Posted on 06/09/2006 5:26:45 AM PDT by mathprof
What it really boils down to for me is keeping internet business playing field level.
The Vonage VOIP service makes for a good illustration. I'd bet many here use Vonage to save money over a traditional phone service. In some areas where a cable company is the sole broadband internet option, folks who have have been using Vonage with no issues for months are now seeing poor quality and lots of dropped calls. When they call tech support for their cable internet provider, they're told, "We can't guarantee any VOIP service besides our own. Oh, and guess what, we can sign you up right now if you like..."
Pretty much all of the broadband providers seem to be rolling out their own VOIP services (even traditional LD providers like Verizon with their VoiceWing service).
If a company is the sole provider of broadband in an area, what is their incentive not prioritize their own VOIP service's traffic, and degrade the quality of third party competitor's traffic like Vonage...
Net Neutrality, in some form (not necessarily this current incarnation), means to me not having to be railroaded into into my broadband provider's services. It means ensuring, that in the future, the net applications and services I run will be based on MY informed choice and not the whims of my ISP.
"Once again, wireless is cool but can't begin to compete with the potential or quality of transmission that fiber or cable can offer in regards to massive audio and video streams and files"
No I got your point but I think you are missing a bigger picture. You are focused on tech specs of today.
I am really hesitant to say things like "can't begin to compete". I have seen so many people make that claim over the past 25 years and later have to eat crow. So now I watch trends and see what people prefer.
Fiber is great for cities and towns that have them but to market fiber and recoup cost is not easy otherwise it would already be done. In business parlance, fiber is hard to 'globally scale' both physically and for marketing development. It requires siting, and it requires ownership. So far as I know it is not anywhere a public asset such as a sidewalk.
Fiber has better specs but it is still fiber and requires connected infrastructure. You already know that I am sure. But it needs to be emphasized because fiber is limited to contiguous real estate and that makes it economically dubious. In order to market it you must own enough of it to reach a market that will provide returns for continuing growth or you must lease and partner with everyone inbetween. That means you have to be a large corp like Comcast or an RBOC DSL and you would need as they need now local monopoly agreements.
Wireless is competing now and is really a good medium now with EVDO. It is getting better, alot better and will continue to get alot better. WIMAX is 7 times faster than EVDO and EVDO streams live action fast enough now for most people to enjoy.
The tech argument of Fiber vs. Wireless reminds me of the tech argument now undergoing between superconductor energy storage and energy matrix storage. Superconductors are definitely superior in all specs. But they require large permitted installations whereas an energy matrix can be put anywhere in portable fashion. In other words, the superconductor energy storage does not 'scale', the energy matrix does. Both accomplish the job designed for, but the energy matrix has so much more flexibility it is being voted by all grid operators as the technology of choice.
You will be stuck with cable for now because all your wifi access is connected at some point to cable, whether in your own digs or your provider's digs or your provider's provider's digs, etc..
What I mean is without cable, your wifi whether local or regional is dead.
Don't believe telecoms will have so much power. As long as the bandwidth licensing is by lottery, they can't foreclose on upstarts. Otherwise why have they not put Comcast out of biz?
But bandwidth lotteries are not even necessary with WIMAX technology. The beauty of WIMAX is that it allows small and large operators to use technology that packets and scrambles data in unregulated and unused bands like a HAM radio operator. WIMAX speed is phenomenal. So there can't be dialup obsolescence comparisons.
People enjoying the distribution of content is not what the debate is about. Again you miss the point. The debate is about big fat pipe infrastructure that the carriers are building and the application and content providers are profiting from.
Gotcha. That's true at the moment with some exceptions. There are regional businesses that are on the same wireless network, they somewhat subsidize the network. There are also peering agreements between some neighboring wireless networks.
My understanding of WiMax was that some vendors offered it 2.4 GHz for testing with plans to move to a higher licensed frequency for rollout. Like WiFi, WiMax does not solve the cable problem you are talking about until there is better wide area mesh routing that everyone can install. Ultimately, being on the side of a mountain, I will be both a relay point and access point for a number of other nodes. I will gladly volunteer my time and power (switching to solar) to do this. The routing code will be open source and the network will be open and free for everyone subject to BW limits that the routers will take care of.
You have no clue what you're talking about.
are building????
There is so much fiber now in some cities that it would take several decades to even consider laying more fiber.
Since I am missing the point why don't you enlighten us as to why fiber hasn't taken over the world of telecom?
I suspect you are an ex-fiber investor/worker that got burned financially/laid off.
Grudgingly, I am not with the GOP on this issue.
And stop labelling net neutrality with government regulation because that is misleading. What if the interstate highway system was administered by the private sector, with high speed lanes for rich fatcats ?
Whether we care to admit it or not, government funded research made the internet possible in the first place.
BUMP
Hey! Good luck to you!
You are on the frontlines of the wireless revolution.
No question in my mind that the world is trending towards a total wireless setup.
Please freepmail me from time to time and keep me posted. Thanks!
Right. This isn't really a question of the free market, because with last-mile monopolies there often is no effective free market. Given that, this may be the one time out of ten.
Yeah goodbye to Free Republic if your local cable system or telco has a liberal bent. Prohibitive access fees will be levied depending on political correctness of the web site you are trying to access.
BUMP
I hope so. That's what keeps me from fully supporting neutrality legislation; if wireless does take over it would be bad to have now-unneeded laws on the books that could possibly be abused.
Pinging you to #74.
#74 mentions the Reason Foundation, so I visited their site and read this article they have up: Network Neutrality Is a Terrible Idea.
It's an interesting read.
I don't pretend to be unbiased on this topic or super well informed. I just have little trust for my cable ISP, the sole broadband provider for my area, who has behaved unethically many times in the past.
Hopefully, the explosion of broadband options that many Freepers seem to predict will truly be soon in coming, which should hopefully make all of my concerns moot.
Unfortunately, the bills are not written to define regulations by "as meant to fadinglight". It doesn't matter what "net neutrality" means to you, what matters is what effect the regulations would actually have on the internet, on ISP's, and on future internet innovators. (That might be one of the reaons that the pro-regulators chose this term for their attempts to regulate the internet.)
Check out any of the links that I have posted on this thread to get more information about what the innocent sounding "net neutrality" really means and what is really being proposed, and you will see that the reality and the understanding that you posted are quite divergent.
I'm setting in a Starbucks now posting on their wireless network.
And as soon as this big fat guy moves and quits blocking the signal, I'll .............
Thanks for that link. I for one will be happy to see the "last-mile" goons go out of business. They are a huge pain to deal with from every aspect---business, personal, political, etc. Good riddance!
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