The Telcos' Secret Anti-Net Neutrality Strategy

NoMoreHelio writes "The political blog ThinkProgress lays out big telecom's plan to attack net neutality. The blog obtained a secret PowerPoint presentation from a telecommunications industry front group (PPT) that outlines the industry strategy for defending against regulatory attempts by the FCC. The industry plans to partner with two conservative 'astroturfing' groups, best known for their work seeding the Tea Party movement. Today's revelation from ThinkProgress comes as Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) joined various telecom-funded front groups to unveil an anti-net neutrality bill."

Comments

What is to stop how ISP's peer?

[thule]

Okay... so let's say I'm an ISP. I don't shape any traffic. A small percentage of my customers are slamming my transit connection with p2p traffic. What if I setup peering connections to large content providers (google, Netflix, Directv, yahoo, large hosting company networks, voip providers, etc)? Now all non-peered BitTorrent traffic will go through the transit link where is could get clogged up. All the sites the most of my non-peering users are interested in get nice fast connectivity. I also setup an alternate network for my own VoIP services -- no QoS, but traffic gets routed off congested points on my network.

If an ISP does this, are they violating net neutrality? Does the government get to tell me which networks I peer with? Is peering now a *bad* thing if the government has too much control over the "neutrality"?

Re:Hooray!

[Shakrai]

The FCC under Obama says "Net Neutrality good"

The FCC is playing it's own political game. Broadband Reports has been covering it for quite awhile now. Essentially they plan on ignoring the recommendation of their own study groups. The studies they've done have concluded that "open access" (i.e: Verizon/Time Warner/etc are forced to let competitors use their fiber and copper plants) is the best way to increase competition. They have ignored these studies in favor of moving forward with a "third way" that won't do anything to address the mono/duolopy of ISPs.

Re:It's no secret

[CyprusBlue113]

Unfortunately I just looked at Google, and it appears the true story behind ISDN has been revisioned away so I'll summarize.

In the industry, it was commonly known as "I Smell Dollars Now". The sibling posters are quite correct that DSL was the explosion of the internet, along with cable etc. My point was that ISDN was an option *years* before those. What held back ISDN was a complete lack of interest in deploying it by the physical plant providers, coupled with exorbitant pricing because they could, and no one could compete with them.

The reason DSL went so well, was the forcible opening of the lines by Congress/FCC, which created an explosion of competition (hundreds and hundreds of ISPs), which have all but withered and died under the Bush administration's view that large corporations should be free to do anything and the market will decide.

I am very excited to see these changes, as it is a step in the right direction (a small one, but still a step), back to the days of the 90s opulence of consumer and small business success.