Give Me Bandwidth . . . (No one to root for in the net neutrality debate)

The Weekly Standard ^ | June 26, 2006 | Andy Kessler

[FreedomNeocon]

Its simple... less regulation is better regulation.

Oppose any kind of law or rule or stupid plan thought up and passed by congress or lobby groups.

Let 'nature' (and the market) take its course.

[familyop]

Civil defense was one of the reasons that the US Army designed the Internet. I wouldn't want to see control of it handed to PC, socialist corporates.

[proxy_user]

OK.

There is no demand for Free Republic. Only a few thousand people are interested.

So instead of Free Republic, you will be seeing football and dancing girls on your computer. These are of interest to millions.

[Ma3lst0rm]

If telcos want more money for their infrastructure then by all means they can raise their rates. There are other options on the horizon and congress should pass laws to make it easier for new technology to be deployed and compete with the existing monopolies. The idea that the telcos aren't making enough money for what they provide is laughable. They are making out like bandits and it is already the case that as companies like google need more bandwidth they have to buy more high speed lines and the telcos make more money and as web hosting sites need more bandwidth they buy more high speed lines and the same thing occurs. The idea that we are going to shift control of the internet content into the hands of telco executives is the absolute worst thing that could happen to the internet and would guarantee the worst kind of corporate politics coming into play.

I think this idea is going to die a quick death. The telcos should just offer better more expensive high speed lines that provide the value and performance companies need on the information superhighway. They can do that now without any additional complication to anyone but no they want more power and more control and the ability to raid the coffers of big internet companies like Google like the government already raids the coffers of everyone while providing very little increase in quality of service.

These companies seem filled with the most greedy and most out of touch people in the world. It is clear they spend way too much time in Washington because company executives are becoming indistinguishable from our out of touch congressmen and women. It is bad enough that media companies think they own you and how you use the media you buy from them without the telcom companies being able to play games threatening the cutting off the bandwidth spigot whenever they want to make up for a downturn in company profits due to mismanagement or what not. I'm just glad that a clear majority of people think they are crazy.

[P-40]

This net neutrality business is starting to sound like BS...

[elmer fudd]

One thing I can tell you as a cable technician is that analog TV is the primary impediment to faster cable internet connections. Simply put, way too much of our bandwidth, (about 70% in most systems), is used up delivering those 75 channels with the crappy picture quality. What's more that bandwidth occupies the choicest part of the spectrum. When we finally dump the analog channels cable internet service will become much faster and more reliable.

[Dallas59]

The net will go if I have to start paying more.

[P-40]

So instead of Free Republic, you will be seeing football and dancing girls on your computer. These are of interest to millions.

You can already get football by cable...and I already have dancing girls on my PC. When I renegotiate for my T1 lines every year I talk with the ISP about my bandwidth usage and the time of day I will need it. We work out something on rates then. My ISP does a similar deal each year with their providers. All that money builds bigger and bigger pipes.

The more you use the more you pay. That works out well enough.

[Eastbound]

A slow-speed, dial-up, out in the boonies BUMP!

[BlueOneGolf]

BUMP to read later

[kms61]

then why do so many "socialist," or at least more heavily regulated countries like France, et al, have better, cheaper, faster, internet service? That's not a rhetorical question, I really want to know the answer. Seems like something about the US internet business model ain't working.

[staytrue]

problem is you can't just go and start a cable co. and start running cable

so when the cable co. starts screaming "no regulation" and no net neutrality, it is hard to side with them.

I might go with no to net neutrality if all regulations against setting up a competing cable co. were done away with. that will never happen though.

[AndyTheBear]

ping

[ConservativeMind]

Post for later reading.

[FreedomNeocon]

Don't act so stupid.

I said any legislation, including the current one which basically says "no next day express, not same day, no overnight delivery.. all packages must be the same"

I trust the market... you obviously do not. If FR only had a thousand interested people, it would not need the same bandwidth of on-demand HBO.

If it was too slow, then there would be ways to get it faster. If you could accept that you could get 150kbps for streaming video from HBO.com, while only 100kbps from FreeRepublic then its a mute point.

Then again, FR is VERY BW friendly, and could look into compression (gzip posts could reduce any kind of text traffic, as long as a compliant client would be smart enough to handle the extra compression) if it ever was a problem.

As I said.. keep the damned laws and regulations out of it... on BOTH SIDES. Let the market and innovation and personal web site owners and visitors worth tough was IS, not stupid congress legislate WHAT MIGHT BE.

[DB]

Okay, then lets rip up all the wires and fiber running through public right of ways and let these companies solve their point to point access problems via the markets.

And until then, they can be regulated to serve the publics best interest while they use public resources.

[P-40]

then why do so many "socialist," or at least more heavily regulated countries like France, et al, have better, cheaper, faster, internet service?

I have not found this to be the case.

[neb52]

I think the analogy the author is using is incorrect. I prefer to compare the Infrastructure owners to the Federal/State Highway system. The Verizon and AT&Ters are wanting to put toll booths on the off ramps of their network which at the moment that only get paid for the on ramp access. What I find funny is that the really big Infrastructure owners like Level3 and WilTel haven't piped up on this issue.

What I can't understand is how would,for ex., AT&T implement a system to bill say Goolge for the amount of content that has gone across AT&T's network. Google already pays somebody for Internet access and I would imagine that they pay close to 20 different providers for bandwidth. So it just sounds to me that a few and I mean a few of the Infrastructure owners want to add a private tax.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Wow. That's one poorly written article.