McCain on Net Neutrality, Copyright, Iraq

An anonymous reader writes "Sen. John McCain kicked off the All Things Digital conference Tuesday night with some interesting comments about net neutrality among other things. His take: there should be as little government regulation of broadband as possible. The market should be allowed to solve the Net-neutrality issue: 'When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.'"

Comments

Follow the money

[Scrameustache]

JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ)
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1 AT&T Inc $39,500

Re:Let The Market decide!

[dgatwood]

Satellite broadband, assuming a geostationary orbit, has, by definition, high latency (more than a half second round trip even if both you and your ISP were directly under the satellite at the equator and if there were zero additional delay from routers, etc.). For web browsing, you might not notice this too much if you have a good local caching DNS server in the satellite router. For most other uses, though, it will seem very, very slow, and VoIP is right out.

With that in mind, you don't have to be in the middle of nowhere to have only one choice. Just outside Santa Cruz, CA, I've been looking at land. Nearly every piece of property that does not have a structure on it is outside the range of DSL from the CO, which means that unless you can convince the local telco to put in a remote terminal, your only option is cable. In fact, there are places in the heart of the Silicon Valley where DSL is not available due to distance limitations. Granted, I've seen one wireless ISP that serves some of those areas, but at their prices, it is no wonder that people don't see it as a viable option.

By most estimates, only 60-70% of the U.S. population lives within range of DSL. That means that 30-40% of the population has at most one real choice for broadband (and that's assuming that their cable provider offers broadband). It is not at all uncommon to have only a single choice in broadband providers.

I won't mind his stances if the market was open...

[Fallen Kell]

The problem we face is that the market is actually closed. There is no free market in the telecom or cable industries. Almost all towns, counties, and even states have laws in place restricting the number of cable providers and forcing a monopoly in the state, county, etc., etc.

In an open market, things would work out for the consumer, as they would have the choice to go to a different company if they were not getting the service they want or even expect from their current providers. Yet, where I live, I can not even start a rival cable company if I wanted let alone have a choice between different ones because the law forbids me from being able to use anything other then Comcast, as they have an exclusive deal with the county to be the only licensed cable tv provider, and the county will not license any other competition. So, since I have a choice of them or nothing, it isn't like I can do a whole lot when I am upset about a change in service or experience poor service, etc., etc. In a free and open market, I would go to someone else who didn't do X or Y to me, and isn't speed throttling different network connections, etc., etc., and that is the idea of the free market, and in that case, the free market would make sure that the consumer got what he or she wants, not what is forced on them.