Net Neutrality and Carrier Incentives To Invest

An anonymous reader writes "In policy debates before Congress and the FCC, the big ISPs and wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Sprint) argued that net neutrality rules would give them less incentive to upgrade their networks. The reality is just the opposite, says Infoworld's Bill Snyder, citing a game-theoretic work done by two researchers at the U. of Florida's business school. If carriers can charge premium prices for expedited service, they have an incentive not to invest. Hmm, this reminds me of the agriculture business, where prices are sometimes propped up by paying farmers not to grow crops."

Comments

Open source internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

With wireless technology developing as it is, is there any chance that some day we can create our own ad hoc internet without relying on expensive cables and thus expensive carriers?

I suppose we would still need some kickass routers, but it's not like open source projects are completely devoid of money. Wikipedia has tons of hardware, no?

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

With wireless technology developing as it is, is there any chance that some day we can create our own ad hoc internet without relying on expensive cables and thus expensive carriers?

Not without a decent spectrum allocated for it. The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band at our current power restrictions don't allow for very good distances, unless you have a very clunky antenna that you wouldn't find on a mobile device.

Developing an ad-hoc mesh network has many issues to take into consideration, including dealing with the fact that there will be people who are using an unfair amount of resources and no single transmitter can be trusted to keep any information secure or even 'truthful' about who it is.

Re:Open source internet?

[spidercoz]

I don't think he meant wireless

Re:Open source internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd think trust is something you'd deal with at the presentation layer. We've dealt with spoofing at lower levels in our existing setup after all.

Re:Open source internet?

[icebraining]

How would you solve the transatlantic problem?

Re:Open source internet?

[jellomizer]

The internet is Open. The specs to communicate over TCP/IP are quite clear. The problem is who owns the infrastructure. Cables, Satellites, and the ability to bring them to peoples location costs money. Then they have the cost of maintaining their routing to other providers.
An Add Hock network can only go so far, once you scale larger then you get into more issues.
100 people all maintaining their own routers is fine.
1000 people you may need to find a good techie and pony up to give him a good router.
10000 More techies that you need to maintain the router. And you are start having complains on who's cable go where. Or crazy nuts afraid that their house is getting too much wi-fi radation.

The bigger it gets the most it costs and the more issues that happen. You will start to need Full time people working on this stuff, and they can't starve for the glory of keeping your internet up, they will need to be paid for their work...
Then when you are done you either have a set of big ISP that you probably need to pay $20-60 a month too or a government controlled internet, where you will get think of the children people yelling at the government to block whatever seems bad information to them at the time.

Re:Open source internet?

[ArhcAngel]

Well if everybody just signed up for FON we'd be pretty close. We'd still be using the carriers but we'd have WiFi access anywhere a FON subscriber is nearby.

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

Certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd think trust is something you'd deal with at the presentation layer. We've dealt with spoofing at lower levels in our existing setup after all.

The problem with talking about the OSI model is that our current networking technology doesn't even respect that model. I will note that I didn't say it wasn't impossible to deal with untrusted nodes, but it's something that we should take into consideration when developing a new networking environment such as this.

Back to your original comment, I think dealing with it in the presentation layer is a bit too high in my opinion, as it would require reworking essentially every application to offer some form of encryption. There wouldn't be a clear way to ensure that every application developer even ensures there is encryption. I would suggest producing something similar to IPsec which sits in the 'network' layer of the OSI model, where by user applications would need little knowledge of what network they're operating over to function and ensure some form of security by default.

The issue however is having some sort of global authority system that hands out registered assignments to devices to ensure no spoofing. An authority system like this would likely cause a new slew of problems however, mainly the faults of having to deal with a centralized system.

Dealing with this sort of system with issues such as a netsplit (where the authority is on the otherside of the split and new devices are added to the side you're on, unable to get assignments ends up being rather a complicated matter.

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

I don't think he meant wireless

He started his sentence with:

With wireless technology developing as it is

Re:Open source internet?

[spidercoz]

ah, so he did, oops.

Re:Open source internet?

[SuricouRaven]

Interesting idea, but if you want it to be even remotely feasable you'd have to first work on a transition to a more content-addressable web. That way you could vastly decrease network usage at the expense of vastly increasing storage required by nodes. Sticking a 2TB hard drive in every node is a small price to pay for the network savings.

Re:Open source internet?

[Catbeller]

802.22, and limit the hogs. And someday the interference problem will be licked and we will have multiple users on the same frequency; it's a software problem we haven't solved yet, not a physical one.

Re:Open source internet?

[Richard_at_work]

Fuck that, how about routing millions of nodes in general? Ad hoc would result in either massive routing tables or long routes...

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

802.22

802.22 requires dedicated 'towers' to be setup, which can really only be done by big money, this does not work with the idea of "creating our own ad hoc internet without relying on expensive cables".

and limit the hogs.

What if the hogs are providing a very useful service? How do you distinguish between a torrent and a game server?

And someday the interference problem will be licked and we will have multiple users on the same frequency;

To be honest, a mesh network could be done far better using frequency-hopping spread spectrum radios, you could build the addressing scheme into the frequency hopping, this would allow software defined radios to listen in on specific broadcast messages, as well as provide a new form of security measures for dealing with secure communications between any single node or to a select many without much of an issue with interception.

802.22 doesn't really seem that developed for a technology for constantly changing mesh network, especially since it seems to expect some kind of dedicated infrastructure setup.

it's a software problem we haven't solved yet, not a physical one.

If it's 802.22, it's both for this specific circumstance of "creating our own ad hoc internet without relying on expensive cables".

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

How would you solve the transatlantic problem?

I've networked (and I don't mean computer network) across the transatlantic before with only a few watts over short wave. I've done it with both a huge ugly antenna and using a well hidden ground antenna.

Networking over vast distances is possible (hell, Guglielmo Marconi did it in 1900s), but in my uses, bandwidth was extremely limited, I'm sure someone smarter than me can come up with something far better.

I feel that due to how fragile shortwave is, that we need to have very responsible people using those frequencies and not just average Joe consumer device.

An idea to investigate, the submarine monitoring networks are capable of hearing ships leaving port across the globe, potentially that technology could be further developed for relaying messages over the sea - I wouldn't know how viable that is.

Sadly, I don't have a concrete answer on this, I didn't do much research on long distance communications.

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

Well if everybody just signed up for FON we'd be pretty close. We'd still be using the carriers but we'd have WiFi access anywhere a FON subscriber is nearby.

My Internet is usually saturated, I doubt being a FON user would be that helpful. The idea of "Imagine enjoying videos, movies and games at WiFi speeds while you're away from home - for free! " on my already over saturated connection seems a bit unlikely.

Re:Open source internet?

[turbidostato]

You don't expect to build too thick a wireless network in the middle of the ocean, do you?

But I digress... when you say Internet you obviously meant USAnet.

Re:Open source internet?

[turbidostato]

When money is needed, well, money is needed. But, you know, there' re cooporatives and then you own the ISP instead of being p0wnd by it.

Re:Open source internet?

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

An open source ad hoc mesh network would be immune to government censorship. Your RIAA/MPAA overlords would never allow that.

Re:Open source internet?

[Ash-Fox]

An open source ad hoc mesh network would be immune to government censorship.

Not really, government can raid a physical location and shut it down, just like on the current Internet. They can also tell any major providers to block access to certain things, which is entirely plausible that you would have major 'gateways' which would do exactly the same, just like the current Internet.

Re:Open source internet?

[hairyfeet]

Plus he is missing the point that it is no different than our political system, with two groups at the top that are Coke and Pepsi and take any competition VERY nastily. In my own area neither the cable nor DSL has moved a single inch in a decade and when a friend tried to route around them by getting his boss to shell out for a T-1 and renting connections off the line the duopoly made a few calls and has his connection price raised 400%!

They told him "Just try and sue us" and his lawyer told him flat footed "Oh yeah you'll win no doubt, but it'll cost you about a mil five in fees and a decade out of your life" so they just closed up shop and moved away. those folks are STILL stuck with nothing but cellular or dialup BTW, and guess who is the only ones that offer that in that area? Why one of the duopoly of course!

The only way things are ever gonna change is if the lines are opened up to competition. We even have precedent as we gave them 200 billion to run us nationwide broadband more than a decade ago and all they gave us was a low res Goatse while their CxOs used the cash for big boobed hookers and blow. If they want a monopoly? We'll give them 15 years for any area they run FTTH, we'll give them 25 if that area had never been served. oh and it doesn't count unless EVERY house can receive it, otherwise they'll run it to a single house and count the whole area, like they do on that lame .gov broadband list that shows my mom has SIX different ones to choose from when all she has is a single badly run WISP that is frankly not much better than cellular.

Personally I think with so many out of work it is time to bring back the WPA and have those that are hurting for work run us nationwide fiber that We, The People will own. any carrier can then compete and give us plenty to choose from. Otherwise all we are gonna get thanks to our corporate overlords is the short bus to the information superhighway while even Romania kicks our ass on speed!

Re:Open source internet?

[Toe, The]

Aren't your arguments addressed in the OP?

Here is what Wikipedia's infrastructure looks like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Wikimedia-servers-2010-12-28.svg

They're not a big money-hungry corporation nor are they a government. They're people who want a free encyclopedia.

If people wanted a free internet, they could probably come up with the funds and organization to make one.

Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Hmm, this reminds me of the agriculture business, where prices are sometimes propped up by paying farmers not to grow crops."

I wish as much as anything, we could get the Feds to stop all farm subsidies, especially corn.

WTF should we be doing this? It isn't like we have food shortages in the US. Let's grow all we can...sell it to other countries, but there is no need for taxpayers to pay someone to NOT grown something.

Especially since so many of the farms are large corporations now....

But, sadly, it'll never happen...there's always an election around the corner, and they won't want to piss off states like Iowa, etc.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[hedwards]

The problem is that those countries need to be growing their own food. It would probably work if countries where starvation was common they'd be producing other things, but those countries are usually lacking in all around production capability.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, this reminds me of the agriculture business, where prices are sometimes propped up by paying farmers not to grow crops."

WTF should we be doing this? It isn't like we have food shortages in the US. Let's grow all we can...sell it to other countries, but there is no need for taxpayers to pay someone to NOT grown something.

It's done in case there is a war and the US needs to up the food production suddenly. It makes sense to keep it at a consistently high level in case some major problems occur on the Grand Chessboard.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

The crazy thing about the subsidies is that they encourage the growing of things like maize over vegtables and healthy alternatives.

Maize- yes that wonderful grain that contains almost no healthy nutrition compare to other grains that is often served instead of vegetables.

From which at subsidized prices we get artificially low sweetners such as corn syrup, and because it is used as animal feed (cattle, pigs)- meat prices drop.

Not that there is anything wrong with protein- but it is the high fat that goes along with it that would be missing from more veggies instead of a 99cent ham burger- or a steak.

The subsidies, especially the ones tilted towards encouraging farmers to grow maize of all things does nothign but encourage the obesity epidemic.

Cut the maize- grow healthier grains, healthier fruits and veggies- why are my tax dollars going towards making my neighbours into fat pigs?

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[stephencrane]

The main problem is that the US -does- sell much of our food overseas, but that price point is based on the subsidized price. The price gap isn't recaptured in the form of tariffs. Many countries don't invest in agricultural and associated legal infrastructure at home because there's no way for anyone to grow crops cheaper than the US can sell them.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Aqualung812]

Cut the maize- grow healthier grains, healthier fruits and veggies- why are my tax dollars going towards making my neighbours into fat pigs?

It gets better. Wait until the USA has national healthcare. They they'll use tax money to make people fat (maize), then use tax money to deal with the health issues from being fat! PROFIT!

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[bws111]

Look up 'dust bowl'

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

Ahh-well the government will love then that not only do corn fed cattle have higher fat contents then grass fed cattle- they also require higher levels of antibiotics.

These antibiotics in farming is what leads to super bugs and antibiotic resistance in bacteria... which leads to... ... higher health costs and prescription costs.

Government should double subsidies on maize immediately to help make the loop complete.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[geekoid]

"It isn't like we have food shortages in the US. "
You answered you're own question.
we do it s we don't have food shortages.and it works. Since you have bothered to find out why we started doing it, please shut the fuck up, you ignorant Son of a Bitch.

"Especially since so many of the farms are large corporations now...."
So?
The reason we do it remains the same regardless of who is farming.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

All subsidies need to stop. The government needs to get back to doing what is needed to defend the country and manage the interaction of the states. Get out of subsidies, get out of welfare, get out of a lot of fucking things they are in.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[geekoid]

Wrong.
Many starving areas don't invest because they have no stability to invest. Food is't a problem, delivery to the people who need to east it is.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want your country's foreign trade policies to encourage trade where one partner is not necessarily beholden to the other, sure, get rid of farm subsidies. But I'm not sure if you would like it.

But if you want to folks to grow crops that you don't want to or can't grow, there must be some change in costs for procuring crops from us rather than procuring those same products from themselves. Otherwise if everyone make enough for themselves and only sold off the excess, there would be no reason for solid trade agreements that lead to interdependence of countries via co-joined food supplies. Subsidies make things cheaper for the farming corporations out of pocket. Since a large chunk of the cost of production goes to the American Public, the farming corporations remain turning a profit. On the open world market, this is devastating to other countries who also sell those same crops. They can't make their crops that cheap so foreign companies will adjust to sell something else because everyone will prefer buying cheap American crops.

We as a country, with our weak dollar and our diminishing industrial infrastructure, want other people to buy our crops. We want to make our crops so cheap to grow (cheap to the American farming corporation that is) that there is no way any other country on the planet can match the costs. Those whom do not have the economy to support their own solidarity will opt for maximizing their output that yields the most profit, and then their internal markets will buy whatever products they need from other countries. This forces other countries to also purchase dollars to purchase our crops, which of course keeps the price of the US dollar up.

If one dominates the market in a product such as crops, price elasticity diminishes drastically. Since things like corn, wheat have a growing season that is 4-6 months long and need a great deal of infrastructure to get sizable production, are prohibitive to manufacture cheaply unless there is a great deal of capital and a bit of time to get the facilities ready. This bodes well for us. Once the co-dependence relationship has been established, no matter how abusive it is, there is still this vile local minima that an economy has to traverse in order to move out of it. No one wants to do it, so we can then continue to sell inelastic products that everyone really needs (I mean who doesn't need food).

So yes, we're basically being unfair trade partners by holding many countries somewhat to our whim via crop prices. By controlling wheat and soy prices we also control poultry, bovine and hog production as that's what the bulk of their feed is made from. Much of this has to do with farming subsidies. Unfortunately our country needs to continue to stand on other folks' throats to prop up its standard of living. If subsidies were taken away, the entire country would hurt substantially.

There are countries like Japan who will go far far out of their way to make sure they have enough domestic production of essential crops. They pay a huge cost for this in terms of labor and land but they can afford it. Other countries are not so lucky.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[jellomizer]

The reason is simple.

Any one farmer is willing to grow and sell as much as they can to make as much money as they can.
When you get all of them doing this the supply of food rises and the price drops.
So the farmers need to sell more food to make a living.
Which ends up the farmers working to death to make ends meat.
They will also use up their land creating an environmental mess (Farming isn't green, even Organic Farming), they will plant themselves out of business.

Subsidies keeps the balance.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[geekoid]

Because you're an idiot. Corn doesn't make people fat, meat doesn't make people fat.
Corn is the backbone to regular food delivery. It ahs many properties for that.

Putting too many calories in ones mouth is why there is an obesity problem.

ITs impact of beef costs isn't that great. without corn subsidies, the 99 cent burger would cost 99 cents.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[geekoid]

Dust bowl? the market will fix that~

The guy is one of many who doesn't understand why something is done, and why it was started, but spouts off it should stop because he doesn't understand what it is he is talking about.

AND he gets to vote.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[gumbi west]

The government doesn't pay to not produce any more but does buy land and turn it into prairies or parks. Basically land is so productive now that we don't need it all.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[nedlohs]

Or it results in farmers not making ends meet and hence going out of business. Reducing the supply of food and enabling those who were a little more efficient than them to make a living at the then higher prices.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Corn should not receive the level of subsidies that it does, however farm subsidies are a very good idea; they ensure a consistent food supply by guaranteeing that a farmer isn't going to lose his shirt in the event of a bad harvest.

Corn is also being used as an industrial feedstock, as well as indirectly subsidizing beef production. There's nothing quite like the tenderness of a corn-fed beefsteak, but on the other hand free range beef is much more flavorful.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

If we gave them food, could they spare the labor to benefit when we gave them capital for industry?

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

First off, I don't have a problem with "corn" I have a problem with Maize. "Sweet Corn" if you must.

The word "corn" usually refers to the most commonly grown grain in a region- it is a generic word- so means different things in different countries- and amongst older generations of Americans means different things depending what region you are from. Younger generations are more removed from agriculture so it means maize to them more.

Absolutely Maize is a problem- your 99cent hamburger would not cost 99 cents if it were not for subsized Maize. Over half the cost of maize production is subsidized- it would cost over double if it were not government subsidized. Cheap beef and pork comes from corn-fed animals.

Your 99cent hamburger (now $2+ hamburger) would also contain less fat if it were from a grass-fed cow... and have a superior taste.

Maize makes sweeteners cheaper and much more attractive to use in bulk quantities by food producers.

Look at bread ingredients- in the US which unproportionately subsidizes maize- you will see a lot more maize based sweetners than that of bread from overseas.

This is not as apparant in more quality breads... but your average pre-wrapped mass produced bread will have corn syrup in it. Do you think pre-subsidies bread would get corn syrup added?

You can bet that 99cent hamburger bun contains corn syrup too!

A simple study of economics would show that people prefer to pay less for things rather than more.

If truffles (not the chocolate) cost 99cents- people would eat them too.

Maize is a calorie rich- nutrient poor food. By making it cheaper and thereby adding to the appeal to the masses- you are prodding people to consume crap.

Yes, people have the choice what they eat (that's why I don't eat much sweet corn or hamburgers and have a decent body)- however for the goverment to promote the biggest item that has contributed to America's obesity is absurd.

Maize- and corn syrup useage has gone through the roof because it is so cheap.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[gsgriffin]

Perhaps better stated "...anyone to grow massive crops cheaper than the US..." In the various countries I've been to in Africa and Asia, most of the produce is cheaper because it is coming from a nearby farm where the grower is planting and selling by hand and working for only a couple dollars a day.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually, the farmers can't make a living selling at market price. Rational farmers switch crops, or stop trying to farm. Supply drops again and prices go up until farming is sustainable.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[wierd_w]

The problem with this, is urban sprawl.

Seriously.

Farmers own fat chunks of property that urban and suburban development companies constantly salivate for. Thr land is perfect for homes, in that it is already mostly flat, well drained, cleared of subsoil rocks, and conveniently located near a roadway. It's rural, and makes an attractive prospect for rich people wanting a "country house".

Farmer goes out of business, what happens to the farmland? Do you think a starving farmer that barely held onto his shirt is going to be the one buying it?

Once the developers put houses on it, it stops being farm land. Getting it back into production would mean evicting dozens of families, bulldozing and disposition of all the houses and foundations, removing all the underground plumbing, and possibly chemical cleanup. (Rich people and their use of ChemLawn...)

The result? The agricultural capacity of the US drops precipitously.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[inviolet]

Ahh-well the government will love then that not only do corn fed cattle have higher fat contents then grass fed cattle- they also require higher levels of antibiotics.

These antibiotics in farming is what leads to super bugs and antibiotic resistance in bacteria... which leads to... ... higher health costs and prescription costs.

Government should double subsidies on maize immediately to help make the loop complete.

Grass-fed meat not only has lower fat content (indeed -- it must be cooked differently than the obese meat from the grocery store), but the fats are different. I switched my family to grass-fed after I read the analysis of fat content from my local grass-fed distributor.

They deliver by UPS in insulated boxes packed with dry ice, so everything is still frozen when I get home and pick the box up off the porch.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

"Reducing the supply of food and enabling those who were a little more efficient than them to make a living at the then higher prices."

Supply drops below demand, people starve, disease starts to crop up, people die.. yeah, great idea.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

...not only do corn fed cattle have higher fat contents then grass fed cattle...

I'm having a hard time with this one.

I actually have problems FINDING beef with a decent fat content.

I saw an old picture from the FDA, of a steak. I believe it was used to grading beef. A piece of Prime Grade beef from the early 60's, was almost pink..it had WONDERFUL marbling, which of course, is where the flavor comes from.

A prime piece of beef...looks NOTHING like that these days. It has far less marbling, and hence..does not taste anywhere nearly as well as steaks I remember from my youth.

Hell, these days...it's hard to find ground beef at the stores with more than 20% fat....whenever I do see the rare 75/25 ground beef, I jump on it immediately for grilling burgers...they taste so much better.

I'm not saying you should eat it every day, but when I do want a good burger or steak, I sure want it to taste as best as possible, and make it worth my while.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Ok, then explain it to me...how stopping paying subsidies to farmers, to keep them from planting food, would cause us to have food shortages???

If you're such and expert on this, how about enlightening all of us with how that would work? Citations, etc...?

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Farmer goes out of business, what happens to the farmland? Do you think a starving farmer that barely held onto his shirt is going to be the one buying it?

Once the developers put houses on it, it stops being farm land. Getting it back into production would mean evicting dozens of families, bulldozing and disposition of all the houses and foundations, removing all the underground plumbing, and possibly chemical cleanup. (Rich people and their use of ChemLawn...)

There is SO much undeveloped land in the US, I seriously have a hard time believing that cutting subsidies and letting some farmers go out of business would result in us losing all our farmland.

Take a drive across the US, and notice how much of it is just untouched or at least undeveloped land...the majority of the US is undeveloped.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Food prices go down, more food is produced, driving prices down.

costs of operation tends to remain flat, but income drops.

Farm can't run.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, several should be kept (conservatory; cotton, etc), however the vast majority needs to go.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[BranMan]

I'll take a shot at it. In essence, subsidies are an insurance policy so that we always have plenty of food. Without subsidies, farming would be subject to the ups and downs of the free market. Consider this - with subsidies, farms can, regardless of how much of what they produce, KNOW what they are going to have for income, more or less. The subsidies make sure the prices they get are STABLE. With that we can make sure we're always producing the right amount - i.e. too much for us here at home, so we sell the excess overseas - regardless of climate or droughts, since we'll always make sure we have excess capacity.

That works out really well. Without that, the market rules. If one year there is a drought, for instance, prices will jump as there will be shortages. The next year, all kinds of new people will try to get 'in' on the high prices and end up with a bumper crop, which will depress prices instead. Maybe to the point of bankrupting farmers, closing farms, etc. The next year after that, not enough of a crop is produced, and we have more shortages. Up and down, up and down. Not something we want happening to our food supply.

I'm probably not explaining it well enough, but that's the general idea - simple economics, lots of players looking for an edge - if we leave prices unsupported, we'll have chaos. And hunger. And if we end up hungry here, what about all the places depending on our exports?

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[WindBourne]

Actually, I believe that you would be wrong. IIRC, all of the subsidies are used ONLY for local production that is sold LOCALLY. So, it does not interfere with exports. BUT, what is does is keep out some other nations.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[WindBourne]

Do you even have a clue that nearly all of the beef in fast food restaurants come from Argentina? I mean that is the ONLY place that sells .99 hamburgers. And sweet corn is not fed to cattle here. It is feed corn that is fed.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people have the choice what they eat (that's why I don't eat much sweet corn or hamburgers and have a decent body)- however for the goverment to promote the biggest item that has contributed to America's obesity is absurd.

If you don't eat it, why does everyone else eat it? BECAUSE THEY WANT IT. You were obviously able to make a choice and somehow you think no else can make that choice? I saw some recent info that shows although most fast food places have healthy alternatives, not many people are buying them. Why? Because they don't want them fruit, they want french fries. Quit blaming the government and the industries for people getting fat. The companies are selling what people want. People are fat because they choose to eat more and choose not to exercise. That's like blaming the car makers for selling so many gas guzzling SUVs. Guess what, they are selling them because people are buying them. It's not the other way around man.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

And who sells the maize to Argentina?

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[WindBourne]

You are so right. heck, we have our troops in there hold a rifle to their head telling them that unless they feed that cattle our corn that we will shoot them. Sheesh.

Look, sweet corn is not fed to cattle. Only an fool who knows NOTHING about ag would think that. However, since you will continue to simply spout off, here is who we export to. Look carefully at it. Now, do you realize that Argentina is a corn exporter themselves? They are not as large as the US, but they are up there. So, you are going to continue to claim that we export our sweet corn to Argentina to feed to cattle.

Have you considered being a side kick to Rush Limbaugh? You would make good money.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

Amusing- how when people find themselves wrong they resort to the petty name calling.

Anyhow- quick google reveals many results... three below.

It is just rediculous that we continue to subsidize maize to a degree it deplaces vegetables from our diet. I'm sure you know better than Scientific American though that traces cattle feed to 90%+ maize.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=that-burger-youre-eating-is-mostly-corn

http://www.paulkienitz.net/enron/kingcorn.html

http://www.nobody-knows-anything.com/2009/06/food-inc-the-review.html

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[s73v3r]

WTF should we be doing this? It isn't like we have food shortages in the US.

The people who grow the food need to eat, too. Unless you want the only ones who can afford to grow crops to be giant, corporate farms, then farm subsidies should be a good thing. At least better than the alternative.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[s73v3r]

Blah blah, you're just trying to find a way to blame government for something that is purely the fault of people themselves.

You anti-government nuts are crazy.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[s73v3r]

Explain how rock bottom prices for food would provide enough incentive for people to actually go through the risk and the huge capital requirements of farming?

Without those subsidies, the only ones who could actually afford to farm would be the giant corporate farms. I don't really want them to be the only ones that I can get food from.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[s73v3r]

Sucks to be you, that you can't see what's clear in front of your face.

Yes, there is a lot of undeveloped land. Why don't you go take a look at it some time. Tell me how much of it would actually be usable as farmland. And then tell me why the developers would want that land over some nice farmland that just came on the market.

Seriously, you have a head on your shoulders. Use it sometime.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Without those subsidies, the only ones who could actually afford to farm would be the giant corporate farms. I don't really want them to be the only ones that I can get food from.

But, that's exactly pretty much what we currently what we have NOW in this nation.

Pretty much all of our food comes from like 5-6 major corporate entities. I wish I could remember the fairly recent documentary, but I was shocked when they showed that pretty much all of our meat (beef, pork) comes from like 3-4 major companies.

There aren't that many indie farmers out there left, really... most small farmers are just corporate producers, subject to their rules.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Tell me how much of it would actually be usable as farmland.

Actually much of it I've driven past would be good for farm land. I've driven all over the southeastern part of the US, and there is tons of it here.

Are you saying that the vast areas elsewhere in the US are unsuitable for farming??

The US isn't dominated by mountains and deserts from what I've seen of it...

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

Look, sweet corn is not fed to cattle. Only an fool who knows NOTHING about ag would think that.

BTW- I recommend you do a google so you know how silly that statement comes across. ;)

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[hedwards]

Theoretically yes, in practice no. The amount of technology needed to grow food is less than the amount needed to trade for it. Think Victory gardens in the US during WWII. The problem isn't entirely lack of food production, but it's hard to come up with examples of countries that have thriving exports that aren't also capable of feeding themselves

Plus, by failing to produce your own food your ceding an incredible amount of control to other nations..

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[hedwards]

Precisely, if those nations are unable or unwilling to invest in the infrastructure to feed themselves then it's rather unlikely that they'll invest in the infrastructure to produce goods to trade for food. It's not a lack of people or ability so much as the corruption and war that prevents it from happening. Few populated parts of the world are genuinely incapable of producing their own food for long periods of time.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[nedlohs]

The price will rise causing some people to farm more to stop that from happening. Especially if you have global trade to soften the swings.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[wierd_w]

Unless it happens to be growing grass as the primary biome, it will make very poor farmland.

Forest property makes very poor farmland, as the soil is *NOT* very rich in nutrients. (That is why it grows trees. Grass crowds out forests when the soil is good.)

If the land you are referring to was forested, your evaluation of the usefulness as farmland is dead wrong.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[WindBourne]

Calling you a fool is probably a bit out of line and if so, sorry. Just in a bad mood. However, I dislike seeing ppl speak about stuff that they have NO clue of. Earlier here, you stated that sweet corn was fed to cattle. It is not. Then you state that all of the .99 cent burgers are from cattle that are here. Yet, most of that is from argentina. Then you imply that we sold them that corn, even though they are an exportor. The fact is, that you have ZERO clue of what you are talking about. I mean ZERO.

Now, it has been 30+ years since I worked in restaurants or ag. However, I have worked at monfort's beef and Northern Pumps. I have worked dairy at my uncle's (all back in the 60's and 70's). When I see ppl saying that we feed sweet corn to cattle you OBVIOUSLY do not have a clue of what you talk about. Now, I try to get range-fed because that is what I ate growing up. In addition, it means that the cattle get more exercise so it is better living conditions.

Finally, while I am opposed to how much corn we use here, I will also say that I am not convinced that corn is the root of our evils. I suspect that it has a lot more to do with the bacteria that we have in our gut. As a one time geneticists that worked at CDC (80's), I really suspect that we are looking into the wrong areas. I think that the bugs that intestinal tract has been changed due to overuse of antibiotics due to our issue with doc/legal system. Literally, it is in our water.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[rtb61]

The problem is slightly more complex than that. It has to do with annual crops, what people choose to plant this year and what people forecast to be the highest value crop next year. Just because a farmer grew corn this year does not mean they have to grow corn next year. The problem is when every farmer sees one crop getting a much higher price this year, they all then start planting that crop for next year, catch is this drops the price and a whole bunch of crops other crops soar in price. So it is meant to stabilise the market.

Of course the whole principle is the bugger up when Wall Street commodities brokers through collusion with the government grossly inflate world food prices. The basically buy up all the sources of supply, and via collusion extort higher prices from the worlds people. So psychopathic who put nothing into the crop apply a corporate tax to the crop taking a large percentage for nothing but greed. This kind of stuff used to be banned for obvious reasons but not when governments routinely betray the people they are meant to serve anything goes.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

Google Sweet Corn and cattle.

Go on- do it.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[WindBourne]

Right. They used to feed them the STOVERS, not the corn. There is a DIFFERENCE. Now, the stovers are going to ethanol, however, in day's gone by, we used to allow the horses and cattle to go through the fields feeding, followed by either pigs or goats. The advantage is that this is converted to fertilizer right in the fields where it winters. In addition, it lowers the feed needs. The other thing that can be fed to cattle is the WASTE. Tops, husks, cobs, etc. The corn has been removed. However, again, this is not feeding the sweet corn to the cattle.

What gets fed to cattle is called feed corn. Totally different than sweet corn. If you ate it, you would know it. Much Much cheaper to grow.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[cayenne8]

Not what I would call a forrest.

Some trees. But heck, many places have had trees, that were cut down for farm land. A lot of it in AR was done that way, and they produce plenty of farmed products.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[Oswald McWeany]

Actually- I think I know what is confusing you. It is the whole reason why (being a transplant from overseas) I insisted on calling it Maize to begin with.

Corn, and as I see from looking, even sweet corn are ambiguous terms.

Corn- means "cereal crop"- what we grew as corn back home was what you would call wheat- the Scots called Barley "corn"- "Sweet Corn" is what the English speaking world outside of the US refers to as Maize- in the same way that "Indian Corn" was the original US language for Maize (although now Indian Corn means something more specific).

Even in the US- corn has not always ubiqutously meant "Maize"- it would mean different things in different places- that has happened as the US has moved away from agricultural base.

To you it appears "Sweet Corn" is a specific species of Maize. The "Sweet Corn" that grew in my village was always sold for cattle feed- or used on the farm ("corn" or "wheat" was actually better suited to our climate though so more of that was grown). If you look back at all my posts- I have always called it Maize, not "Sweet Corn"- until you insisted on repeatedly calling it "Sweet Corn". I think my only reference to "sweet corn" was explaining this very fact that "corn" is not a very good term to use on an internationally accessible forum.

However, that said, all varieties of "corn" are used to some degree for animal fodder- even what the younger-generation American version of the the word "sweet corn".

The science behind this is highly documented.

Unhealthy fats are trippled and so-called "healthy fats" are almost eliminated. Total fat content is much higher. The protein loses flavour (whether this is bad or not depends on the palate of the consumer- although most people prefer grass-fed beef flavour).

Minerals such as calcium, beta carotene, etc are found in much lower percentages.

It's not just cattle- it is pigs, sheep, becuase maize prices

As the Sci-American link I pointed to earlier clearly points out- over 90% of cattle's feed comes from maize.

The fact remains that the American government sponsors the production of Maize way-above that of any other crop.

It is a backwards policy.

I won't argue whether subsidies are necessary or not- but if we must subsidise farming- DON'T SUBSIDISE MAIZE.

Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP

[wierd_w]

If it has trees, and is not disturbed soil (dug up by something which broke the sod layer), then the property is called "marginal land"

Look up the definition. It essentially means "land that cannot support sustained agriculture, with little or no value for farming or housing, usually near arrid or inhospitable climates or conditions."

Good soil is rich in organic matter, and as such holds moisture well. Grasses dominate these pieces of land by creating sod, which is thick with their rhyzome systems, and which choke out opportunistic flora like tree seedlings. Poor soil lacks the nutrition to support a sod layer, and often has exposed bits of dirt. It tends to grow herbacious weeds (like pigweeds, cactus, tree seedlings, sorrels, mallows, etc. Essentially broadleaf dicots) because there is nothing to prevent them from getting a foothold.

Do a google image search for "marginal land", and see if it resembles the areas you are referring to.

This isn't meant to say marginal property cannot be farmed, it is meant to say it is not good for that purpose.

Happens at work too.

[Oswald McWeany]

Don't know the cable companies! They are completely right- you as the hoi polloi are wrong.

Happens at work too- people are more motivated to work if they're paid for not working.

At a restaurant- I'm more likely to order food if it tastes disgusting and I don't like it.

When I'm in Soviet Russia, Jokes are more likely to tell me if they are not funny.

Premium service..

[Anonymous Coward]

...is what you used to call 'regular service' yesterday.
Case in point: Data caps. there were no data caps before, services wee running just fine...and somehow, a couple of years later, you need to pay more for the same data transfer.
It's artificial shortage is what it is.

Re:Premium service..

[hedwards]

Not entirely, when the iPhone came out for AT&T and became quite popular the data use dramatically increased in a short period of time. Combined with AT&T's network engineering incompetence and bad things happened. Around here despite being more or less smack dab between antennae I still have to climb a hill if I want a decent signal because AT&T didn't really cope with the hills when planning cell tower sites.

Re:Premium service..

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on where you live, they may have not the option to "cope with hills". There is a lot of NIMBY in places, where AT&T has a lot of demand yet can't build new towers or it takes years to build one.

Not to apologize for them, or data caps, or anything in general... but you can't just piss and moan about bad towers without saying where you live.

Re:Premium service..

[Catbeller]

The big problems with network capacity happened in San Francisco and New York City, both places loaded with tech journalists who had the ability to broadcast their complaints. Other cities are mostly fine.

SF dwellers complain, but don't seem to realize that it takes two years to get a new cell installed in their city due to NIMBY laws. AT&T simply could not roll out new capacity after the iPhone took off in 2007 for over two years because they were not permitted to do so. The problem started to diminish when the extra cells started going up... in 2009. Sometimes, when you have a problem, look in the mirror and the answer is staring back at you.

NYC? Dunno.

Re:Premium service..

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't agree with this.
ATT has seemed to always have substandard service, even in areas where they had _supposed_ market saturation (LA...). I used to travel a lot, and my service with ATT was terrible, which is why I switched away from them.

Re:Premium service..

[Anonymous Coward]

I was referring to wired internet service providers, and the caps that they are now introducing...

Re:Premium service..

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I recall, most of the NYC infrastructure went to T-Mobile when Cingular was sold to AT&T. With the iPhone, AT&T had a huge new user base in NYC and none of the towers to support it.

Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[MobyDisk]

I am glad that someone did some academic research to prove this, but it seems unnecessary. Isn't the entire point of eliminating network neutrality just so that carriers can charge more for their existing bandwidth? They slow down a site, then charge you to restore the speed back to what it originally was. Or they charge you a fee to make your packets a higher priority than your neighbor's. Either way, no infrastructure changes were required. The highway analogy the article uses is spot-on.

Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality? Why all the hate and rhetoric? It's really a very simple, and should be a non-partisan issue.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[0racle]

They slow down a site, then charge you to restore the speed back to what it originally was.

Actually, it's worse than that. In addition to the above, they could introduce internet tiering packages where they went to the content providers and charge them for getting preferential treatment or at least slightly less throttling. They charge you for access, charge you again for faster access and charge the content providers for letting them get your traffic in the first place.

Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality?

You seriously have to ask this? It's about money. Also, I don't believe anti-net neutrality is a partisan issue, R and D are both for it.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[spidercoz]

Because the Republicans have been hijacked by a cabal of narcissistic, egomaniacal corporate toadies. They don't want free-market capitalism, they want a guaranteed ROI of infinity+1. They don't want to invest anything, but they demand profit regardless. They want money for nothing, yet they bitch about people who do that. They're liars, cheaters, and hypocrites, you know, the best we have to offer.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[Bloopie]

Also, I don't believe anti-net neutrality is a partisan issue, R and D are both for it.

If both parties are against net neutrality, how do you explain the Senate vote last week where the Democrats voted against repealing it and the Republicans voted for repealing it? And Obama threatened to veto a repeal? Link

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[jmac_the_man]

They slow down a site, then charge you to restore the speed back to what it originally was. Or they charge you a fee to make your packets a higher priority than your neighbor's. Either way, no infrastructure changes were required. The highway analogy the article uses is spot-on.

The problem with Net Neutrality is that it won't work. Instead, I support "Internet Justice." After all, it has two good things in its name. How can it be bad?

Hint: Everything you said about what Net Neutrality is was wrong. Net Neutrality regulations IN THEORY SHOULD prevent ISPs from charging website operators (note: not end users) more for faster access to that ISPs end users. Under Net Neutrality, you (as an end user) can still buy higher priority/more bandwidth lines on either end if you pay for them.

Now, those are the STATED goals of the Net Neutrality regulations the FCC is trying to enact. The current rules the FCC has on the table won't do that, but they do help the liberals and their buddies at the expense of everyone else. (Also, the FCC shouldn't be allowed to enact Net Neutrality rules anyway, that's Congress's job.)

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[SuricouRaven]

Ideology. The republicans, or at least the base that they need to keep happy, oppose all government regulation by default as a matter of princible. They strongly believe in the power of the free market to self-optimise for the good of the people, if the government would just stop trying to fix it. Any times the market fails they'll just blame it on the government anyway.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[spidercoz]

No no, I know they're no better. In fact, they might be worse, since they don't even have the balls of their convictions. The question was about Republicans.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[desdinova 216]

Follow the money. The people who don't want Net neutrality are Comcast/Verizon/AT&T

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[MobyDisk]

Following the money doesn't seem to work here. The telecom industries are giving equally to both parties.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=B08
AT&T and Verizon are the biggest lobbyists in the telephone industry by 10:1 and 5:1 respectively. Most of the money went to Obama, naturally, but he supports Network Neutrality. The next 4 on the list are Republicans. Looking at the "Party Split" graph, 2010 the Democrats got 4.3 million and the Republicans got 4.2 million. The "Telephone Utilities to House" graph does show the Republicans receiving somewhat more money, but it is fairly even in the house.

I don't see any definitive conclusion from this.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is in vogue (on slashdot) to be libertarian and believe that the government's actions are always bad, regardless of controlling interest

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[shadowrat]

The sentiment outlined in TFA, "broadband service providers charge consumers only once for Internet access, do not favor one content provider over another, and do not charge content providers for sending information over broadband lines to users" Is laudable. The proposed solutions are rarely so succinct, and the fear is that people want public supported government run "free" internet everywhere, and it's going to mandate that you can only use cisco model bg103 routers and google is in charge of xy and z, etc.

I totally support legislation that just says traffic can't be discriminated against. I just don't want it to mandate what price access must be provided at or how much cable must be laid, or what technology needs to be used, etc.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[desdinova 216]

I was more or less implying that the the specific congresscritters opposing net neutrality were the ones on the payroll.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans will vote against anything Obama pretends to like.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality? Why all the hate and rhetoric? It's really a very simple, and should be a non-partisan issue."

Spew yourself. Today Congress is voting on a bill allowing the Federal Government the power to censor internet addresses they don't like. What is it about government control of the 'net that you don't understand?

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[scot4875]

but they do help the liberals and their buddies at the expense of everyone else.

How? Specifics or shut the hell up.

--Jeremy

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[s73v3r]

Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality?

Because it makes more money for business.

Why all the hate and rhetoric?

Because Obama is for Net Neutrality(at least he says he is).

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[s73v3r]

From that graph, it looks like AT&T gave far more to Republicans than to Democrats. Furthermore, if that place gets it's data from the place I think it does, then that's not really the company giving money. Anytime a regular person like you or me donates money, we are supposed to list our employer. So when they add things up like this, it's not necessarily that the company itself, under the direction of the CEO gave that money, it's that employees of that company gave money. It's where you get the misleading stat that BP was one of Obama's biggest donors. They weren't, but lots of BP employees decided to give money.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[s73v3r]

Considering the Democrats were the ones to vote FOR Net Neutrality, I'd say at least on this issue, they are better.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[s73v3r]

Wow, your last paragraph was nothing but pure bull shit. And with absolutely nothing to back it up, too.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[MobyDisk]

Since you seem to know the source, can you list it? Does opensecrets know this? This is contrary to their mission and if they are ignoring it that paints them badly, and if they don't know it you should tell them!

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[Chirs]

Under Net Neutrality, you (as an end user) can still buy higher priority/more bandwidth lines on either end if you pay for them.

For me the big problem with NOT having net neutrality is that my ISP is also the cable provider, so they can give preferential treatment to packets from their own video-on-demand service while slowing down the traffic to the internet as a whole (incidentally slowing down Netflix). If I choose not to use their video-on-demand service then my Netflix packets are being slowed down to allow my neighbour to stream his movie smoothly.

Re:Glad to hear it, but a big "duh!!!"

[jmac_the_man]

This is the thing the Obama FCC doesn't fix. Under the proposed rule, the ISP is only banned from charging NETFLIX more for a higher tier of "access" to their customers. The rule allows EXACTLY what you are describing.

Incentive, incentive, this is capitalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Industry is a bunch of spoiled children these days. They cry and scream and throw a tantrum, threatening to take their ball and go home unless they get bribed with candy to behave. Remember a time when all it took to get a business to make a wise move was prove it would make them more money? Neither do I.

Re:Incentive, incentive, this is capitalism?

[shentino]

Being rich enough to buy laws that keep everyone else poor is a profitable move indeed.

Re:Incentive, incentive, this is capitalism?

[hedwards]

It still works that way if by "them" you mean "the CEO" and by "more money" you mean "a buttload of tax free money."

Re:Incentive, incentive, this is capitalism?

[Talderas]

Have you thoroughly assessed whether providers would get more money with or without net neutrality? Either way I don't see it as a necessity for them to upgrade the networks with it either. With net neutrality, they don't upgrade and start charging a higher price for the same access you had yesterday. Most people won't care unless provider in the area provides a better deal and one we're not talking pennies about. Something that actually justifies the hassle of switching.

Without net neutrality then they segment the market and have you pay a premium to get on an uncongested pipe. Then once enough people move to the "new" pipe and it starts to get congested they segment off the excess bandwidth from the lower tier to create 3rd tier of pricing better, grandfather everyone at the bottom tier and make the premium tier the new basic tier.

You're fucked either way.

Gov't regulation encourages risk taking?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure it does.

Re:Gov't regulation encourages risk taking?!?!?

[Nemo137]

That's the idea behind anti-monopoly legislation.

4G roll out

[Silver Surfer 1]

When you look at how fast Veizon has been rolling out the 4G coverage the arguement that carries will not upgrade their networks losses some steam. The incentive right now is to push as many customers onto the 4G network as fast as possible. Double data deals if you upgrade your device to 4G are going on right now at Verizon.
I suspect that 3G users will be pinched as service "degrades" over time just like carriers did when digital towers were replacing analog.

Re:4G roll out

[Riceballsan]

Unfortunately that is mainly because they love screwing over the long-term for the short term, verison's 4G allows a more or less instant ability to be self paid for. "Oh you want to use the new 4G in your town, just sign a new 2-3 year contract so we can upgrade your phone. The problem is ISP's need to actually start upgrading their infrastructure to allow themselves to continue to go their current speed (well actually at this point to get closer to their own advertised speeds), and well investing money to actually deliver what you advertise, just isn't as fun as an upgrade that lets you make even more claims.

Re:4G roll out

[s73v3r]

Actually, the fact that they are capping the 4G data is evidence in favor of the argument. If they were planning to keep upgrading the network, instead of forgetting about it once the 4G was in place, they wouldn't be capping the data.

Why cannibalize your revenue ?

[Crashmarik]

If you upgrade your base quality of service, you are going to eat into your revenue from selling quality for particular services A la carte. If a carrier is charging you and or netflix to provide a quality connection why would they invest in making the network "better".

Re:Why cannibalize your revenue ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, why aren't we all still running 300-baud modems?

Re:Why cannibalize your revenue ?

[Crashmarik]

Well good question lets look at why we got past the old Lynx D-cat.

300 baud accoustic modems were there because you couldn't hook up your own equipment to ATT's lines without their permission. If you're an old timer you will remember that it used to be you had only one choice of telephone, western electric. Using an accoustic couple let you sidestep ATT and use their phone lines in ways they would have and often tried to charge people extra for.

ATT in general was a very good example of how a large company with monopoly power could and did operate. It used to be you had to pay extra for touch tone service on a phone line. This was despite the fact that touch tone service was cheaper for att to install, and resulted in lower operating costs for them. They looked at it and said we can make people pay for dialing faster. This is analogous to the internet monopoly/duopoly providers. In order to throttle services they have to install additional infrastructure and then go to the trouble of maintaining it to make certain that their customers get less service than they are paying for. Then they want to get paid for not causing problems for you ?

Fundamentally there is a built in mechanism for throttling how much bandwidth a content provider it's the user wanting to use the service. The same user that paid for the bandwidth in the first place.

Re:Remember to keep our priorities in focus

[AdamJS]

Is...is this a bot of some kind?

You mean the ISPs lied to congress?

[JustAnotherIdiot]

I, for one, am totally shocked.
Shocked I tell you.

Re:You mean the ISPs lied to congress?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I was shocked when I read "incentives to incest"...

Actually it doesn't matter either way

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is no competition, then the ISP can just charge more for the basic service with net neutrality or create a premium service otherwise. The key to fair pricing is competition. An ISP which charges extra for a premium service will lose customers if there are competitors with better service or lower prices, and an ISP which charges high prices for basic services will also lose customers if there are competitors with better service or lower prices. Get it? COMPETITION. Make the rules such that there will be competition and the rest will sort itself out. Step 1: Make existing monopolies rent out their infrastructure.

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[JoeNathan]

glad at least one person on this post understands how business works. I don't think anyone here actually realizes that choice is what drives business. People choosing to use a service, and in order to have that you need competition, and in order to have that you need local government contracts that go out to more then one company for things like laying wire, using public roads etc etc. If you want net neutrality you want your city to have as many different providers as possible, then watch them scramble to create a better service.

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[spidercoz]

joen? is that you? aicn?

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[Catbeller]

Except it didn't happen that way, did it? ALL the providers adopted data caps within months of each other. ALL the providers charged for overages, about equally. ALL the providers won't upgrade their infrastructure. Competition did happen, and they competitively decided to copy each other so they could all profit; if one carrier decided to instead increase capacity and maintain unlimited data plans, that carrier, competitively, would not be making as much profit as possible and the shareholders would have risen up to replace the CEO. They are not in business to increase their base number of users - they are in business to increase their profits quarterly. And, once more, real world experiment is over, and objectively your argument has failed the test of reality. They did not compete, they acted as a meta-corporation and raised prices and lowered service simultaneously. Competition does not work at this level of capitalism, as Adam Smith warned us. They collude to maintain prices.

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[sjames]

Or, perhaps you didn't figure in that there is basically no ability to vote with your wallet when everyone is locked in to a multi-year contract and the 'other guy' is just as bad.

Like it or not, that is the current situation, and our regulation must be taylored to that rather than some never before seen ideal where customers choose between 10 vendors and switch at the drop of a hat.

You could try to address it from that angle, but you'd have to legislate phones being portable across carriers by switching the sim card and mandate that the subsidized phones be split out from the service contract to even approach the ideal. You'd also have to find a way to get more actual carriers into the market (actual carriers with infrastructure, not just front ends that buy in bulk from a carrier and sell to customers).

The latter might be sufficiently difficult to achieve in the short term that we'd need a net neutrality regulation as a stopgap anyway.

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[bws111]

Except it doesn't work that way in reality. The simple fact is that the ISPs don't WANT to compete with each other, because it is too costly to do so. On slashdot you hear a lot of whining about monopolies keeping competitors out, etc. Ever hear an ISP complain about that? In my area Verizon was making a lot of noise with FiOS. They sent out all kinds of advertising, got people to urge their local governments to allow them to offer service, etc. Then, when they actually got permission to deploy, they sent out letters saying 'on second thought, we can't make enough money competing against the local cable companies, so we are not going to deploy'.

No company (that wants to stay in business anyway) is going to invest the huge capital required to build a competing network if the only way they can get customers is compete on price. That is how the government-created monopolies got created in the first place: the choice is either monopoly service, or no service at all.

So that leaves the 'make them share the wires' option. Have you ever met anyone whose phone bill went down when they allowed you to pick your own provider (other than for a brief period of time when all kinds of fly-by-night outfits showed up offering low rates, before they went out of business)?

Re:Actually it doesn't matter either way

[s73v3r]

Competition is great, and I'd be all for Common Carrier rules, but it's not the be-all end all solution. There are many places in the country, most of them rural, which can realistically only support one ISP. Should those people be solely subjected to the whims of their provider?

Go ahead an enact all the pro-competition statues you want. More choices for as many people as we can stand. But make sure that there's a minimum level in place, to benefit the many people who live in rural areas.

Re:Remember to keep our priorities in focus

[Yvan256]

I guess it must have ran out of theme parks, blackjack and hookers.

Manufacturing scarcity

[Catbeller]

They aren't providing a service; they are manufacturing a scarcity of service. Any producer or provider will ultimately do this if they are not regulated in some fashion. They will build out a minimum of infrastructure for a maximum of profit. And they will never stop raising fees. Our great-grandparents understood this, so electrical utilities and such are government-regulated monopolies. Some things can't be covered by free market economics. Wiring all homes is one of those things.

Re:Manufacturing scarcity

[cobrausn]

Any producer or provider will not 'ultimately do this' as long as the market barrier-to-entry is not too high. This can occur for a few reasons, one of which is actually the existence of regulations that favor the existing businesses (e.g., Regulatory Capture). Another reason is that the infrastructure required to support the service is incredibly expensive, which serves as a 'natural' limitation to the number of players. It seems in this case we have a bit of both. The only viable solution I see (solution being something that benefits both the market and the consumer) is to not allow the person who owns the lines to also provide service, only rent out the lines in a neutral fashion.

Re:Manufacturing scarcity

[slimjim8094]

I'm almost a socialist, but you're right on. The classic example is the electrical market - when the utility owned the plants, transmission, and distribution, they made their money by convincing the regulators they had to raise rates. Plant inefficiency actually helped them do this.

And in that form, they were a natural monopoly. But simply splitting up the three parts made everything vastly better, as long as the split was handled properly. But now that production is competitive and the transmission companies are common carriers, a company can pay for power to be created and transmitted to them - and there's competition for that business, so reliability has gone up and prices have fallen.

For anyone who hasn't read up on it, basically there's a graph of quantity vs marginal $/MW, sorted by $/MW so it's monotonically increasing (though not linearly). Things like solar and wind are at the very bottom (since they cost nothing to run), hydro, then nukes, coal, gas, oil, peakers (jet turbines), etc. Every day, they predict how much they'll need for the next day (plus a margin) and tell all the plants below it to be ready. The key is that everybody gets the market rate. The last plant to turn on makes no profit, and the solar plants make (near) 100% profit at any load. So there's an enormous incentive to move down that graph.

It works. It really does, for the past 10-15 years. Prices fall, reliability rises, plants get cleaner. It's because they're not making money by convincing regulators, they're making money by moving down that graph.

I should note that the company with the wires is still regulated, but even they've been split into physical maintenance and procurement divisions - you can swap out the procurement side and the small line fee is still present, but you're not buying your electricity from the local utility any more. You're buying it from someone else. The reason it's cheaper is because the local utility has to be the "provider of last resort"; they pick you up if you don't pay your bill to the other one, so they need to buy a little bit extra. And yes it's all the same power, but the dollars match everything up and if you go through it, it does actually make sense to think about paying for those exact megawatts to get to you (since they're all the same) and it simplifies things.

Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I'm from, farmers are paid not to grow crops because L.A. doesn't have enough water rights.

Re:Water

[nedlohs]

Surely that's not paying them not to grow crops. It's paying them them for their water. Obviously if you can make a but less money selling your water and not have to do the work involved in farming you'll take that and make up the money doing something that is less hard work.

Let's try logic

[brxndxn]

Here's simple logic on 'carriers' or ISPs:

ISPs either have a monopoly or pseudo monopoly (in practicality) or they have competition. Therefore, there are two types of situations:

1. Monopolistic - Upgrading networks not necessary
2. Market-based - Carriers must upgrade networks to compete or lose customers

In either situation, there are two types of sub-situations:

1. Net-neutral - Carriers must upgrade networks to satisfy bandwidth demand, content decided by individuals
2. Prioritized - Upgrading networks not necessary, low-priority traffic dropped, content decided by corporations

What we have now in most of America is Monopolistic, Net-neutral. Carriers are arguing for Monopolistic, Prioritized. Consumers demand Market-based, Net-neutral. What should we get? Market-based, Either. What will we get most likely? Monopolistic, Prioritized.

The fact we even need a study to prove that the carriers are lying is ridiculous. The best incentive to force ISPs to upgrade their networks is MORE and DIVERSE competition. It is not free-market competition when the only 'normal bandwidth' Internet access at home for a consumer is a choice between either the local cable company or local telco. It is not free-market competition when the only cellular bandwidth is a choice of 1 of 3 major carriers that control hardware and software of the devices and lobby in unison to our government. Carriers are essentially arguing to continue a monopoly and ignore advances in technology that allow unlimited upgrades in bandwidth.

Instead of arguing net neutrality at all, if our lawmakers started making it easier for some competition in the marketplace, ISPs that do not deliver all traffic quickly would die off.

Re:Let's try logic

[SuricouRaven]

It's called a natural monopoly: The costs to enter the market are so huge (Equipment, laying fiber, buying spectrum, etc) that once one company is established, it's simply pointless for anyone to try to compete - and anyone who has the required billions of dollars isn't stupid enough to try it.

Re:Let's try logic

[fermion]

There is one other thing, a thing that most in the US have lot sight of. All mobile operators use the public space to generate a profit and as such should be required to use that space for the public good. If they cannot make a profit using the public space for public good, that public space should be given to someone who can. Nowhere is it written that profit is a fundemental right, although some conservative wackos want profit to be a fundemental right, I am talking about bush and reagan and the bailouts. Profit is merely something we have the right to persue.

We lost this when TV and radio took over our government and decided they were entitled to the bandwidth loaned to them by the people. The people have every right to take that bandwidth back. Even the cable operators, whose cable runs though and limits the use of public space, has a duty to the public though they too believe they can take from the people without giving anything back.

The argument for net neutrality is simply that the airwaves are public property and the public should make the decision on what it is used for, not the firms who are borrowing them. Like I said, if the mobile companies can't make a profit, then take the bandwidth away and attempted to be let to a new firm that can make a profit. This is what is done in real life. When a firm rents a space and does not make enough money to pay for that space, the space is taken back and rented to someone else. In the US we do say that they space is theirs forever just because they squatted on it and no one else wants it. We let the market work, except when a firm is so big they can corrupt the market by creating regulation to favor them. Which is the purpose of many regulations. To keep competition out.

And as far as sig goes with Ron Paul, remember that instead of letting the market work and allowing his constituents to suffer for bad housing and car choices, or to allow the public to decide what food was best for them, he used tax payer money to build a million dollar bus stop and gave untold hundred of thousands of dollars to his fishing buddies so they could be hired as consultants to push shrimp. This is what is wrong with the market. Even those that claim be hands off will not be able to avoid the temptation of free money and helping their friends steal from the poot.

Re:Let's try logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Atlas is shrugging.

Question: When Did Net Neutrality Pass Congress...

[Shuh]

... & become the law of the land?

Re:Remember to keep our priorities in focus

[Surt]

He's just suffering brain damage from his encounter with the Italian water drinking conspirators.

Re:Remember to keep our priorities in focus

[spidercoz]

Be careful, there was almost an intelligible thought in there.

heres how this works.

[nimbius]

you start a business, and we impose regulations to prevent you from abusing your tacit monopoly be it global or regional. Comply with them or spend more lobbying dollars.

do not threaten the customers hoping they will back you. verizon and AT&T subscribers enjoy some of the shittiest wireless service in the first world, comcast customer experience is comparative to that of an internet subscriber in rural india. cox service, if it ever gets installed, is just as bad. Sprint does nothing more than bait-and-switch its customers hoping they remember the CEO chortling about some amorphous unlimited everything plan on paid advertising.

Re:heres how this works.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...comcast customer experience is comparative to that of an internet subscriber in rural india"

GPRS?

Because that's all you have in rural India... if you're lucky.

What about latency?

[jopsen]

Today most homes is either hooked directly up on fiber or hook up on cobber with translation to fiber not very far away... I'm guessing here, but I think ad hoc wireless networks, would be crazy unreliable, slow, insecure and have an extreme latency...

Re:What about latency?

[Pope]

Today most homes is either hooked directly up on fiber or hook up on cobber with translation to fiber not very far away... I'm guessing here, but I think ad hoc wireless networks, would be crazy unreliable, slow, insecure and have an extreme latency...

Cobbler...so you're proposing the return of Sneakernet?

Not hard to incentivze them

[silas_moeckel]

Require some truth in advertizing from them. Enact legislation where if they do not meet there advertized speeds one average during peek times they are fined and eventually loose there monopolies. There networks are cash cows network upgrades are a simple matter of trending and re engineering for wired networks. They want to suck all the money they can out and avoid capx purchases to make there bonus bigger. Honestly most monopoly services should be bid out where the carrier offering the most for the least gets the contract. I would love to see AT&T loose out on DSL and have to give up that franchise, they have no cost of bandwidth (paying your sister company does not count) but aggressively limiter there subscribers.

The difference with agriculture

[rsilvergun]

is that there's a good reason to prevent over farming. Over farming tobacco turned Virginia into a desert in the 1800s. Plus in agriculture you sometimes have to get people to grow food that's not profitable but that people need to eat, e.g. it might be a bad year for potatoes, but we still need potatoes.

The trouble with net neutrality, indeed with any concepts on the Web, is that we're brushing up against a post-scarcity economy here. There really isn't any analogy that works because we've never done that before.

Re:The difference with agriculture

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, brave new world, where is thy sting?

The ultimate irony, if this (brushing up against a post-scarcity economy) is true, is that "socialism" will actually become the functional (in the sense that it will be the only system that works) system of "economy" simply because without scarcity, there is no economy. In fact, the most-successful post-scarcity "economic" system will be more like a communist system because the only thing that will need to be done will be the clerical work of actually doing the resource allocation, the logistics, the management of ensuring (rather than allowing people to buy!) that people get things they want (rather than merely need!).

After more than a century of the ideological battle between "good, honest, decent, hard-working capitalists" and "lazy, ignorant, selfish, warmongering socialists" (from the perspective of U.S. public consciousness), do you think it will be so easy to transition into post-scarcity? Will forcing the issue (by the appearance/development of a Mac-Guffin resource-machine like regenerative medicine or nano-fabrication devices based on radically expanding 3D printing sector) turn out to be a good thing in the short-term? There seems no doubt that, as we ascend the Kardashev scale, scarcity as a practical limitation will disappear, but that doesn't mean that we are guaranteed to survive the transitions along the way, nor that there is not still the problem of developing effective systems and ideas to (in a very fundamental way) restructure our civilization (exponential change or no!).

I think there is actually a very good analogy to draw from: MMORPGs. The phenomenon known as "mudflation" is, I say, a very good example of a post-scarcity economy. That is, in an MMORPG, resources (basic goods from which other items are manufactured as well as pure cash) are generated simply by engaging in the (game) environment as opposed to the real world where no matter how long you mine the planet, it is still composed of a limited amount of matter. Time, specifically play time, becomes the resource!

Until we actually transcend the limitations of spacetime, there will be something that limits our endeavors. Whether there are more limits still beyond this, we may yet survive long enough to discover.

Steve Jobs, it seems, agreed with me...

[Catbeller]

If I were Jobs, I'd stomp in, put my bare feet up on your desks, give you the old staring laser eye, and say: "The Internet is shit. We need to make a new one."

Apparently he was of the same mind as I. In 2006-2007 he wanted to build a new data network using 802.22, the old TV spectrum which goes through walls quite well, to build a new nationwide WiFi network.

Image this. A 99 dollar box, an Apple Net box, as it were, that anyone could buy and plug into the wall. It automatically meshes with any other AppleNet boxes it can detect, and starts passing packets, at a really, really high speed - those frequencies are capacious.

Data, voice, all the same.No network carriers, unless perhaps the government could just operate major long-distance backbones through the agency of private companies as a cost of having a civilization. That last might become unnecessary as the number of nodes in the mesh increase geometrically; like Bittorrent, the more people participate, the faster the network becomes.

No carriers. No profit. All we need is bandwidth and a simple box anyone could buy.

You could make outdoor ones that have tiny solar panels, and just plant them anywhere you can get permission. More the infinitely better.

And in the future, some genius will solve the interference problem. Interference in radio is a hardware/software solvable limitation, not a physical one. True; research it, it's fascinating. When we have fast enough processors, we can solve that problem and crowd thousands of channels on the same frequency.

This is all not only feasible, it is absolutely necessary for our economy and our personal freedom - not to mention we won't be robbed forever by two or three corporations. We need to remove the aspect of centralized control from our communications structure.

Re:Steve Jobs, it seems, agreed with me...

[Catbeller]

Oh, I know indeed. And sound cannon and tax investigations and pepper cannon. But at some point, if we don't, we're never leaving a world-wide police state. They will become ensconced into the Panopticon State, and to add insult to that they will make us pay car-loan prices for our incarceration. We need comm they can't control. A century ago, our lives weren't funneled through one network. Now it is, and they have grabbed control and we are now seeing the beginning of what that means. It will become infinitely worse unless we end-run them. By which I mean 802.22 on mesh networks. And it doesn't have to be illegal - if we can get that spectrum declared public access, like 802.11 etc, then we can do it legally. Of course they will demand gov issued digital certificates and all that for the routers, and there we would have to make a stand for all the marbles. Without anon comm, you cannot have a free world. Can. Not.

Re:Steve Jobs, it seems, agreed with me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful plan. Little problem: as far as I know, the tech simply doesn't exist to do get any sort of reasonable performance out of a wireless mesh. If the tech for a mesh did exist, then you would probably want to run it on 802.11 first, so you could set it up simply with alternate firmware on existing hardware (as pretty much everyone already has a wireless router and in urban areas they have overlapping ranges).

As a lighterweight solution, it would be nice to have protocols that could handle UUCP-style updates of e-mail/social networking so updates could be transferred among nearby cell phones.

Also, I saw a talk recently on two-way radio where they had combined two old and one new interference-reduction techniques so they were able to just barely send and receive at the same time on the same frequency.

Re:Steve Jobs, it seems, agreed with me...

[Catbeller]

Well, I don't want to stream video; I want an alternate network that can't be shut down by commercial decree. Wireless, decentralized mesh networks are the only solution to that. Any non-censored communication is better than none at all.

Re:Steve Jobs, it seems, agreed with me...

[Catbeller]

Sorry, more to say. Thanks for the information, as I am uniformed about research in the area of eliminating interference on the same frequency.

You are right, of course. The tech does not exist. But Apple has 70,000 millions+ dollars in cash money that says that they can develop it. And probably are. I do hope.

But perhaps not. Steve Jobs really believed that sharing copyrighted information was stealing (not mentioning his phone phreaker days when he sold Woz's and his box that made free long distance calls with a digital tone generator). He probably would not welcome a system that he could not personally monitor, in spirit if not in fact.

So it probably comes down to open source to manufacture mesh networks that actually work, and are not compromised at the factory to snitch out the users.

Re:Question: When Did Net Neutrality Pass Congress

[spidercoz]

1934

Why wait?

[Catbeller]

Here's a thought. Why don't we just do it anyway? FCC be damned.

Re:Why wait?

[SuricouRaven]

Because the FCC can send men with guns around to arrest you and take your stuff.

The Senate just voted last week

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. The Senate voted last week along party lines whether or not to repeal Net Neutrality. Guess which side voted which way?

Incentives

[DragonWriter]

In policy debates before Congress and the FCC, the big ISPs and wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Sprint) argued that net neutrality rules would give them less incentive to upgrade their networks.

When industry reps for government policy based on whether or not that policy would give them an "incentive to do X", they almost invariably really mean "profit without doing X".

(They are more likely to be honest if they talk about a policy that would give someone else an incentive to do something, especially if that something would create more opportunities for profit in the industry doing the advocacy.)

Obviously with tiered pricing

[Deliveranc3]

They will be less enticed to provide more bandwidth.

What part of: More product = More Customers. Better Value / Price = Happier customers willing to pay more.

That's like, the system. Don't bypass that system, unless we can strip you of management and turn you into a crown corporation (a Canadian/Brit/Aussie concept, but something the U.S. should consider).

Can we see some statistics on how much it's costing in support calls due to poorer than advertised speed/latency/availability? I'm pretty sure these companies are spending millions (billions?) on support personnel they wouldn't need if their services WORKED and their pricing system wasn't INSANE.

These companies want to report increased revenues to their shareholders. From the statistics they are spreading on how many users will be affected by tiered (capped) service and the probable level of support and billing required to implement it there won't be any more profits for these companies (though I suspect we'll find their implementation would be surprisingly aggressive/unfair/hostile/targeted/unfair/illegal [in some areas, particularly people with no legal recourse, as always] and will produce incredible profits [some of which might come from law enforcement inducements for disrupting subversive information users]). Which is really how we should support good ISPs:
A: go with them.
b:do illegal things
c: bring them court order reinbursement money
d: give subsequent generations internet freedom
e: Profit, culturally?

Bandwidth isn't like crops

[PPH]

That analogy falls down. Bandwidth is a high fixed cost, nearly zero marginal cost resource. Once some level of capacity has been installed, the cost to carry one additional megabyte is zero (assuming the capacity limit isn't reached). So its a question of how best to distribute the fixed charges among the users. That is, the capital costs incurred by burying all that fiber in the first place.

The whole Net neutrality thing is an argument about price discrimination and its use to manage classes of users rather than directly addressing network load. In a free market, this is rightly left up to the private parties. But seeing as how the telecoms involved are using public property (air waves or utility corridors) to provide their service, we (the public) should have some say in how various user classes (among other things) are to be treated.

The paper and the highway analogy are both wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper assumes a monopoly, as in there is only one ISP, just as the highway analogy does. A monopoly can only exist by keeping pricing low enough to prevent competition or by force (governmental or physical). In the former case, it shouldn't really matter a great deal to consumers whether you have a free market or not as profit margins are likely similar to those that would exist under competition. For example, if you have the one road that exists in the highway analogy, you need to keep prices for your "skip ahead" service low enough for it to be unattractive for a competitor to build another road. In the latter case, you get government to do your bidding through lobbying, blackmail, whatever to prevent other roads from being built and charge whatever you please. With Net Neutrality, the question is should we allow those who own a road to charge what they want and compete or should we say there shall be no discrimination on price and no skip ahead service? If you answered the latter, what do you think about airlines having first class sections or bars offering ladies' nights? If you believe those two things are evil, then Net Neutrality must be passed. If you believe they're perfectly acceptable and you are a Net Neutrality supporter, you may want to rethink your position...

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality is a solution searching for a problem. How many providers are actually providing tiered services right now? And what if there were a sudden scarcity of bandwidth, wouldn't we want our ISPs to have some tool to prioritize traffic, say, I don't know, a pricing system?

Personally I've never lived anywhere where my ISP was operating in a monopolistic environment. I can think of many choices locally for purchasing network access including wireless providers, DSL, satellite, cable - the list goes on.

Also most posters here assume that without NN laws the ISPs will just hold supply steady and raise prices indefinitely. Total BS for two reasons. One is competition and the other is that people have a limit on what they are willing to pay for internet access. If there are 2 ISPs who are charging $100/month for internet access, they will inevitably compete on price and quality of service by expanding network capacity to poach customers from one another.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even a solution, it's an excuse. An excuse to set a precedent for government regulation of the internet. An excuse to justify yet another expansion of the bureaucracy "for our own good". As if nothing good ever happens unless Uncle Sam is watching over us.

Great analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

To understand their logic, consider this thought experiment: Imagine that you own a freeway -- say, Highway 101 through Silicon Valley -- and you had the power to pluck a car from a traffic jam with a helicopter and deposit it on a clear stretch of the road. Naturally, drivers who could afford the service would be happy to sign up.

"That highway is like the Internet, and the individual cars are the packets of data. The ISP is essentially the gatekeeper that controls the flow of cars on the highway. If the ISP is allowed to snatch any car from the back of a very long line and put it in front of everybody else when the driver of the car pays a priority delivery fee, would the ISP have an incentive to keep the road congested or to expand the road capacity?" they wrote.

The answer is pretty obvious: If you can make more money by keeping your network congested, why would you invest money to make it less crowded?

Maybe not calories

[spopepro]

Recent work and research seems to indicate that, no, it's not just an issue of thermodynamics through caloric content. Unfortunately, many of the top proponents and researchers are of the sensationalist and inflammatory type. (Like the UCSF dude who proclaims "Sugar is Poison!". 95% of the science and research is exactly correct, and very well done, but I just wish he would shut up because I think he hurts his own cause.)

Think of it this way-- you know what has lots of calories? Petrol. Will drinking hydrocarbons make you fat? So who cares if a burning doughnut changes water temperature the same amount as a crunchy shrimp roll (both around 500 kcal)? Eating each will have a different impact on metabolic reaction, and energy storage.

Separate content providers from distributors

[bryan1945]

How far back has this idea gone?

I'm trying to think of a car analogy here...
Ford cars run better/faster on Ford gas?

arguably, last-mile should be a utility

[Chirs]

The final connection to the house should be run as a utility that is completely separate from the ISPs. The ISPs would terminate at neighborhood substations and all ISPs would use the same last-mile connections.

This would minimize the startup costs since you don't have nearly as much cable plant to deal with.