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FCC Votes Yet Another Study of Net Neutrality
yuna49 writes to let us know that the US Federal Communications Commission last week announced a Notice of Inquiry (PDF) into: "...the behavior of broadband market participants, including: (1) How broadband providers are managing Internet traffic on their networks today; (2) Whether providers charge different prices for different speeds or capacities of service; (3) Whether our policies should distinguish between content providers that charge end users for access to content and those that do not; (4) How consumers are affected by these practices." eWeek reports that the study is targeted at whether broadband providers are treating some content providers more favorably than others. Distinctly absent is any discussion about port filtering or other restrictions on Internet usage. The two Democrats on the Commission pressed for a broader "Notice of Rulemaking" to move more quickly towards a policy of non-discrimination. The Republican majority ignored these arguments and voted for an Inquiry, to which the Democrats acceded.
That's another myth. How does network neutrality stifle innovation? When common carrier laws were created for shipping companies, it didn't stifle innovation. Nor did it stifle innovation for telephone companies. And it isn't stifling internet companies either.
I've been replying a lot to this discussion, so let me cut down to the real reason we are in the situation we have now:
Comcast says I get 4Mbps of bandwidth. But they really divided 400Mbps across 100 customers, said I get 4Mbps (that's a simplified version). Now that everybody wants to download stuff from YouTube, Comcast finds that they don't actually have enough bandwidth to give everyone 4MBps. So they decide that maybe they can charge some customers to have priority over others. They make more money and finance their rollout of real 4MBps service. They they tell everyone it is 8MBps service, and sell another the option to give priority over other users. This cycle repeats forever. But it's a scam - one person gets 4MBps only because someone else's connection is now slowed down even further because their packets are delayed. You see, you really can't "speed up" a packet, you can only slow one down. There's an expression "robbing Peter to pay Paul" when you get behind on one bill, and so you pay another bill late to make this one on time. That's what the ISPs want to do.
A similar thing happened years ago with phone service. Phone companies would sell caller ID, and a service to block sales calls. They they sold the sales people a service to block their number. Then they sold a service to send blocked numbers to a special message that told them to leave a message. Then they sold sales people a service that got around the special message. In the end, nobody ever got what they paid for. The phone companies just pitted their customers against each other. So it is with "priority" service. Once everyone pays for priority, who has priority then?
Instead, we need to go the opposite direction than all of this. We need to make ISPs report accurate information on their service level (The FDA mandates food labeling and nobody went out of business). Then, we need to open-up the local telco lines to competition. You do that by separating ISP service from phone line service. Ex: Verizon does the local phone lines, but Comcast, Earthlink, CavTel, etc. provide ISP services over those lines. This will open-up real competition. In Maryland, they passed a law about 5 years ago that did this, and DSL suddenly appeared everywhere and new ISPs arrived. Now that the law reverted, my current ISP is likely to vanish since my local telco (Verizon) can force them out of business once the time limit is up.
It all gets really complicated. But in the end, Network Neutrality just means everyone is treated fairly. It has worked in every aspect of the telecom industry thus far. If your issue is that no law is needed, that is a reasonable position since the FCC is handling this now. But remember, the telecom companies stand to gain a lot by starting the phony "prioritization" scam, and you will find fake blogs and links all over the place with info about why Network Neutrality is evil. The telecoms see a chance at eliminating the FCC law, and the fight is really just to retain the status quo, more so than to add any new regulation.