Posted on 09/19/2009 11:02:26 AM PDT by Admiral_Zeon
There’s never going to be an ideal internet and “net neutrality” is a day late and $10 billion too much. It takes time, but customers are able to vote with their feet when their ISP becomes too restrictive. I fear the FCC more and wish they would butt out as that capricious, politicized bunch has entirely too much power already; however, as the article hints there may be more to this than first meets the eye. The Obama administration is always up to their old tricks and they don’t care if the first admendment stands in their way. Suggest you find out what “net neutrality” really means once the ink is dry on the regulations.
You miss the key element of what the net neutrality rule would do - which is NEUTER. Obama and his czars need to leave well enough alone - basically with everything they touch and insist on “changing.” Americans have had quite enough of it already. Much more of this “change” they want to inflict upon us and we’ll be wanting an impeachment type change.
I believe this is also becoming important because of the big increases in smart phone use over 3G networks.
When you have AT&T wireless and Apple creating exclusive agreements with each other and thus dictating specifically what applications can be used on these devices and on its network.
Such as the recent revelation that Apple & AT&T are continuing to block all Google iVoice Apps from running on the iPhone and being available at the Apple App store.
Sounds like a back door to an internet fairness doctrine to me. Once they have the power it will be perverted to do the 180 degree opposite of what they promised.
***
I am in telecom ...
You guys don’t seem to get it - Net Neutrality is about access, NOT content.
Internet providers SHOULD have the ability to block the download of illegal content.
BUT
Internet providers SHOULD NOT have the ability to block free speech.
That being said, the exigence for Net Neutrality lies in the ACCESS to content.
Example:
Suppose I have Verizon FIOS and they have a movie download site. But, I use NetFlix because of better pricing, choices, customer service, etc.
Verizon wants to throttle back my NetFlix downloads to say 12 hours, while NOT restricting downloads from their site.
All in an attempt to get me to switch from NetFlix to the FIOS movie app.
The Big Boys (Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, etc.) are AGAINST Net Neutrality for one reason - and one reason only ... MONEY !!!
NOW - if the Big Boys want to charge more for content transport of NetFlix’s traffic that is fine ...
AS LONG AS THEY INCREASE THE CHARGE (ON THE BOOKS) THAT THEY ASSESS THEIR OWN COMPARABLE MOVIE SERVICES ...
This keeps a level playing field.
Now, if Netflix (or the Big Boys) need to increase pricing to their customers because of the increase in transport cost - that is fine. They may even introduce tiered pricing (maximum bandwidth allowed). ***
BUT THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO THROTTLE BACK THEIR LOW-PAYING CUSTOMERS, WHILE LETTING THEIR HIGHER PAYING CUSTOMERS GO THROUGH UNFETTERED.
*** This is similar to Netflix’s own pricing structure at this time - pay $9.95/month, get one movie at a time ... pay more, get more movies at a time.
Read this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10355714-266.html?tag=rtcol;relnews - “net neutrality” is being pushed by Henry Waxman and other dems. Note the sentence that the term net neutrality is “not well defined”. If you can’t see that this is government takeover of the internet...
Technology is on the way. Electronic switches are the bottleneck. Optical switch interfaces will be 1000X faster.
“5% of the users use 95% of the bandwidth while downloading their bootleg MP3s and BitTorrents. Why do we have to subsidize their activity?”
You don’t have to subsidize them you know. Most cable folks can shift to DSL to save money, or if DSL is too fast (and expensive), then dialup is available at reduced cost. We live in the boondocks, so sats were the only thing available outside of dialup which was not acceptable for our level of use. Sats are expensive, but well worth it. I never worried about others using more than I did. As time went by, speed increased to the point that suppertime reduction in speed wasn’t noticeable, or at least we did the high capacity stuff later in the evening. Rural fiberoptics (yes, there is such a thing), solved many of the problems associated with satcom (lag and capacity issues. Technology marches on!
You’re asking the wrong question. If bandwidth is a problem, then work at getting the bandwidth increased. The speed is unbelievable, compared to what was available 10 years ago. Comcast is bumping it up swiftly. It’s not like the capacity is going to remain static, else we’d all still be on dialup. Tell the ISP’s to increase their capacity. Demand drives technology. Viewing bandwidth as a zero sum game is unrealistic. Ten years from now the current internet will be considered quaint, and the applications.....limited.
Much of the media content will be delivered over the net, Hulu being a great example of what is to come. Skype video conferencing is another high bandwidth app that would have been considered “magic” a decade ago. Don’t bemoan the fact the others use more capacity than you (they’re either going to use more or less). Without demand, there is no increase in capacity. All it takes is additional investment and R&D. It’s coming anyway, so encourage it.
Internet Fairness Doctrine? Starts to smack of that to me. Why does anything need to be done?
marxist and communist info distributed worldwide?
Time Warner says the top 5 percent of users, largely peer-to-peer file sharers, consume more than half its capacity (source). P2P is responsible for as much as 90% of all net traffic (source). P2P traffic consumes anywhere between 49 and 89 percent of all Internet traffic daily (source).
I don't care about P2P per se - I'm not arguing the ethics of it one way or the other; it is none of my business. The problem is P2P, Netflix, video-on-demand, whatever, by a small number of users domainating the available bandwidth without paying proportionately for it. My beef is with Obama's new FCC appointee forcing me to subsidize the Internet hogs on my nickel.
"Just use DSL" doesn't cut it - level 2 and level 3 tiers are getting hammered too, and everyone suffers for it. Market forces would normally fix it, but as usual the government wants hammer down our throats their unrealistic regulations in the name of 'fairness'.
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