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If the FCC Had Regulated the Internet From the Start

Posted by timothy on from the council-of-wise-and-benevolent-men dept.

In the spirit of (but with a different approach than) last week's post "Is Net Neutrality Really Needed?", an anonymous reader writes with this "counterfactual history of the internet, but one that is all too plausible. Unfortunately, I can see this happening under the new 'Net Neutrality.'"

2 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pure Fantasy by abarrow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, and there's a good chance we would have ended up like some countries that got widespread Internet after the Telcos figured it out, like South Africa. Telekom hired a bunch of consultants from SBC who showed up and told them they had to meter Internet usage.

  2. We already had it. Called X.25 by shoppa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We already had "the internet" regulated, tarriffed, and adopted by the suits.

    It was called X.25.

    In retrospect it was the best possible scenario. All the standards writers, and the big business suits, and the government, and the telcos, were chasing X.25. Giving hackers the freedom to do TCP/IP and SMTP and FTP and the web etc.

    BEST POSSIBLE SCENARIO!