ISP Guarantees Net Neutrality, For a Fee

greedyturtle writes "Ars Technica has up an interesting article on the first ISP to guarantee network neutrality. It's called COmmunityPOwered Internet, aka Copowi. The offer of neutrality comes at a higher price — mostly due to uncompetitive telco line pricing schemes — $34 for 256K DSL, $50 for 1.5 Mbs, and $60 for 7 Mbps. The owner claims to need only 5,000 subscribers to move his ISP into the national arena from the 12 Western states where it now operates. Would you be willing to spend the extra bucks for network neutrality?"

Comments

Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

It ain't gonna work.

They don't own any fiber. The access that they can deliver is at the mercy of the telcos who provision their lines. And while they claim that presently they have cushy arrangements which allow them to do whatever the fuck they want with the bandwidth as long as they pay for it... Who guarantees that agreement will remain in place? The first time a Copowi user turns into a warez pup, what's to say the local DSLAMs won't just "dry up?"

Cute idea. I wish it could work. Ain't gonna survive in our current sad state of Intellectual-Property-uber-alles, especially when one single entity owns the last mile in just about every jurisdiction of this country. Sure, I'd like to start up my own "I don't give a fuck" ISP, too. If only I owned a fiber run to everybody's house, it would be a piece of cake.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

I know good and well what "net neutrality" means. How do you offer such, as an ISP, when you don't own any infrastructure and you have to piggyback on the big boys? If you're offering DSL over lines that really belong to Verizon or SBC, how can you promise your customers that all connections are equal?

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[Billly Gates]

My guess is they pay the ISP more money so the traffic isn't throttled back. The telecom industry has been doing this illegally for years. Remember in the 1990s when there were hundreds of ISPs to chose from? Now how many are left?

I wonder what would happen if the public works water and sewer companies tried to do this? Maybe have 2 year contracts and charge by flush and you must pay a surcharge if you move for money they would lose? Pay it or shit in your backyard in an outhouse?

I view the telecom industry as no different here since the lines are tax payer owned and paid for.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[QuantumG]

By, say, shaping every connection equally?

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[The One and Only]

And if Verizon or AT&T decides to shape the traffic on the lines you're reselling, you're hosed.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[ShaunC]

OK, then; who's going to sign up for internet access with company C, knowing that they cater to the lowest common denominator and give everyone shit bandwidth? That sounds more like company V, who already exists and is generally the only option for many people.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[lucas teh geek]

see that would never fly, but not because it's entirely different (it's not, i agree with you on that), but because the luddites in power understand that water is an essential service. they understand that they need water to have a shower in the morning, and they need water to flush their toilet. but the internet... in their minds nobody NEEDS the internet, after all isnt it all just porn and email? why is that important? (their thinking, not mine)

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[NickFortune]

By negotiating contracts to that effect with Verizon or SBC? If they break the contract, they can then be sued for damages.

So the way to preserve net neutrality is for our ISPs to pay the big carriers not to downgrade our packets? And this is a good thing because otherwise they might demand payment from our ISPs in order for them not to downgrade our packets?

Makes you wonder why no one thought of this before, really.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[spottedkangaroo]

lines are tax payer owned and paid for.

Perhaps in some places, but certainly not at the telco where I work. All the lines were installed by the construction workers employed the telco where I work. The taxes account for over half the phone bill, but we don't get get anything out of it.

I doubt many of the lines are actually owned by tax payers. I'm sure that's the case in some places, but I would guess most of it is privately owned and privately paid for.

Re:Naga..naga..nagannahappen

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't paying more for the full, neutral internet the very definition of a tiered internet... which is the exact opposite of network neutrality?

Um....

[Spy der Mann]

isn't requiring a fee PRECISELY what Net Neutrality is against?

The local monopolies still own the layer 1

[lanner]

I'm sold on paying a little more for an ethical network operator, but they really can't deliver on their promise. This is because they don't own the hardware transport. And, ultimately, if the monopolies (both cable and telco) want to twiddle with my bits, they can do so all the way down to layer 1.

Right now I have Qwest DSL in very-downtown Phoenix Arizona. I'm literally two blocks from the local baseball park. The only ISP options that I have are Qwest with an 7Mbps down/800Kbps up ADSL line or Cox with a 10Mbps down/1Mbps up DOCSIS cable line. That's the best that America can do in a major metro area, which is pretty crappy. I'm more unhappy with the upload than download. Covad just *might* have a DSLAM somewhere nearby, but they would still have to lease Qwest's copper 24 gauge pairs.

You see, nobody else can own the lines that come to my home, and neither Qwest nor Cox are going to turn over their copper line that they buried for anything short of a court order. Other possible means of a communication media might be wireless radio, power lines, or (in the very-imaginative but more-possible-than-you-might-think spectrum), flushing a fiber optic line all the way down to the sewer system where it could be aggregated to some central point.

ATM is a real technology that has the possibilities of taking that layer two connection and making it portable, rendering the layer 1 less relevant, but ATM is a train wreck of a technology. It works for some of Asia, where it is popular, but it's a really horrible standard. Unfortunately, ATM has really gone to hell in the USA. This is mostly due to the fault of the equipment manufactures who could not deliver reasonably priced hardware and software, the ATM specifications horrible requirements (cell overhead, the need for hardware switching, and the horrific unnecessarily-complicated standards), and the resulting bad taste left with network admins/engineers like myself who just don't think of it as viable any longer.

In summary, I'm still screwed. I can't use BitTorrent for legit or illegal usage without having my rate limited and I can't serve up a decent website because of a crappy upload speed.

That's not net neutrality

[danaris]

It's worse than that, ShaunC.

See, even if company V (rolling their eyes and sighing in exasperation) decides to be nice and let company C keep its promises, company A over there, though whose pipes 75% of the traffic from companies V & C must flow, is still trying to make a few extra (million) bucks screwing everybody else in the world, and they're throttling YouTube, but prioritizing MySpace because they paid up.

Dan Aris

Presumably they signed a contract....

[Joce640k]

Presumably they signed a contract which mentions that sort of thing.

Not Neutrality

[njfuzzy]

This is not Net Neutrality. This is what Net Neutrality is trying to avoid-- A tiered Internet, where the people who pay more get unfettered access.

Um... Peering?

[camperdave]

One problem with your analysis: You are not taking peering into account. The tier one providers, like sprint, verizon, British Telecom, etc, are networked together in a mesh. Same thing for the tier two providers. Any ISP worth its salt has connections to multiple peers and upstream providers. If someone in the mesh starts throttling traffic, the excess will just take another route.

Paying either way it seems

[Jtheletter]

So let me get this straight, if we go with a major telco who throttles bandwidth to non-extorted - er, I mean non-partnered - sites then we have to pay them extra to really use all of our bandwidth. OR we can go with a company such as this one and... pay extra to use all of our bandwidth.

This really hasn't gotten us very far. I'm glad that a company is doing this, it's much needed, and actually gives us a chance to vote with our wallets. But until someone who controls the lines offers a similar competitive plan I think we're going to be stuck with a lot of '6 of one, half dozen of the other' choices.