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The Internet Businesses The Almighty Buck

Why The Net Should Stay Neutral 260

Posted by Zonk from the not-much-of-an-argument-here dept.
Dino wrote to mention a BBC opinion piece on why tiered Internet setups are a bad idea. From the article: "What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road. This issue just the latest round of a long-running debate about how much government - of whatever type, in whatever country - should be involved in the growth and development of the internet."
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Why The Net Should Stay Neutral More

Why The Net Should Stay Neutral

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  • Bad analogy for this argument (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:30PM (#14700694)
    Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system [washingtonpost.com] where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic. The more traffic on the roads, the more you pay, and the less traffic, the less you pay. Sounds a lot like what the ISPs want to do.

    • public utility (Score:5, Informative)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:38PM (#14700729)
      Public utuilities are normally regulated. The reasons for that are well established. Companies in the utility markets are not generally are not cherry pick the most profitable customers. Instead for being allowed to operate they are also required to serve the public interest in other matters. That's why you have the public access channel on cable TV , the public alert systems on radio, why rural communities have electricity, and why the power company cant simply shut off the juice to the old/infirm without certain procedures. Some of those Odious fees on your phone bill pay for things like universal 911 connectivity.

      We generally strived to avoid two tierer public power or phone service in their early days. Of course deregulation did take place in the phone arena eventually did make sense but only after ubiquitous access had been achieved and was affordable.

      So we have to be careful about two tiered proposals for the internet. It might be okay but it should be scrutinized from a public policy perspective not a bussiness perspective.

      • Re:public utility (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

        Public utuilities are normally regulated. The reasons for that are well established. Companies in the utility markets are not generally are not cherry pick the most profitable customers. Instead for being allowed to operate they are also required to serve the public interest in other matters. That's why you have the public access channel on cable TV , the public alert systems on radio, why rural communities have electricity, and why the power company cant simply shut off the juice to the old/infirm without

        • Re:public utility (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrchaotica ( 681592 )
          Right, including Internet access as it is now. However, this new idea is basically charging both ends of the connection: once to access the network itself, and again to access the host on the other end -- despite the fact that the only point of connecting at all in the first place is to reach that remote host. In other words, it's charging twice for the same thing!

          • Re:public utility (Score:2, Interesting)

            by zoips ( 576749 )
            Telecoms already do this. End users pay a fee to access the internet, hosts pay an even larger fee for the bandwidth to ship data down to end users. Telecoms want to drop their common carrier status in favor of being able to charge preferentially based on the type of content shipped, instead of just how much bandwidth is used.

            I think that telecoms are going to find that in dropping common carrier status they are going to lose a lot more than they gain; naming them in kiddy porn suits is going to be the next

            • I think that telecoms are going to find that in dropping common carrier status they are going to lose a lot more than they gain; naming them in kiddy porn suits is going to be the next Big Thing.

              I could be wrong, but as I undestand it, they desire to keep common carrier status while acting quite the opposite. What do you suppose 535 Congress-creatures cost? Not much compared to the profits they expect to be able to suck out of the 'net.

              On the other hand, they may be somewhat delusional as to the rea

    • DC has some of the most corrupt traffic legislation I've ever seen, people really need to start doing something about it. One of the biggest offenders I can think of is them passing legislation to make yellow lights shorter so more people are likely to run through red lights, thus increasing ticket revenue. Nothing quite like putting your citizens' lives at stake by making them run through more red lights just so you can have some more money to play with.
      Regards,
      Steve
    • I agree totally..

      we arent talking about offering the option of a 2nd set of dirt roads everywhere and if you want to pay you get pavement.. It will end up being either you pay more, or your dirt road may lead you nowhere..

    • Closer, but here's one closer yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @04:09PM (#14701105) Journal
      Here in the Washington, DC area, they are considering a tied road system where you would have the option of paying more to travel in lanes with less traffic.

      Closer. But the premium lanes are still doing "best effort" delivery.

      Here's one closer yet:

      Think of what they're building as a multi-lane highway - with railroad tracks down the lanes. Each house gets a multi-lane driveway with a couple sidings running up the lanes.

      Driveway/sidings come in several standard lane counts. Theaters, arenas, and factories have very wide ones, houses narrower ones (but still plenty wide), businesses, restaurants, and so on have something in between. The wider the driveway, the more you pay (in taxes or "driveway rent" to the "road company").

      You can runs trains, cars, motorcycles, trolleys, people-movers, delivery busses, computerized delivery carts, you-name-it, on the pavement or the rails.

      There's a fancy computerized signaling system telling every car which lanes it can use. Lots of switches tied in with it (and signaling BACK from the trains and such), so rail vehicles can be switched around as easily as cars make lane changes.

      You've got two ways to use the road:

      - You can pay a small toll and schedule a non-stop run or a scheduled stream of them (if there's capacity for it). The computers controlling the signaling system moves all the other traffic out of your way when it's your slot. If you got your reservation your trip is guaranteed. No stops, no traffic jams (for you), limited number and duration of red lights, getting you to your destination when promised.

      - You can pay nothing (besides your flat-rate driveway rental) and use it like a regular road. Usually you get through. Sometimes there's a traffic jam and it takes a long while, or you have to make a detour. Once in a while it's so bad you give up and go back home. Big point: You have to guess how long the trip will take, and whether it's possible.

      With this road in place you call a restaurant to cater your big party: The restaurant schedules a set of reserved road slots, cooks up the courses in his central professional kitchen, puts each on a little automated cart, and the cart brings it to your house: fresh, piping hot, and just in time to be served. Course after course, just on time, guaranteed to make it.

      Meanwhile, the lane the caterer's carts were using is being used by lots of other traffic, mostly flat-rate, take-your-chances-with-traffic-jams traffic, whenever there wasn't a scheduled cart/train/bus/limousine/whatever using it.

      THAT's the combined system.

      What's the alternative?

      You build a road AND a railroad. Separately. Each with its own infrastructure. This costs a LOT more than building one system, so its total capacity is smaller for a given investment. But even worse: Cars only get to use the road, trains only get to use the railroad - cars can't run down the rails when there are no trains in sight. So much of the capacity is unused.

      Maybe you rented a siding from the railroad company. If so, you only get their trains. You don't get catered parties unless you buy them from the railroad company. Your local restaurant might try that stunt using waters on motorcycles - but he can't guarantee the main course won't be caught in a traffic jam while the soup gets cold. Some shippers might use trains to haul containers cross-country and transfer them to truck beds - but once they're on the trucks they're back in the traffic jams.

      THAT's the "no favorites" scenario some posters keep whining for.

      The problem is that some internet services, like streaming audio and video or VoIP, REQUIRE guaranteed bandwidth, limits on packet latency, and/or delivery reliability ("Quality of Service" (QoS)). Others (like file transfer) don't - "best effort" is good enough. If you want to serve both on the same net and do a good job of it, you have to give some packets preference over others.

      If some packets ar
    • The analogy is fine: you pay for the speed of your connection, just as you pay for the right to use faster roads. What the telecos are proposing is more subtle, analogous to charging you to use a fast road, and then charging you again depending on who you are, what you're carrying, where you're going, and how fast you're driving. Actually the telecos charge even more: both the sender and the recipient have to pay - and here's where the analogy breaks down.

      This is about chopping the internet into smaller

    • You already pay your ISP for how much traffic you pay (or at least how much bandwidth is allocated to you). Want a fast pipe and stream video? You pay for it.

      What they're proposing is to get paid twice by the provider and once by the consumer.

    • It's similar to the tiered health care system as well (USA as an example)
      The government provides some basic services to get buy, but you should pay for more to get more.
      Compare to Canada where a single health tier exists. It essentially splits the cost of health care across everyone.

      Roads are just the same. They provide a basic service, and if you want something a bit more, you should be willing to pay. How is it different from a toll highway? You _could_ save money and take other roads but you want to

  • Alignment (Score:3, Funny)

    by Suit_N_Tie ( 128024 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:30PM (#14700696)
    The net should be Lawful Neutral :)
    • The problem is, everybody knows this would be bad. Unfortunately, big commercial thinks it will line their pockets a little bit better. It's either going to happen or it's not. There's nothing we can do to stop it besides putting together our own backbones, etc.

  • Nice conclusion (Score:5, Funny)

    by RiotXIX ( 230569 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:34PM (#14700709) Journal
    "We must just hope that the US government recognises that this is the case, and sets a good example to the rest of the world."

    Hopefully it won't come across as sarcasm.
  • Now some of the big telecoms companies want to be able to sell premium services for things like streaming video or voice over IP, and some people are worried that this will eventually lead to a segregated internet.
    Hopefully, this will allow small companies to have an edge, by simply providing access to all services without artificially jacking up the price for access to what has become standard services.
    • Except the big telcos own the lines... where are the little guys going to get lines?
      • Except the big telcos own the lines... where are the little guys going to get lines?

        Like the big telcos, they can build them. And before you talk about double-build of the last mile, what about new housing? Anyone can build there, and everyone's cost is the same.

        A lot of these small companies just want to live off the backs of the existing telcos - they don't have to invest in building and running the network, but they demand ultra-cheap rates and no committment to invest in the infrastructure.

        • "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
          And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum.
          And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
          While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."
          I'm really trying to avoid using the phrase "suckling the public teat", so let's all (yes, I'm looking at you, LaRoucheian asshat) just agree that no business exists in a vaccum.
        • Yes because small companies have that kind of money.
        • so presuming local government and the housing developers allowed this to happen and small buisnesses were suicidal enough to get involved you get a situation where whoever initially scores the most customers has a huge advantage and a few years down the line you have a monopoly or possiblly a duopoly after noone else can compete.

          afaict the cost of building out cabling to a street or group of streets dwarfs the cost of dropping a bit of wire from the local pole to someones house and plugging them into the ex
        • A lot of these small companies just want to live off the backs of the existing telcos - they don't have to invest in building and running the network, but they demand ultra-cheap rates and no committment to invest in the infrastructure.

          Your statement implies that for one reason or another, you feel that the rates I'm being charged are too low. Care to justify your position? Do you feel that the rates I'm being charged are inadequate to maintain the integrity of the network infrastructure?

          Have you actually
          • Your statement implies that for one reason or another, you feel that the rates I'm being charged are too low. Care to justify your position? Do you feel that the rates I'm being charged are inadequate to maintain the integrity of the network infrastructure?

            You misunderstand. I am talking about the rates that carriers pay other carriers under regimes such as UNE in the US or LLU in the UK. That is the basis for much CLEC-ILEC competition. I am not much of an expert in the area of retail rates.

            Have you a

  • Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jdludlow ( 316515 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:40PM (#14700738)

    That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats. I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband. Some people pay for it themselves, others have dial-up, and others choose to not have any internet access.

    A major problem with this line of thinking is that after they establish that everyone has a right to use the internet at max speed, the next thing on the list will be the huge social injustice caused by not everyone having a tax payer supplied computer.

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:06PM (#14700851) Homepage
      And no one has the right to have a green park or cleaned streets in downtown or whatever public services are there. And don't tell me you don't live downtown and have to pay your gardener or the cleaning lady! Sometimes it's just a good idea from a town to offer a service for free, even though you don't use it.
      If a mayority in a town wants to have municipal WiFi, then let them have their way. If it gets too expensive for your wallet to pay the taxes, move somewhere else. Sheesh!

      • And no one has the right to have a green park or cleaned streets in downtown or whatever public services are there. And don't tell me you don't live downtown and have to pay your gardener or the cleaning lady! Sometimes it's just a good idea from a town to offer a service for free, even though you don't use it.

        If a mayority in a town wants to have municipal WiFi, then let them have their way. If it gets too expensive for your wallet to pay the taxes, move somewhere else. Sheesh!

        Well sure, if by "fre

        • The big difference between your examples is that corporations are not generally in the business of providing parks or maintaining streets.

          No? Never driven on a private road? Never been in a privately owned park?

          I can't just understand why you want to forbid a certain entity to provide a service. A town is in charge to maintain a certain quality of life within its bounds. Quality of life means lots of things: having clean streets, attracting business, create zones for recreation, plan urbanization, provide s

        • The difference between zero internet access and some internet access (i.e. dial-up) is enormous. This also costs about $5 per month.

          Plus whatever you pay for your phone line. I know several people who have cheap cell phone plans that actually cost less per month than a landline, and have no landline, so for them it would be more like $35/mo. to get dial-up.
      • Sometimes it's just a good idea from a town to offer a service for free, even though you don't use it.

        There's no such thing as free. Selling the idea that there is was the best marketing effort for unrestricted government growth that ever existed.

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by abes ( 82351 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:06PM (#14700853) Homepage
      Yes, that damned WIFI being shoved down our throats. It's nearly as intrusive as those damned telephone cables. Yes, it's true the telephone cables are owned by companies, but there is also a telephone tax to make sure telephone services can be used in parts of the country where there are less people. So it's nearly the same thing. Do they have a *right*, to use your term, for telephone service?

      I think we can all agree that telephones are essential to modern day living. If we want all our citizens to be in a level playing field (i.e. such that it's not the case only rich people get the benifits), then it's a good service to provide. Additionally, it can *help* make money for the municipalities as a whole. It makes people actually go outside more, and more likely to spend money. Finally, it's not something that companies will ever do -- in NYC Verizon does have WIFI hubs in all of their payphones, but then you have to use Verizon's services, which I completely, and utterly, refuse to do. Why? Well, to get back to the original subject of this story, it's because they are the type of company to do tiered payments.

      It's an unnecessary evil. It doesn't cost them anymore, they aren't partcularly hurting for money, so the only reason for them to do so is to make even more money. I understand that's what companies do. But it doesn't mean I should be happy with it, or help feed their addiction. I will do everything in my power, as an informed consumer, to pay what I actually value the service for. But it's difficult to do with near monopolies like Verizon and SBC.

      So, is it a right? Well, if the US is a capalist country, then the free market is supposed to help decide what we 'have a right to'. But, unfortunately, with the FCC relaxing it's definition of monopolies, it's not exactly a free market anymore.
      • But, unfortunately, with the FCC relaxing it's definition of monopolies, it's not exactly a free market anymore.

        I'm sorry, but what? What are you on about? What do you think a free market is? Unbridled competition without state intervention (which, for the avoidance of doubt, includes the FCC), is exactly what the free market is. This is not a defence of it, you understand - I firmly believe that unrestricted, unfettered capitalism, rapacious as it naturally is, does more harm than good, and tends inevit
        • Freedom, as I am sure most /. users are aware (i.e. beer vs. free), is a difficult term. When the term 'free market' was first created, I suspect that the categories were not yet fully explored.

          I remember hearing someone once describe two types of freedom: personal freedom, and societal freedom. I, as a person, should be free to do whatever I want, including playing my music as loudly as possible. My neighbors, as part of society, should also have their freedom, and not have to listen to my crap.

          Thus, not a

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:11PM (#14700872)
      The problem with arguments like that is that they are almost always made after an infrastructure is created using government funding in one way or another and using government powers to create monopolies in that infrastructure.

      Then the "owners" of that infrastructure start yelling, "It's mine, mine, all mine. I'm a greedy little miser."

      If you don't want the government meddling in your infrastructure, don't rely on it to create it in the first place, particularly if you live under a government of, by and for the people who have paid money and sacrificed rights for the supposed benefit that infrastructure will create for them.

      KFG
      • Then the "owners" of that infrastructure start yelling, "It's mine, mine, all mine. I'm a greedy little miser."

        Wow, I couldn't have said it better . It all about the money .

        This proves the Telcos motives => http://www.newnetworks.com/Scandalreslease13006.ht m [newnetworks.com]

        I think a Co-op is needed, basically all ppl that want internet services get together and
        start funding locally controlled metro LAN's .

        It could be part Fiber, part Wireless, and part Ethernet .

        It would not be controlled by any government, but instea
        • It would be good if the co-op owns (not rents) as much of its infrastructue as possible. Maybe purchasing unused cell towers, or even launcing a satellite. The revolution will begin once AT&T starts acting foolish.
    • Huh? He doesn't say anything of the sort! All the opinion piece says is leave the Internet as it is - a network that doesn't care what the packets contain, instead of making it such that (as a provider - not a subscriber) you have to pay extra to every ISP in the world to increase the priority of your packets.

      The beauty of the Internet as it is now is that anyone can publish for next to nothing. A change where it is tiered such that providers pay each ISP to allow their traffic priority breaks this, and jus

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:20PM (#14700903)
      I don't think that the argument from most proponents of government-provided WIFI is that it is a right by any means. Rather, it is a privilege which, if given to everyone as part of goverment services, would benefit society as a whole at a much greater level than the costs involved. This idea may be false in terms of the result of such services - but the idea itself does not involve artificial rights of man to goverment services.

      It's the same as with public transportation by bus - it's not something that is a right that has to be given to everyone, but rather a sound logistical choice that builds a stronger, freer society than would exist otherwise.

      Now, it is true, if government-provided WIFI is seen as important to people, it could become established as a service people are unwilling to let goverment drop, but that's another issue. It still wouldn't be a right. The only right people would have to WIFI is the right to use it as they see fit, however they get it, so long as they are not violating others rights in doing so.

      Remember the 9th and 10th ammendments to the bill of rights -

      Amendment IX

      The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

      Amendment X

      The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

      Rights are the freedoms of mankind, not something they are granted by government. Don't let your fervor against goverment action blind you into making strawmen arguments against those you disagree with. There's may be valid arguments for government services, and they don't have to involve government granting new rights.

      Ryan Fenton

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ex-MislTech ( 557759 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:27PM (#14700943)
      I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband.

      While your statement has some truth, it is also like saying why don't we do away with
      municipal libraries . If people want books they can buy them !!!

      You may be thinking I have taken this too far as a case and point, but here is why
      you may have that perception, your own personal usage of the Internet .

      Some people do their homework via the web, some do business via the web, some do research and our send e-mail instead of letters . The internet is slowly replacing the way we do a lot of things .

      We can print thousands of text books for school, or we can make it a torrent on the net .

      We can print millions of voting cards, or we can make it an encrypted multi-point user
      verified voting system that works much better than the current corporate model .

      We can pay per minute voice charges, or we can use VoIP .

      We can pay postage on each e-mail we send , or we can mass e-mail all our family members photos of our newborn child, wedding, or graduation .

      We can choose to realize its fiber with light pulses being turned on and off and using
      VERY little electricity, or we can say it costs TWICE as much to send 2 meg as it does 1 meg .

      We should all easily realize the cost of sending 2 meg of data vs. 1 meg of data is not simply double all expenses .

      Why did an OC-3 from chicago to washington cost 3 million per month in the late 90's ???

      I understand recouping the cost of implementation, but that OC-3 was but one virtual channel
      of many signals being sent down a DWDM fiber line that was a OC-192 as a single strand
      of fiber that had been laid for long distance phone calls over a decade before .

      The glass and putting it in the ground had long been paid for .

      $36 million USD a year for less than 2% of the pipe means that the pipe would make them over 50 times that a month at that rate, roughly 1.8 billion .

      They never laid just single strands, they laid bundles of multiple strands .

      But we must recognize one pricing scheme of long haul fiber, quadruple the bandwidth, half the price per Mbit cost .

      But then you come to the consumer, the more you want the more we are going to charge .

      Also consider the dark fiber situation ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber [wikipedia.org]

      Some areas have 30 times the fiber they need , and it just sits dark and has for years .

      With better and better DWDM and other compression technologies this just becomes even more pronounced .

      US taxpayers shelled out $200 Billion, yes billion, not million , to the major Telcos
      for a deployment of fiber to all homes in the US .

      This is what we got => http://www.newnetworks.com/Scandalreslease13006.ht m [newnetworks.com]

      The telcos much like bernie ebers of WCOM are nothing but a bunch of corrupt , crooked
      scam artists , and my uncle worked as a union steward for one for 30 years, so
      I have heard ALL the inside dirt from SBC .

      I got one word for the corporate whoring of the internet ..."scum"

      Other countries who were further behind us are now far ahead of us, and citizens have 100 Mega-bit fiber to their homes for reasonable prices .

      In the country that made the internet possible our corporate pimps are too wrapped in
      greed, and our politicians take 200 billion of tax payer dollars from us to give to the
      corporate pricks to just screw us all and want more money thru .... "Tiered Internet"

      Excuse me but this is Horseshit ... Once again greed wins .

      Ex-MislTech

    • Re:Municipal Wi-Fi (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bheer ( 633842 )
      > I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband.

      Do you have a right to good roads? clean air? power lines strung to your home? a crime-free neighbourhood? Come on, I am as much of a minarchist as the next man, but this is ridiculous.

      The point of progress is that conglomerations of people create more and better services for themselves. A hundred years ago it was New York getting wired to the elecric grid, why should it not be wired (or unwired) to the Internet today?
    • That argument sounds like the slippery slope fallacy.

      While I don't think broadband should necessarily be free, I wonder how many people in the 30's said that no one has a right to affordable telephone service or electricity. Wiring the USA for power and telephone was a significant but worthwhile investment that helped the post WWII booms. As it is, most of the nations that are ahead of the US in broadband acceptance were from state controlled telecomm that manages to be less regressive than the US telecom

    • I'm sorry, but no one has the right to have broadband.

      Nobody has the right to use a nice paved road to get from A to B, either. Some could pay to use it, others could plod up muddy trails, and still others could hack their way through the bush with a machete.

      But we do pave the roads, and we do make them freely available to everyone. You know why? Because it's better for society as a whole to let everyone be easily mobile than to set up toll booths everywhere and slow the whole system down. That's why w

    • Even though the taxpayers have already paid for extra-high speed broadband that has never become available?
    • That opinion piece uses arguments similar to those being used to ram government funded Wi-Fi down our throats.

      That's interesting. Prior to this, the only people I'd heard of who didn't like municipal wifi were companies who wouldn't be able to charge you $20/day for access at Starbucks (et. al.) Next time I move, the presence of municipal wifi will be a major attractor. I love the ability to sit down in a park or in a coffee shop or wherever I am that I might otherwise be just waiting, and be on the net
  • We can expect the US Government not to meddle with the 'net as much as they didn't mess with wikipedia entries...

    http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/ 29/1732238 [slashdot.org]
    • We can expect the US Government not to meddle with the 'net as much as they didn't mess with wikipedia entries...

      That wasn't the GOVERNMENT messing with the wikipedia entries (as a government action). That was some INDIVIDUAL POLITICIANS and/or their staff messing with the wikipedia entries.

      Meanwhile the reason you have an essentially unregulated and untaxed internet is that some FCC commissioners, over more than a decade, have had a bee up their butts about keeping the government's hands off the internet

  • The money quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by patdabiker ( 710704 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:47PM (#14700764) Homepage
    The money quote:

    "After all, once we get away from the idea that the pipes just move bits around without really caring what data is being transmitted, it's a small step to discriminating against some forms of content and then targeting specific sites, services or users."

    What if all the big ISPs start charging $0.10/min for VOIP? Or $1.00/mb from "long-distance" sites? Where does it end?
    • ... it ends with the USA losing its technological edge
    • And we'll cry the day when this turns from funny to an eerie prediction: http://www.bash.org/?142934 [bash.org]

      #142934 +(6986)- [X]

      docsigma2000: jesus christ man
      docsigma2000: my son is sooooooo dead
      c8info: Why?
      docsigma2000: hes been looking at internet web sites in fucking EUROPE
      docsigma2000: HE IS SURFING LONG DISTANCE
      docsigma2000: our fucking phone bill is gonna be nuts
      c8info: Ooh, this is bad. Surfing long distance adds an extra $69.99 to your bill per hour.
      docsigma2000: ...!!!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK
      docsigma20

  • if that did happen how would it affect.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slysithesuperspy ( 919764 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:49PM (#14700776)
    non-US countries?

    • I like how you've divided the world (Score:4, Funny)

      by Vicsun ( 812730 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @04:12PM (#14701121)
      "non-US countries"

      As opposed to all those other US-countries?
    • Non-US countries have been quietly running this since 1997. Been there, done that.

      It is just the US waking up and finally realising that instead of throwing good money after bad you can use your network intelligently. In fact not even US. Baby Bells. Homo Telephonicus. The scientists are unsure if it qualifies as a subspecies of Homo Sapiens. Most likely not. Other US companies like Level3 and Global Crossing have had QoS and possibility to pay for QoS since 2001 or so.

      All in all the Baby Bells are gate

  • Paradigm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RomulusNR ( 29439 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:49PM (#14700777) Homepage
    What is being proposed is more like building two roads into every town and up to every house, one smooth and well-maintained tarmac and the other a dirt track, and then letting Tesco and Waitrose bid for the right to use the good road.

    The problem with your analogy is that there is some New Business-man reading that and saying. "Hey! That's a fucking GREAT idea! (If I weren't a opportunist monkey, I might have thought of it myself!)"

  • Tunnels (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kd3bj ( 733314 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @02:50PM (#14700783) Homepage
    It would seem to me that shortly after some big corporation tries to segregate the Net, if there is
    any marginal advantage to the bandwidth carrying their segregated service, somebody will devise a way
    to tunnel other services through the "premium" bandwidth. If I can send you bits, I can code my data
    into those bits, steganographically if necessary, but there's no way the channel can stop me from
    sending whatever I want.

    So I say, bring it on. We'll have fun writing ironic tools like IPOV -- IP tunneling over Voice Channels -- betcha we can send up to 56K bits/sec on a 3 kHz analog voice link.

    • Re:Tunnels (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jacksonj04 ( 800021 )
      I like your IPoV idea. Perhaps we could get devices to 'dial' each other? Some kind of Mega Over-Driven Electric Messenger - M.O.D.E.M.

      That's the way it will go again if traffic becomes controlled by type. The only things that should have special attention paid to them are priority headers.
    • This seems sound reasoning to me. As a libertarian, I'm loath to rely on regulatory solutions. Can anyone think or a reason why we couldn't just start encrypting all our packets, or why regulation would be a better solution?

  • Let's not pay twice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by t7 ( 591821 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:01PM (#14700831) Homepage
    I'm going to take a step back and look at this purely from a consumers standpoint. I'm already paying comcast my $45+ a month to have a "blazing fast" connection so I can stream music and videos. Most news and video providing sites offer their streaming services for free, charging only for higher quality content. I fear if these sites must pay a premium to offer the same service they are currently providing free, that they cost will be passed down to the consumer.

    This will undoubtedly usher in a wide variety of subscriber fee based sites and services. I'm not looking forward to shelling out another $20+ a month to view streaming content on the handful of sites I like to visit.

    On a side thought, how would this affect Internet2? [wikipedia.org]

  • Digital Divide (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EEPS ( 829675 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:02PM (#14700838)
    I have heard for years about the "Digital Divide" that separates those with computer/internet access and those without. To offer multi level internet access would actually physically impose such a divide and make the internet a place for wealthy elitists. The low end internet would get worse and worse as companies wouldn't want to advertise to the people that don't have enough cash to get the higher level internet in the first place, thus you would get less content.

  • Pay to play (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Unknown_monkey ( 938642 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:12PM (#14700874)
    I think the problem is that the companies that want more money out of the internet have a mis-conception about the internet. It's a useful tool for me at home, but I can live without it when the cost exceeds affordability. I could have a gigabit line but I can't afford it, and when my broadband cost exceed my budget, I'll drop it and go to dialup, and if that is too costly, then I'll use regular mail. They think that if they are charging google, then the multi-billion dollar company will just give them money, but they miss that the source of the money is ultimately individuals using a service. That's why I switched from Compuserve to Prodigy, then Prodigy to a dialup bbs while out of work then to a Dialup provider for internet, up to isdn, then to DSL, then cable, then dsl, and now cable. It's all about what consumers are able to pay ultimately, not what the companies want to make in revenue.
    This is the same reason why I don't buy CD's, I know that at the same $14.99 that they have been charging for the last 15 years, that they are making obscene amounts of money. So I don't buy CD's and I just listen to the radio. But they see that change in my spending and decide I must be pirating music because no one is allowed to change habits in their worldview. Their marketing machine says that once a customer always a customer. So if you aren't buying from them, you must be stealing. This is the same worldview that the telecom networks that built the backbone of the net have, if they want more money from the system, they should just ask for it and people should give it to them. They think they are entitled to it.
    So let's all just cancel our internet access for a month. No one use the internet at all for anything.
    • >> So let's all just cancel our internet access for a month. No one use the internet at all for anything.

      Problem: We have to pay huge severance fees if we do. If we change the agreement we have with our ISPs, we have to pay them for the inconvienence. If they change the terms of service on us, we have to deal. Yeah, it blows.
  • It's not quite clear to me exactly what internet model the article is arguing against. I found there are two ways of reading it:
    • Two levels of bandwidth available" broadband and, presumably, superbroadband
    • One level of bandwidth to your house but with complex limits on the bandwidth from your provider to the rest of the world based on protocol, destination etc.

    The first I have no problem with: it's the same difference we have now between broadband and dialup. The second I find a lot more troubling. For

    • "This would be more like paying to have your house connected to the road system and then being told that to be allowed to drive your Rover on it will cost twice as much as your neighbour pays to drive his Ford."

      Have you looked at the taxes and license registration fees on that Rover as compared to that Ford?

  • Language is only as useful as the AGREED upon use and meaning of it is applied. It is that which enables communication.

    To see this from a matter of communication lines that can carry whatever transmission they might carry...

    What happens when some party tries to restrict a language? Another party breaks the rules in order to advance beyond the limitations of the restrictions.

    And of course you have those who play the markeing game in effort to distort the meaning so as to dishonestly gain market share (thanks

  • Translation for Americans (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tx ( 96709 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:27PM (#14700942) Journal
    "Tesco and Waitrose" is like Walmart and ... oh, that screws up my analogy, Walmart doesn't have any significant competitors ;).

  • Verison, ISPs and Napster (Score:5, Interesting)

    by usurper_ii ( 306966 ) <eyes0nly@NOSpAM.quest4.org> on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:35PM (#14700972) Homepage
    I seem to remember back when Napster was hitting its stride really well, analyst were saying that ISPs were going to reap the rewards because Napster was that golden application that was going to magically get everyone to sign up for high-speed Internet. Well, people did sign up in droves to use Napster, but as it turns out, ISPs wanted customers...but NOT the customers that actually used what they paid for. Yes, taking their cue from the insurance industry, ISPs want to sell every single person on the face of the earth an Internet connection, but they don't want everyone to actually use it, just pay for it.

    And now they want the customer's to not only not use it, but they want the content providers to pay them as well!

    It must be nice to have a business where everyone pays you, but you don't let them actually use your service! Now wait a minute, what exactly are we paying them for?

    I work at a small WISP and it's brought up constantly to filter out traffic. I always say, we sold this person high-speed internet...and this is what they want to do with it, why should we filter it?

    Usurper_ii
  • If there is a market for bandwidth, then let the market solve this problem. Unfortunately, too many people on BOTH sides of the issue don't want the market involved.

    Charging Google for their bandwidth usage is as silly as a State Department of Roads sending Walmart a bill for their customer's highway usage. That's because Google isn't the the user of the bandwidth.

    Way back in the beginning of internet time, if things had coalesced so that individual users paid for their individual bandwidth use, there wouls
  • Bill Thompson is wrong and so is Robert X. Cringley [pbs.org]. Yes, I said Cringley is wrong. Here's why: This is EXACTLY what we need. Bellsouth and the other idiots should be allowed to do with "their networks" what they please. Sure, in the short term we'll suffer a little bit more.

    But think about the long term.

    Will Google, Microsoft and the others pay Bellsouth's extortion? NO! Google is already building their own network and toying with ISPeeing in San Francisco. This attempted extortion would result in t

  • The right approach seems very obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday February 12, 2006 @03:57PM (#14701062) Journal

    ... to me, anyway.

    There's a conflict here between private companies, who should be allowed to structure their pricing and services any way they like, and the public good, which seems best served by undifferentiated transport. The author of the article believes that regulation is the right approach, that the government should tell ISPs how they can and cannot structure their business. I'm not so libertarian as to deny that government regulation is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to see it as a solution of last resort.

    In this case, I don't think it's necessary at all. It seems to me that we already have this notion of a "common carrier", which is a carrier of information who is not responsible for the nature of the information transported. If we simply establish the rule that ISPs that attempt to favor one sort of traffic over another lose their common carrier status and become liable for the content that flows across their networks, I really doubt that many will want to take that route. Non-common carrier ISPs will be a target for copyright lawsuits, defamation lawsuits, criminal charges for child pornography, etc. Any ISP that wants to provide preferential access to specific content had better carefully control *all* the content.

    Problem solved, IMO.

    If only the world were that simple...

    • The author of the article believes that regulation is the right approach, that the government should tell ISPs how they can and cannot structure their business. I'm not so libertarian as to deny that government regulation is sometimes necessary, but I prefer to see it as a solution of last resort.

      An easier answer is to end government protection of cable and telco companies by opening up the public servitude to more than a single telco and a single cable company. This eliminates the monopoly abuse problem

  • for the fact that the gov has allowed, and even encouraged, monopolies. For tiers to work and be fair, the gov. needs to disallow ALL monopolies. Right now, all network providers have some sort of monopoly that is killing true competition.

  • Even those who remember that the net emerged from a publicly-funded attempt to build a high-speed data network choose to claim that the days of subsidy are now over and that only deregulation can offer real benefits, both to companies and to the wider society.
    ...
    Of course they are wrong, and badly so.

    What he then forgets to mention is that TelCos and Cable companies are constantly on the recieving end of massive tax breaks + various incentives.

    Verizon would scream bloody murder if you messed with their tax

  • Limited access? Does this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MikeSty ( 890569 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @04:19PM (#14701145) Homepage
    net*split*

    On a more serious note, I think the Internet is fine as it is. Would you not agree that as it is, the internet is a very succesful thing? Why make such radical changes to it that could shake it up?

      Oh, whoops, this is capitalism.

    "Previous attempts to set up a two-tier net have failed"

    Does this say anything to anyone else? Yeah yeah, it's probably like people saying to the Wright brothers, "Previous attempts at flying have failed," but this is something of a totally different scope and I think that failure is imminent.

    The internet itself is a revolutionary public communications system. It is my opinion that the internet is far greater than the postal service or the telephone service. Not so much from a technical standpoint, but the fact is, so much of it is user-created and comes at little expense. It's a public form of communication, and it should be left as it is for the good of the people.

  • Let it be tiered (Score:2, Interesting)

    by otaasi ( 939715 )

    If the networks you're using aren't what is your ideal image of it, create your own. - I'm pretty sure nations like China will soon introduce their own version of the Internet. They're not too happy about the idea that the US still dominates it.
    This tiering idea has many good aspects, if you have a certain corporate stand to look at it. Of course, we would then have these corporation owned networks, as well the good old Internet.

    I think we already have a tiered system, alternative root nameservers and s

  • 2-Tiered or it won't happen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cfulmer ( 3166 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @04:50PM (#14701262) Journal
    Ignore for a second the fact that it's mainly the Telcos who are pushing for non-neturality... Imagine that you're the cable company and you're considering whether to invest a lot of money in taking your broadband internet service from 5 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s. If you do so, one of the main things your subscribers will do is watch high-quality video, including pay-per-view, over the Internet and they will stop buying your own pay-per-view service and may even cut back on their cable TV service. So, the total cost is the price of the roll-out plus the resulting drop in your video revenue. Will you do it?

    The answer depend on whether you can get enough new revenue from the service to pay for that total cost. If you are limited to getting the revenue from your subscribers, will that affect your decision? After all, the more you charge, the fewer people will want the higher-speed service.

    Telephone companies are in the same boat as cable providers -- they want to use the network to roll-out television as well.

    Also recognize that video is much less tolerant of network problems than web-browsing -- if you miss a video packet, the video quality diminishes. If you miss an HTTP packet, it'll get retransmitted and you won't even notice. There has to be some way of distinguishing who gets the higher quality. If it's free, then everybody will mark their traffic as high priority and nobody will get priority.

  • I don't think that's going to catch (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @07:09PM (#14701788) Journal
    Basically it's a balancing act. The US lawmakers want to decide if more money is to be had from the telcos or from the content providers. The balance in the long term is for the content providers. Specially if they are international content providers.

    Has anyone stopped to think what would happen if that idea suddenly became law, and it was adopted all over the world? Well, the German telcos, for example, would tax Google to allow a moderately good access. And then the French, and the Chinese, the Zambian, you name it. Everybody would partake into Google profits, and then Yahoo, and Amazon, Ebay, etc. The US would be taxed from foreign telcos. Of course that would be a two-way street, but the balance I think would be bad for the US, as it has so many content providers.

    I don't think US lawmakers would find the idea of US companies' profits being siphoned away to China, for example (think about how much the chinese could charge, if rates are by user) at all funny. So I don't think this is going to become law, ever.

  • Telcoms should charge per bit per mile (Score:3, Interesting)

    by geekee ( 591277 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @08:42PM (#14702238)
    Everytime I sign up for an unlimited service, I end up paying more than for a limited service. Let them charge per bit per mile and make it dirt cheap. Then companies that want to hog bandwidth with streaming video can pay a premium, while I can check my email and download patches for a lot less than my current DSL bill. Quit being a bunch of reactionaries, and pay your fair share. You'll probably find out you're being overcharged currently. Of course the overhead is a pain in the ass with this solution, but it's a simple example to illustrate my point, and to show you reactionaries that you're thinking about the problem the wrong way.

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