Net Neutrality — Threat Or Menace? 253
Roblimo writes "I had a dream. In it, I was CEO of a large telecommunications company that was also a major broadband Internet provider and all five members of the FCC were stabbing me with pitchforks and yelling in my ear that my company would be treated as a common carrier, not as a special entity they couldn't regulate. That's when I woke up..."
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
huzzah composition words. A mental combination of queue (to line up) and cue (as in, "to trigger an action") I suppose. Interestingly either of those could have worked well enough.
Re:here we go again (Score:4, Interesting)
> Que the standard partisan trolls screaming about how the government should "keep their hands off of the free market".
No, que me saying we should MAKE the Internet a free market.
> Remember folks, before posting make sure to conveniently forget that the current state of affairs is anything but a free market..
No, most folks get to pick government regulated monopoly telco A or government regulated monopoly cable company B with a government regulated but hopelessly out of the running because spectrum isn't nearly as bountiful as wires/fiber, wireless carrier as option C. Break the monopolies one last time, but do it smart unlike the AT&T fiasco. Regulated utility in control of the physical plant running on right of way monopolies selling access to unregulated entities providing TV, dialtone or IP.
> ..and that telephone companies have been common carriers for years without the foundations of freedom this country was supposedly built on crumbling. (well, at least not because of that...)
Yes. And you can call anyone at regulated rates..... so I can call California cheaper than the town next door because of it. Oh God bless the wisdom of the regulators, they brought sanity to the telephone game! And I get to pay $11/month for AT&T to tell their switch to NOT supress the Caller ID stream. Oh joy of joys. If you want the same insane, capricious bullcrap on the Internet, give control to the FCC. And thst is before the political cleansing that is the real reason they want to get involved starts.
And why do I believe the want the control for political reasons? Because I listened to their words and did something I'm not supposed to do. I believed they intend to do exactly what they say for once.
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm genuinely baffled as to how my comment could possibly be interpreted as supporting Apple. Generally I'm the one hurling mud at Apple if I can smell even the slightest chance to do so...
My take on Net Neutrality (Score:0, Interesting)
I don't want to talk about Net Neutrality anymore. NN is so obviously the right thing that to argue the other side.
you'd have to be a drooling greedy evil ISP provider or a dumb as rocks "what is this internets thing you speak of?" fox news watching troll.
I don't want to talk about Net Neutrality anymore. I simply want to know where to show up with the rocks and pitchforks.
d
Re:Also be worried about the rest of the world (Score:4, Interesting)
Personnaly, I'd be more comfortable having my government come out and admit that they are spying on me then the current situation here. Pay no attention to those NSA splitters and fiber optic lines coming out of teecom switching centers (not on the international submarine cables, on the internal circuits).
Nothing to see here. Move along now.
Re:Shitty Story (Score:2, Interesting)
What we have is good? Try telling that to the old-timers like me who remember when USENET was a place where people enjoyed conversing, rather than a place of spam, hatred and hostility.
Re:Shitty Story (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet is far more pervasive than it was in 2002--look at the business world. Sure, every office and cubicle had a computer in 2002, and they probably almost all had outward facing internet access. Email was prevalent but probably only the official means of communication across everyone in the most forward offices (I mean between everyone...you email the mail room employees these days at most places--they wouldn't have had individual computers 10 years ago). Now email is everywhere, and there are corporate level IM services all over the place. Even unimportant people have laptops they can use at home or on the train or while traveling. People have blackberries to always access emails and even review documents (now you might not get called in on the weekend but rather emailed in).
I actually am surprised that more big businesses out there are not pushing for big neutrality. Unless your business is providing the data lines or directly being a content provider (e.g. ESPN might live to be able to pay for the privilege of loading faster than fan sports pages), it seems like common carrier status is in your best interest. It would be pretty bad if microsoft decides that sharepoint and RDP connections should be prioritized while citrix and lotus/domino or whatever groupware your company uses gets throttled down.
As to the other replies above...its kind of a tough regulation question. Right now, there isn't really any regulation and things are generally fine. The Google/Verizon deal *IS* regulation, but it is regulation that would allow verizon to do what we are afraid they are going to do. In my mind, I can't see congress passing a sensible "net neutrality" bill. There are just too many ways that it will become loaded with technicalities that will halt innovation or allow bad things to go on. I can see a case for allowing the FCC to cover IP data under existing common carrier rules, but I can't see some big messy legislation working well.
In many places, the wireless carriers are more competitive (despite their similarity) than the broadband carriers. Sure, they usually lock you in to long contracts...but for the most part, in any reasonable sized town, sprint, verizon, at&t, and t-mobile will provide usable coverage. Compare that to broadband...in my old place, the options were Comcast or AT&T DSL but the fastest speed at&t could offer in most buildings was about 1/10 as fast as cable (old buildings and wiring...although even the fastest DSL can't compete with good cable). AT&T could try to compete on features or "openness" but even if comcast was throttling some content to 10% speed, I would be better off. Paid content would come to me 10X as fast as DSL and content that didn't pay the "speed bribe" to the border router guard would still come just as fast as it would have on DSL. There is still room in the wireless industry for the companies to force each other to stay open through competition.
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree to a point, but I feel the regs should still be in place to prevent an unfair advantage. a man with an IQ of 100 who inherits 100 million will inevitably trounce a man with an IQ of 140 who inherits nothing when they attempt to compete with each other.
Basically I think they should remove most safety regulations, but keep the business ones and add to them. Mostly because social IQ is a different metric, and business almost exclusively promotes social IQ, and a society left in an endless circle jerk isn't going to get anywhere. We're already seeing effects of this at work in some areas.
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
People've been fighting about it for a lot longer than that. It's just that somehow the world has decided the US has to solve the world's ills in the mere 200 years they've been here - despite the rest of you lot having been around quite a bit longer.
The US has become the world's bloody soap-opera. I've had countless students from all over the world mention Obama (or Bush, a few years ago) but they don't even know the name of their own countries leader. Scary that they expect more from the president of a country that until now they've never been to, than the leaders of their own.
My $.02 fwiw (Score:2, Interesting)
I see a lot of arguing over what "Net Neutrality" is, and how to define it. Really, I don't think it's very hard at all, and doesn't require a wall of text only the most veteran lawyers can understand. To me, "Net Neutrality" means this:
Absolutely zero regulation of the internet, or what is sent over it. No blocking, no filtering, no slowing down of traffic, no pandering to higher paying customers. Data is made up of packets, and all packets are equal.
I don't think this is a toughy by any stretch, and any attempts to over-analyze it or come to any other definition is, IMO, an attempt to create more problems.
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
an idiot thats handed 100 million because he lucked into having a good father is still an idiot. Certain parts of that genetic code may be good but you lose all darwinism as soon as the idiot procreates off his fathers efforts.
On an even playing field that jackass wouldn't have been more fit to survive. You can't have an even playing field in a free market. In a properly regulated market the idiot would squander his fathers fortunes while not being able to play bully in his market and the other guy would keep trucking along and eventually be a great success, advancing the species more than the idiot ever could have.
Re:Shitty Story (Score:3, Interesting)
The best compromise is to simply negotiate contracts with your customers stating that they are limited to X capacity of download at Y speed, after which they are downgraded to Y' speed? This is equally effective and not in conflict with net neutrality. Limiting specific apps or protocols gets you into that area that we are trying to avoid where the networks can manipulate the market of the Internet... eg, wireless networks would intentionally downgrade Skype service because it is a competing product.
Re:here we go again (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're spot on with your analysis. I only take issue with your conclusion that it can't be changed.
Every great success in US history - and there are many - has come as a result of concerted action against enfranchised elites over the course of decades.
Now get to work. 8^)
Re:Shitty Story (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry but everything you said is based on your brainwashed understanding of the US wireless market. Let's put some things in perspective for you. Very recently France Telecom offered a *quad play* for $60 (45 euro)/month. That's TV, home phone, home internet, and cell phone + data. Free.fr offers triple play for $40/month (30 euro). As for the US, the wireless market is insanely profitable for AT&T and Verizon. That's why Verizon has been dumping landlines in rural markets and shifting to wireless solutions (700 MHz LTE) for those same customers. Their ARPU is ridiculously high, as is their profit margins.
The NY iPhone issue was completely AT&T's fault. They've been cutting capex by billions every year, despite tripling (yes TRIPLING) their profits from $4 billion to $12 billion between 2005 and 2008. As a recent study indicated, Android users actually use significantly more data over 3G than iPhone users, but Verizon has had no such network issues. In Japan, one of the densest areas in the world, especially its cities, 3G has been used as a primary internet connection by millions of people for years. There are no caps here. In fact I'm using 4G WiMax right now in Japan, and despite using 200 GB a month my provider has increased my speeds over the last 4 months.