 0.01c per kilobyte for traffic that doesn't count towards the bandwidth the subscriber pays for.
ie, someone paying for a 256k connection sees no reduction in service when someone else in their home is streaming "Star Wars: The Version Where Chewbacca shoots Greedo In Order To Save Wimpy Han" to their iTV box.
Everything looks great until the FCC unexpected intervenes and rules the practice unlawful under network neutrality rules, because they've been worded too broadly.
I'm concerned about network neutrality not being the panacea its supporters claim it is too. I'm not opposed to regulating the Internet (in terms of service quality, not, obviously, in terms of content), as I wrote here I think the Government needs to intervene to ensure a level playing field, and guarantee reasonable expectations are satisfied. But I have difficulty with the idea of bans on providing better services for those willing to pay for it. We need to make sure the minimum services are acceptable, not that the premium services are unavailable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Your access to this web site has been denied
You appear to be accessing this web site via a telecoms provider who supports tiered internet service. Please contact your ISP and inform them that we have granted $TELCO their wish of a tiered internet and that the bill for accessing our network will be $10,000,000. Congratulations to $TELCO on a job well done.
All the best,
Webmaster
On behalf of the web site team.
Do you actually have any examples of someone doing that and changing sides or are you assuming everyone participating on slashdot is the same person and you are not directly included in the same grouping although you participate as well?
Did you forgot to take your pill again and now think you were reading slashdot from an exclusive third dimension that is not a subset of slashdot your were initally refering to?
Its supposed to mean that you cannot priorotize one site or service over another, the fear is that one ISP might prioritize its service over competition, or more importantly, might extort from google using the fear of unsure delivery. So the neutrality suggest that you have to be site neutral, you cannot accidentally lose, or hinder packets from say, competing sources.
This all sounds good right? Well the router providers are making the point that this has not been a problem in the past, so why borrow the trouble?
I would agree with them if it were not for Bell South.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
If you have a solution in search of a problem, then clearly there is no problem, and you are fixing something that isn't broken -- which invariably ends up breaking it. So why do they want fix something that isn't broken? Because they can make money fixing it once it is.
What you are advocating is essentially the ability to legally tax the quality of service as well as performance. Sure, they'll sell you that 30Mbps connection, but if you want that speed for anything other than HTTP traffic you'll have to buy our upgrade package too!
=Smidge=
FTH is strongly correlated to population density. Japan's and Korea's population are mostly in cities with extreme population densities. In countries with sprawling suburbs FTH is less economically feasible, regardless of network neutrality regulation. BTW, the "open wire" regulations in Europe are very different from the network neutrality concept that is debated in the US. And, unlike just a few years ago, broadband access is cheaper in Europe.
Nothing for us to do but suck it up!
I may be missing something here and someone may have alreay said it, but didnt google buy massive amounts of nationwide Dark Fiber a while back? Say someone on ISP A wants to get information from google at B, but they have to pass over backbone C, But google aint playing ball with Backbone C so they restrict their traffic. Couldnt google just send the data directly to ISP A over their Dark Fiber missing out Backbone C entirely? Feel free to flame/destroy me here
This is another example of the failure of libertarianism. What is the difference if we the people are strong armed by a government monopoly or a corporate monopoly?
Nice taking the issue and reversing it into a touchy feely they only want to help us argument. More likely scenario... Apple goes to Earthlink and offers .01c per Kb to give them priority for iTV over youtube.com traffic. Or it's even Earthlink shopping around... will you pay us x extra per Kb to ensure your traffic doesn't drop into lower priority on the stack.
Zapp: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Zapp: So, a plan to assassinate some weird looking aliens with scissors. How very neutral of you.
Neutral Alien: Your neutralness, it's a beige alert.
Neutral President: If I don't survive, tell my wife 'hello'.
Wow, the idiot moderators (or corporate shills) must be out in force today if a post demonstrating this level of ignorance can get rated as "insightful".
How many other DSL/cable modem providers are there in your area?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Repeat after me: Coorelation does not equal causation.
What evidence do you have that supports the notion that Americans will get faster access if net neutrality is scuttled? This is equating "faster access" with killing net neutrality is the exact koolaid that the telcom industry has been trying to cram into the collective consciousness. Their real goal has nothing to do with fiber in your home. It's all about being able to wring more cash out of Google, YouTube, and especially Vonage (who directly undercuts them).
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
it would also permit municipalities to offer their own broadband services.
Did I read this wrong? Some municipalities already offer their own broadband services. I know this because I'm "Broadband Services Coordinator" at a municipal utility. So I ask.. WTF?
Can all fish swim?
So if UUNet is throttling traffic to Amazon how will switching from Comcast to ATT help? It won't. Chances are all routes from your physical location to a given host passes through one of only a few Tier 1 providers regardless of who your last mile ISP is. Don't think in terms of your local ISP charging you to vist websites, think of trunk carriers charging websites to receive traffic from them.
Breaking Net Neutrality violates the End to End Principal. Think of it this way: would you want a phone call from Boston to Florida to cost more than one from New York to California because some regional telco in Georgia wanted to charge Miami more to receive calls? The end of a rational peering system won't be the end of the Internet, it will just be the end of this internet.
No, I didn't. I gave an example of something that would be perfectly legitimate, a positive thing for all parties involved, that would be outlawed by poorly written laws that attempt to support network neutrality.
My point was doing something about unintended consequences. A service of the type I described would be valuable, and would be something that ISPs and content providers would both benefit from. However, over-broad laws on network neutrality would outlaw them.
As I said in my linked to JE, we need more Internet regulation. "Network neutrality" however is a single issue, which so far the proponents of appear to be unwilling to even consider the possibility of negative consequences. Without something that means a node can send data and expect some predictable QoS for it, many applications will be problematic at best.
FWIW, neither are scenarios that Earthlink's customers would find acceptable.
More importantly though, neither are scenarios remotely relevant, as neither are legitimate services that would be outlawed by over-broad network neutrality laws. We already have a long list of potential abuses that would be outlawed, but at this stage, the question is whether we'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've given an example. It's up to you to show how NN laws can be written to avoid outlawing legitimate applications like the one I gave, particularly when my linked to JE, proposing the enforcement of minimum standards, also prevents such discrimination without preventing the legitimate scenario I presented.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Correlation != Causation
Correct me if I am wrong here, but I will try to explain the breif history of this debate as I have understood it since its development.
1) The internet was considered a telecommunication and as thus had to adhere to existing net neutrality regulations. This was the case since the internet existed.
2) At some point, the FCC ruled that the internet was a data service and not a telecommunication. As a side effect of this ruling, Net neutrality was no longer required for the internet.
3) Verizon (I think) started to throtle VoIP, more specificly Vonage traffic.
4) Verizon, Bellsouth and ATT came out and publicly made statements that Google, YouTube, and Vonage have been getting a free ride on their pipes (forgot who started it).
5) The easily defeatable debate of a "free ride" (due to the fact Google/YouTube/Vonage pay for their traffic) made the telecoms change their position and the debate about wanting to serve Television over the internet (TVoIP?). Somehow Net Neutrality would prevent them from offering these extra services to their customers.
6) The "free ride" debate sparked interest in creating a net neutrality bill passed for the internet.
There is a lot more details here, but this is in essence what I have followed. I do not see why it is so hard to see that the greedy bastards are the cable/telecoms? Why are we paying so much for internet access and yet receiving so little when compared to other countries? Where did the $200 billion go to fund a 45mbps duplex fiber line to every home in America? Why do people keep defending the very same companies who tried to rob you of $2/month when the FCC lifted several federal charges on DSL? I am pretty pissed, and everyone else should too!
For me, if I'm ever torn on a candidate for office or a ballot mandate and I don't know or have time to research all of the issues involved, I'll often look at who supports or opposes them. One can often make an informed decision based on this alone.
So, lets look at who supports Net Neutrality: Google, Yahoo, Vonage, Ebay, Skype, Amazon etc. Now take a gander at who is against it: Most (not all) politicians, major telcos such as Verizon, ATT, Comcast, Time Warner and now hardware manufacturers are coming out against it. Now is it so hard to tell who is telling the truth and who is spreading FUD? Who among those mentioned above has the best interests of the consumer and small businesses in mind, and who else is constantly trying to squeeze more and more and more profits from them?
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
I want the government to maintain a fair playing field for all competitors in all markets. Without this, capitalism dies.
This means the government enforces fraud and misreprentation. It means the government enforces environmental laws so all vendors have the same production costs. It means the government punishes or breaks up monopolies that try to abuse other markets. It means the government enforces the neutrality of mediums upon which business is conducted.
If roads were private, and the vendor of the road to my house decided to charge USPS and UPS trucks $10 a package to drive through (but let DHL and FedEx trucks through with no extra charge), I'd be clamoring for the government to fix that problem, too.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Essentially, your argument is a strawman.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
What [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that."
I can tell you that Google, Vonage and everyone else who has a web presence out there already pays a bill. They're already paying to make sure that their packets get where they're going. How is it the consumers fault that AT&T can't work out a profitable peering agreement with Google's bandwith provider? I can tell you why they can't! Too many AT&T customers sending email, visiting site, etc. that aren't on AT&T's network. Since they can't keep their customers on their own network, they have agreements that let them swap traffic "for free". For example, AT&T swaps with C&W so that everyone stays connected, all the email gets through, and we can all surf where we want. What they really want to do away with is the peering agreements. They're all trying to move to an AOL-ish model where you keep your customers on your 'net and just call it "the internet", even though it's really only sites that are either hosted or cached on their network. Man, this makes the Chinese goverment look like a bunch of role models instead of the censors that they really are.
Well, I don't want anyone telling me "You've got mail!" I want a real internet connection.
I pay my bill to Verizon for a screaming fast 7MB/sec FIOSS connection. If I want to host, which is against my AUP, but I never put up anything that sucks up too much bandwidth, so they've never complained. Still, it is bandwidth that I purchase from my provider. I want to go where I want and do what I want on 'net without some damn pop up saying "Google is over it's service limit with Verizon and so your access to this site is temporarily blocked." If Verizon tries it, I'll be going back to my own T1 with an indie carrier. If the indie carrier tries it, so help me, I'll start my own wireless 'net replacement, invite everyone to join me, and make rude hand gestures at the big boys like AT&T, C&W, etc.
If you don't like this legislation, write your congressman or your sentor and tell them to get their 90 year old heads out of the sand before it's too late.
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
No, I gave a perfectly reasonable example of something that a law on Network Neutrality would likely ban. It's hard to see a way of wording a law on NN that wouldn't ban it. After all, it is a system where some traffic receives "special treatment" due to a financial relationship between the provider and the ISP. It is the very opposite of network neutrality, yet it is perfectly reasonable and, indeed, even desirable.
I also gave a clear map of how the issue can be dealt with, pointing out that requiring ISPs to live up to minimum levels of service would deal with the issue without tying their hands. My solution is workable. It doesn't prevent any ISP from providing premium services.
What's the problem with my solution, and why is the demonstrably flawed Network Neutrality principle better than it?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
multicast would be much more useful to allow TV-like content.
Good. I don't want my ISP making decisions as to what mail I can get, based on an imperfect filtering algorithm. I think that spam filtering should be an optional service ISPs are able to provide, rather than something that is done across-the-board and that affects all customers, willingly or not.
FC Closer
Not exactly. Network neutrality has been around for a long time, however the term "network neutrality" is new.
Net neutrality has existed ever since the dawn of the Internet, but it was called the common carrier laws and it originally applied to carriers of parcels as well as telecom companies. Since Internet was run over telephone lines, common carrier laws provided neutrality until the August 2005 changes that states that internet services are not telecom services. Simultaneously, the FCC added a series of network neutrality regulations that are not as strong as the original common carrier laws.
Really, this is about reinstating the network neutrality laws that we already had.
I wonder how many of the Founding Fathers spoke out against the Bill of Rights as a solution without a problem? Sometimes Regulation needs to step in to prevent our rights from getting regulated away.
For high-speed Internet, there are no functioning markets -- why do you think Internet access is far more expensive in the US than in many other countries? We have an oligopoly in high speed Internet access in most cities across the US.
Well not only did you contradict yourself, but you are also quite wrong. In many areas you have several ISPs to choose from. You can go for DSL, cable HFC, FTTP, or even wireless (yes, sprint has started rolling this out already.)
Rolling out broadband services isn't cheap, but slowly but surely it will start coming around. If you start regulating telecommmunications companies "just because," then you increase their financial burden which in the end only serves to slow down this deployment. You can't expect them to just do this for free either, we aren't communists.
ie, someone paying for a 256k connection sees no reduction in service when someone else in their home is streaming "Star Wars: The Version Where Chewbacca shoots Greedo In Order To Save Wimpy Han" to their iTV box.
That would be awesome if only it were true.
Now, show me where that bandwidth Apple is buying for their customer is, so that I can buy it for myself. Oh wait, it doesn't exist! The telcos have stalled network upgrades entirely. As telcos in other countries roll out 10,100, even gigabit networks in both "high density" cities and in smaller towns, our telcos rollouts have completely stalled, with fiber to the home in a few select markets while promises to the rest of the cities keep slipping into the future.
No, it's clear from quotes other replies have given that what the ISPs want is for Apple to pay 0.01c per kilobyte of traffic, or every earthlink subscriber's iTV box gets "no signal".
The ultimate problem is hypothetical.
The actual genuine problem is lack of competition.
Find a way to increase competition, and both problems go away.
On the same day that we see a story that says over 50% of business students cheat, we see an article in which:
Network equipment manufacturers lie, because they want to sell equipment.
Bobby Rush lies, because he's selling his community out to the phone lobby by pushing a law which will "Improve competition between VoIP Intenet-based telephone services and local telephone services" (by adding more restrictions to VoIP companies, which means less competition for the local phone companies, not more). He has the audacity to promote a law which will "Allow localities to retain control of their rights-of-way and ensure local jurisdictions still receive the franchise fees they collected under the current system. Additionally, the FCC will be authorized to step in if a locality tries to unfairly use its rights-of-way authority to block new competitors from entering the local market." which is simple doublespeak, since it claims to give rights but also codifies the giving of them away.
The Telcos lie, because they claim no restrictions will be made, while at the same time DESPERATELY fighting any restrictions on their ability to restrict, which wouldn't hurt them at all if they WEREN'T lying.
Nobody in consumer-friendly (read TV) national news simply calls them on this obvious stuff, because they're in tight with advertisers and telcos advertise.
And if all the above didn't curdle your toes, the average schmoe in business school thinks that mirepresentation is just fine.
What's a /.er?
Trolling, Trolling, Trolling.
Again, it has not been a problem in the past, because there were regulations to stop it. Net neutrality is not new.
Here's Bobby Rush's bill: http://www.benton.org/benton_files/HR%205252%20COP E_0.pdf
I still don't see this as something happening... Ok... Maybe Earthlink has 512K lines, and sells you only 256K of those lines... Then Apple comes along and offers to pay for extra above the 256K part of the line. Technically it's legitimate, but I'd call it dodgy.
... <your favorite ISP here>
Your argument about Earthlink's customers is only true IF they know about it.
Besides, a net neutrality law wouldn't be cast in stone, never to be changed. It often comes to how it's enforced and how it's modified over time... I guess the need all comes down to how much you trust publicly traded companies like
The federal government is owned by big business, and vice versa. Both of these parties have ulterior motives for regulating Internet communications. Perhaps saying that the party has ulterior motives would be more accurate.
Regulation in itself is not necessarily bad, but in this instance I have a feeling that we, the people, will be losing out regardless of the direction in which this legislation falls.
the country likes wars. "the war on information nonproliferation" sounds pretty good to me.
"Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the information nonproliferationists."
"This crusade, this war on information nonproliferation is going to take a while."
Please stop stalking me, bro.
It's interesting. Europe has widespread deployment of cell phones. But not so many hardwired lines.
Oh yeah, that's right... they've got all these old buildings and streets and such. Harder to run wires around after the fact, but it's easy to deploy wireless antennas.
Now compare this to the US where we have telephones, but not much broadband or cell coverage. Because the country is so fricking huge, it's expensive to run wires and/or put up that many antennas.
Wait a minute! I think you might have determined causation wrong.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060909 Give the babies their bottle. Just when they are in the middle of jumping and hooting for joy, that's when you tell them they just lost common carrier status.
Here's how:
In all cases be clear, firm, and polite. Net neutrality is important. Make it clear to any elected official that you will vote based upon their stance and donate money accordingly. You get bonus points if they are up for election this year (Senate).
Keep in mind that you will probably not reach them directly. Most likely your call or letter will be directed to an aide. That aide's job is to tell the individual what to think about an issue. The aide will be loyal to their boss but may be more easy to sway (they don't have to appear omnicient). If you make it clear to them why neutrality is important and why a non-neutral internet will cost them then you can get somewhere.
This tone also goes for letters and for the public.
..repeat after me..
People who argue against net neutrality because they feel government regulation is ultimately bad for development do to not realize that internet access has to exist in a free market for that development to happen. Most places I've been have 1 local telco and 1 cable provider, both of whom will soon be competing to offer the same thing, data service.
Both will also be glad to keep a status quo of nickle and diming for new services, ultimately limiting innovation and increasing their profits massively. One just needs a small taste of experience with Verizon or Comcast to realize this, among other offenders. $2 ringtones, $5 caller id, and giant packages of television channels that must be bought wholesale, or not at all, are just some examples. It is sort of like when you go to CompUSA and buy a printer - they make more on the $20-$30 cable "accessory" than the printer itself. Except in the case of common carriers you can't go shop somewhere cheaper, the options are limited by necessity. If they are charging $X for service Y but it costs only $X/10 to provide that service, why would they possibly lower the price barring any real competition? I don't think 2 competitors counts as a real compeition, especially since the stakes can get pretty high. Not just anyone can go put up their own telephone poles, space is too limited to allow that.
Common carriers will just smile and tell you that such "value added" services justify the cost, even when they are not adding much if any value at all. Just look around on broadbandreports.com, and you'll see plenty of reports that Comcast already manages to "lose" packets from competing VOIP providers, and I imagine it isn't going to get better with the lack of ability for others to enter and compete in this market.
If the number of competitors per market were to increase to say, 5, I think I'd be more comfortable tossing aside net neutrality. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of auction where 5 companies bid to for the ability to become common carriers, and then share the costs of bundling 5 fiber lines along each pole, that they would control individually for the next, say, 15-20 years. Bidding could re-open at the end of the term, making way for infrastructure upgrades. I don't work in the telco industry so I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but something needs to be done.
The problem with your solution is that ISPs don't have the 256k that John Doe is paying for, much less more bandwidth to set up special deals with Apple to transmit over the cap. Requiring that ISPs live up to the "minimum level of service" would pretty much kill every single one of them overnight thanks to oversubscription and the ISPs refusal to upgrade their infrastructure until they can guarantee that they can make everyone but themselves pay for it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'll give you an offtopic example. In the late 70's in California an inititive passed called proposition 13 which limited property taxes and more importantly added a requirement to the state constitution that a 2/3 majority in both legislative houses was needed for future tax increases.
Proponents argued that the property tax savings would be passed on to renters. Opponents claimed that a lot of state services would eliminated or greatly curtailed.
As things turned out, passage of the inititive didn't reduce rents but did produce even more dire consequences than the worst-case scenarios opponents imagined. Libraries closed, the school system is not longer the envy of the nation, infrastructure is crumbling, affordable housing has disappered and a minority of legislators can control the destiny of the state.
Once the proposition passed the proponents got what they wanted and haven't to this day admitted they were wrong.
"It would also permit municipalities to offer their own broadband services..."
You mean, like the Town of Norwood does now (and has been doing for years?)
What on earth does net neutrality have to do with whether municipalities offer broadband?
The Town of Norwood has had municipal electric power (and has for the better part of a century). They do a pretty good job. They didn't have much trouble convincing the Selectmen that poles are poles, trucks are trucks, and customer service is customer service... and that if they could do a good job on power wiring they could do a good job on broadband wiring.
Norwood Light Broadband and Comcast compete in Norwood, and an unscientific survey suggests that they have roughly comparable numbers of customers.
Multicast would rock for a lot of things, not the least of which would be Bittorrent, or any P2P app for that matter. Let the internet multiply your outbound bandwidth for you.
There are probably really clever architectural reasons why multicast is hard to implement, or doesn't scale to the entire internet, though. Darn.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
To suggest that rent would be lowered simply because owners pay less taxes is ridiculous. Under no voluntary situation would I opt to accept less income simply because I'm paying less tax. I'd rather just buy more or save more money. So what would make property owners charge less for rent? Not lower taxes!
The only thing that would have lowered rent would have been competition. That competition was already balanced and so nothing needed to change there.
It's an interesting insight into a parallel problem.
As far as never admitting they were wrong, this one year alone has witnessed significant change in the US's perspective on global warming. Not only do I no longer hear denial arguments (though no one said they were wrong yet) now I hear California suing car makers!
Well, if we were looking for a reason to get car makers to start producing hybrids and electrics, that's the motivation we were waiting for...
I prefer this one myself.
I would totally gay marry John Hodgman in Canada, though strictly for tax and insurance purposes.
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
It seems to me that ISPs can make plenty of money by simply charging by the real-time packet. End points can make as much or as little of their traffic real-time as they wish. It is probably necessary to reserve a certain bandwidth ahead of time to be guaranteed minimum latency. VOIP and similar applications also need a button or config option to enable real-time priority. Those on a budget may choose to put up with the dropouts and pops. Or they may have reserved a small amount of bandwidth, and need to save it for important calls.
The telco ISP threats to boost/degrade service based on endpoint is just greedy and evil.
I'll go even further than that: scuttle net neutrality, and Americans will get slower overall access to the internet. The reason is that the telcos will be able to simultaneously advertise very high speeds (since the speed the customer gets for "preferred" traffic will be very fast) while also reducing (through traffic shaping) the bandwidth available to non-"preferred" traffic. The reason for that is to minimize the amount of additional infrastructure
So the question really is: what makes you (the original poster) think that the customer will be able to use the bandwidth he can get even if he does get FTTH? Once the ISPs violate net neutrality, they'll have no incentive at all to improve general internet service, and every incentive to reduce it.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Japan and Korea have legislated net neutrality.
Frequent lies:
- network neutrality would change how the internet works (no, it preserves it)
- content providers are using network infrastructure for free (bull - if a corp doesn't like its peering arrangements, renegotiate)
- they want everyone to keep their hands off the internet (no - they want to get their hands on the internet without interference from the public)
Don't buy into the lies. The telco and cable companies are making a power grab, leveraging their (mostly government-granted monopoly or duopoly) network dominance into content. The equipment manufacturers want to be able to sell lots of new equipment the companies that want to restrict and degrade services other than their own. No mystery there. Network neutrality gives us something close to a meritocracy on the internet - the best site wins loyalty from the public.
n countries with almost no neutrality (Korea, Japan) it is pretty common by now to have a 100 Mbps or even 1 Gbps link in the household.
In America that would equate to everyone having 100 Mbps links but only allowed to surf freely at 56Kbps. The rest of that bandwidth used to sell you television shows, movies and other asorted crap.
A 100 Mbps link would be great if we could use it as we wanted, not as apportioned out by ISP's with dollar signs in their eyes.
As for backbone operators? That is what peering arrangements are all about.
I'm afraid what we are seeing here is Greed knifing the baby.
It seems to me that market forces have been and will be sufficient to guarantee that the net is as neutral as the people want it to be.
No, government regulation has been sufficient to guarantee that the net is neutral. Now that that regulation no longer applies, I'm extremely eager to hear your theory of what market forces would discourage the telcos from discriminating based on packet source/destination. They have a ton of money to gain from extorting Google and other services.
The enemies of Democracy are
False.
If by "bad" you mean "inaccurate", yes, it does.
False. No version of network neutrality ever proposed would prohibit ISPs from blocking spam on your email account with the ISP. A net neutrality law might, depending on implementation details, stop your ISP from blocking spam on email connections made from your computer to an external server outside their network that never touched your ISPs mail server, but it wouldn't stop the person running the mail server from doing that.
No, it doesn't.
No, it doesn't.
It might limit the business protocols through which QoS arrangements could be made, but would not prevent QoS from being implemented.
No, adequate available bandwidth is required for that. QoS systems are simply a prioritization scheme which throttles other competing demands on bandwidth to make the bandwidth available. Improving overall capacity is another way to do that.
Yahoo and Google, and their users, already pay, between them, twice for every bit they transmit over anyone's network.
Network neutrality is simple common carrier treatment in the internet arena, which was the law until last year.
Your post is complete FUD.
What about the third alternative: Congress does nothing.
I know, I know. It'll never happen; but I can dream.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The problem I am having with these companies and government representatives is that Net Neutrality isn't some new thing that some anti-something special interests group is trying to get. It is something that for the most part we internet users already have and all we want is to keep it.
Quote: "they'll pay 0.01c per kilobyte"
That's 10 dollar per gigabyte! And who is going to pay apple for delivering the service? You are!
1GB costs less than 1 dollar right now, can you see the increase in costs?
If you want no redunction in service when streaming a movie, you should get a decent internet connection. I promise you, it will be MUCH cheaper in the long run.
Net-neutrality needs to be guarded, or internet providers will implement a pay-per-type-of-usage system.
In which case you will get charged extra for making a VPN connection to your work, because you're using it for business purposes.
Next thing, the RIAA will stalk the internet providers, forcing them to pay up for all bittorrent traffic.
Also, google video will get so expensive that they'll have to cancel it or switch to a subscription based system.
Please remember that the end-user (you!) is going to have to pay for this all! After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Next thing you know, you will be telling to your grand children how great the internet used to be! Back in the days, it didn't matter what you did on the internet, all traffic cost the same and you had only 1 fixed amount you had to pay!
Why will it turn out this way? Because company's will always maximize their proffits, given the chance.
Also, there are enough possibilities to get faster/guaranteed data transfers between certain points as it is, i.e. leased lines. Do you remember how -EXPENSIVE- they were?
Everyone re-posting the exact same arguments without understanding the whole issue should read the Wikipedia entry before posting. If you really don't see your argument represented, add it.
I am so sick of reading the exact same arguments over and over about net neutrality. "But the federal government never gets anything right! Boo regulation! Yay free market!" Or worse: "Net neutrality is just a plot by Google to get free Internet!" Or still worse: "Don't you want your Internet to be fast?"
Look, people. We know that Government Regulation is bad. We also know that government regulation is a necessary evil when there are practical monopolies afoot, even moreso when censorship is an issue. We know VOIP needs QoS to compete with BitTorrent, and we also know that ISPs should be actually giving us the bandwidth we're paying for, and not BS it by calling it "burst" bandwidth. And furthermore, we all know Google pays for their Internet just the same as anyone else, and we know that the Telecoms have gotten plenty of money from the government to build infrastructure that they aren't delivering. We know the telecoms claim that it's a "solution in search of a problem", and we know specific examples of where it has been a problem in the past.
OK? Can we all stop this stupid debate and get back to our lives?
Net neutrality, OSes (Linux/Windows/Mac/BSD/other), UK spy cams, NSA wiretapping, and probably a few other topics I'll remember 10 seconds after I post this -- all of these seem to inspire about 50% of the comments that are rehashes of the same exact BS we've been spewing for awhile. We should come up with a list of required reading, and we should all read it, before posting the same moronic bullshit every time. That way, the only moronic bullshit left can all be slammed with -1 Astroturf, and we'll actually be having an intelligent, new debate.
Well, new, anyway.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A felon, a fundamentalist and a fascist walk into a bar. The bartender says: "Good evening, President Bush!"
"To suggest that rent would be lowered simply because owners pay less taxes is ridiculous."
I agree, but that was how they tried to "sell" it to renters.
Do you enjoy spam? With network neutrality, it becomes illegal for ISPs to block spam. ... your mail provider gets all the spam, and then deletes it. Fine with me.
I always thought that e-mail was send from a host and received from a host. If the hosts "delete unwanted mail", whatever that means , good for them. It is not changing the priotities of the traffic, speed, etc
The rest of your post is the same BS. Be ashamed of yourself.
When congresscritters and corporate big wigs are hurt by outright lies in the media they sue for libel, slander, false advertising, what have you.
I want to know where the class action suits on behalf of the EFF, Google, and the general public are?
Politicians, at least the smart ones.. don't sit and take crap like that lying down.. why the heck are these people? Especially when the settlement could fund their own commercials.
If your answer is "there is no specific law this activity falls under".. then I think it's time we got one..
We need laws which directly and strictly prohibit the presentation of propaganda and outright lies as truth.. not just in the "false advertising and fraud" sense when you're selling a product.. but also in the "undermining democratic process" sense when you're selling a political idea.
The first people to prosecute.. DCI.. then this den of liars on net neutrality.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Get to work people and educate the public."
:P
And after we pull of that miraculous feat, we'll teach sheep how to mine for gold!
The public has made it clear that it does not want to be educated. The American public are quite happy being ignorant and really don't want to be bothered.
Fear and complacency are great ways to keep a populace under control.
Sorry for the cynicism. It's been a long day.
~X~
~X~
The *only* reason the tech corporations are supporting the Bill is because it puts our money in their pockets. They could not care less about our freedoms, our rights, our desire to share and communicate. They just want to fuck us over.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I'd like someone who used to deny global warming to deny it now...
They only wana do it quickly now because elections are coming up. this will totaly change the ball game.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
It's BEEN all over since they killed the television/radio/newspaper equivalent of "net neutrality" - called the "fairness doctrine" back in the 1980's.
It's all over but the shouting, which is pretty much why shouting is all we've been able to do since then, because nobody's listening anymore.
Until that time, America was good shephards of capitalism. Now we've let it grow wild and feral. And this force of nature, the "free market" is going to roll right over this country like Katrina rolled through New Orleans.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
the debate if The Rest of The World(tm) began throttling all traffic to and from the USA(pty ltd)
You shall know him by his Sig
Honestly if the folks on /. aren't educated on net neutrality it really stands no chance at all. Companies are on the verge of taking such measures in both a traffic shaping fashion and in a blocking traffic to competitors fashion. An example from earlier this year would be an ISP blocking access to Vonage. The two tiered Internet will happen if net neutrality legislation isn't passed. Market forces will not stop a two tiered Internet because options for broadband access are very limited in America, usually to one or two different ISPs for a particular area. No new ISP will pop up as the result of market desire for the network access we've become accustomed to because of the enormous cost to enter the market.
This "solution in search of a problem" nonsense is the result of people not actually looking into the issue or trying to write off all concern over it as alarmism. Stop falling for their crap.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/ http://www.myspace.com/savetheinternet Get educated, do your part, support Net Neutrality. I have a personal web gallery, I'd rather not have to fight over bandwidth-leftovers after Telco's are done prioritizing contracted websites.
Why, if not because?
Conversely, Non-neutrality is a problem
I'm not surprised that manufacturers aren't for net neutrality when net neutrality would keep service providers from having to buy as much hardware when they have to make updates to their existing hardware every time a new protocol comes out that the current hardware can no longer effectively/efficently process. Net Neutrality keeps costs down for ISP's by allowing them to invest in bandwidth instead of toll-booths and it allows them to avoid legal battles over not filtering out illegal content. I really don't think telcos have thought this one through and are really only hoping to kill their cableco competition. I personally like competition, it gives me options and provides an incentive for things to keep getting better, something the telcos have lost track of with thier charging exorbant prices for the simplest of phone services. Don't belive me, go check out the free O'Riely book on Asterisk.
everyone will go to "over the internet" delivery of everything, it's a no brainer. it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets. the unfortunate thing for the telco's and cable companies is that for new competitors it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets, meaning that the incumbent carriers will be relegated to leveraging the only service they are able to provide: internet access. once the cableco's and telco's have to compete directly, the result is a race to the bottom, and no one wants that (except consumers, businesses, and local municipalities).
so in the minds of cableco's and telco's (and for the people that make equipment for cable and telco's) it's better to keep internet access a peripheral offering to either cable television service or telephone service, even though internet access is all anyone is really interested in. this is where municipal broadband, muni-wifi, wimax, and broadband over powerlines will have to make headway.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Does anyone know if other countries have such laws?
It seems difficult to get such laws because the political machine depends so much on the big lie. Politicians would be undermining themselves to pass such legislation.
Basically, yeah. I would add a bit to what you said, though. Several major ISPs pushed for those changes in the laws specifically because they claimed, "Oh, boo hoo. My poor little ISP can't charge big bad Google for the traffic they put on my network." This despite the fact that their own customers requested the content in the first place. Google didn't just put it on their network. It's not a truck. It's a bucket brigade. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Funny, Europe is very densely populated - and far behing in deployment. Perhaps, excess regulation still has something to do with that?
There is this insignificant force called "market". If someone with wires will try to squeeze too much cash out of Google, someone else will provide wires to Google for less. Until this "too much" is reached, I could care less if Google will have to fork some extra moneys over to Baby Bells. I don't own either Google or Bells stock, so why should I care?
--- Repeat after me: Coorelation does not equal causation. ---
:-)
Sorry, I see little reason to repeat misspelled mantras, as magic will not happen with badly cast spells. Just to make you happy, I would agree that
Correlation does not equal causation, but frequently hints at one
Just try to get any decent broadband access in Europe, and compare that to Japan, where providers in the middle of bad economy spell are busily laying new wires - and you might be just tempted to agree that a hands off approach of the government is the best.
As for your concerns about Google, I do not see it doing badly under current regulations - could you please tell me again why do we need a new law to improve Google cash flow?