Remember when the telcos and cable companies squashed talk of Net neutrality legislation by saying they would never try to block content on the Web? Then Comcast decided to discriminate against BitTorrent files and Verizon Wireless decided that it wouldn’t allow certain politically-charged text messages to go over its network (before quickly reversing itself). Well, some Senators remember. And now they are talking about a probe. In a letter calling for hearings, two Senators point out:
The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers ‘a solution in search of a problem.
At least someone in Washington is paying attention. If the telcos are going to start asserting their right to decide what kind of information can or cannot go over the Internet, then they are asking for Net neutrality to once again become a big political issue. They should really stick to their “quality of service” arguments.
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Well this should be interesting.
Check out this image and it will put this into some perspective. http://i7.tinypic.com/5z6vt4n.jpg
@ ml #2…..wtf is that?
Maybe it would be a good idea to name the two Senators?
Jeff: The image shows what could happen without net neutrality. ISP’s breaking down content into different categories and charging accordingly.
Michael,
I thought this was a libertarian blog…what’s with Erick’s socialist slant?
The ISPs own their pipes. If they determine that BitTorrent puts such a strain on those pipes that they must expend excessive capital to maintain a constant QoS, then so be it. They have to protect their shareholders ROI - that’s capitalism. The government should not be able to tell a service provider how it can provide its service.
And yes, I realize the telcos and MSOs only exist today because of their past government-backed monopolies…but two wrongs don’t make a right.
Remember, people - their is no “public Internet” in America.
@ Jeff - What internet would be like it the internet companies could charge whatever they wanted for different types of content
@ ML
Whats even scarier is that I can imagine they would also have pricing for people who can only afford to go to just one website. Its like AOL all over again. Esshhh Very scary .
@Ed,,,it would be the same. Yes some companies might do that…but then you would see some company come out with an internet service thats like now, everyone w*ould switch to it…and the big companies would reverse their decisions.
A true free market dominates all, too bad we don’t live in a free market economy and lobbyists can pressure our congressmen to screw over any attempt at competition
I wish politicians would talk with Google about net neutrality. Its not just ISP’s who can act as content gatekeepers anymore.
@ ML and Ed
Okay, now I get it and now I am scared! That would SUCK!
@ Jeff - Yes, yes it would. However, as Andrew and Philipp point out, there is some hope in a supposedly free market.
Equal access to por…errr…..the internet!
There are no free markets without free information.
Hm, the problem is that there aren’t ISP’s willing to deal with the intense strain of all the internet traffic nowadays. Free markets are those without interference from the goverment, but if the merchants themselves want to modify their way of business then they are in their right as Ted Spock points out. Don’t confuse my little rant with being against net neutrality, I’m all for it.
Telcos, googles and yahoos should all be warned! That is scary. With a flip of a switch they can turn off our freedom and we won’t even notice it until it is too late.
There are “no free markets without free information” is the dumbest thing I have read besides your original post. It makes no sense. Pick another cliche out of your magic cliche hat.
You dont own the ISP. If you want to own an ISP get one. then you can offer all the net neutrality you want and the customers will come running. Its not good to go your whole life feeling like a powerless blob who can only get things done through whine’ing. MMMMmom he wants to shut access off thats not fair! call Mr Senator to take care of it Jimmy.
The notion that the telcos and cablecos are free to do whatever they want with “their” networks is nonsense. First of all, these have an remain heavily regulated companies, with at least 51 state and federal regulators overseeing their business activities. To obtain a less regulated state of competition, all of these companies made deals with regulatory bodies and legislatures, few of which have they honored. Executive teams at these companies will continue to violate such agreements so long as the FCC and Congress let them. What you see now is a few Congress-people awaking from their stupor to the seriousness of the flawed telecom policies of the US government (under Clinton and Bush administrations). Our country has neither a fully deregulated telecom industry, nor a fully regulated one. For as long as this purgatory continues, the US consumers and businesses will not get access to communications services that are and will be available in other countries around the world. By fully regulated, I don’t necessarily mean like the old ATT days. A more viable model would be a fully regulated wholesale monopoly that must provided bandwidth on a common basis to all its customers, which would be the entities actually providing service to businesses and consumers. Alternatively, a completely deregulated environment would reserve certain radio spectrum bandwidth for government use, and let the “market” sort out how the rest should best be used.
Regarding Ted’s assertion that there is no public Internet in America, that’s also nonsense. While ISP’s are unregulated, the underlying networks (physical and logical for OSI enthusiasts) are regulated and therefore subject to public policy expressed vis those regulations. There would be no Internet as we know it now had the Internet not originated as a public service of the federal government. As a former telco employee who participated in the planning process, I can assert this as a fact. Prior to the creation of the Mosaic browser in 1994, all the RBOC’s were attempting to build their own “information superhighway” or broadband network. It was the intent of each RBOC to tightly control all content on that network, as well as the devices that were permitted to attach to it. In that world, their would have been no Amazon, Ebay, Google or Facebook, because the telco bureaucrats would never have allowed it. Fortunately for us all, Netscape popularized the Mosaic browser, AOL popularized dial-up Internet access and the RBOC’s have been trying to put the unregulated Internet genie back in the bottle ever since.
The telco/cablecos excel at one thing and one thing only - manipulating the regulatory bodies. They know their legacy business (voice minutes sold on a metered usage basis). They do not know how to transition that business model to a broadband, open access environment. So every attempt to “manage” P2P taffic, or VOIP traffic, or locked cell phones is simply an attempt to revert the world to one they understand. To believe otherwise is foolish, especially if you have never listened to an internal telco/cableco discussion of such issues. Bottom line: unless Congress wises up to the real state of affairs, bandwidth will remain a scarce and rationed commodity in the US, while other countries with more enlightened telecom policies develop a surpluses (France, Korea, Japan, Scandinavia, etc.).
One more (wishful) thought. The ideal scenario would be a completely disruptive communications technology, which as is typically the way with disruptive innovations, would obliterate the current regulatory environment and business models while delivering vastly superior service. Wishful.
Ted@6: Wait a minute, *who* owns the pipes? Specifically, who owns the last-mile copper?
Seriously folks, the telcos might be doing a bad job with the internet tubes right now…
But do we seriously want to give the GOVERNMENT regulatory control over the internet?
Can you imagine the “Bureau of Intertube Technologies”?
How can we begin to imagine that our government wouldn’t end up abusing that power to the detriment of users, not to mention taxing the living daylights out of innovation on the web?
Lets not forget who we’re really talking about here.
Nic: Why does it have to be regulated by the Bureau of Scarydumb Words? Why not sweep it under the existing PUC organizations? Phone, cable & internet…which not so coincidentally is how the existing carriers are packaging their products.
Ok, are we expecting action out of a Congress with lower ratings than the President, having done virtually nothing (not talking about party orientation - just the fact that nothing has come out whatever the excuses), to control the likes of Comcast that is now slowing down video uploads ?
Feel free to express your opinion on this website (forum, not blog) and voice your opinion - the more the better.
Website didn’t come up in the last post : http://www.justexpressing.com/.....st.php?g=w
Net neutrality is a very important factor for the continued existence of internet and e-commerce, so the senators should stop calling for a probe and start probing right away and any Telco or Cable cos found in violation should be severely punished and fined.
There are “no free markets without free information” is the dumbest thing I have read besides your original post. It makes no sense. Pick another cliche out of your magic cliche hat.
You dont own the ISP. If you want to own an ISP get one. then you can offer all the net neutrality you want and the customers will come running. Its not good to go your whole life feeling like a powerless blob who can only get things done through whine’ing. MMMMmom he wants to shut access off thats not fair! call Mr Senator to take care of it
The telco/cablecos excel at one thing and one thing only - manipulating the regulatory bodies. They know their legacy business (voice minutes sold on a metered usage basis). They do not know how to transition that business model to a broadband, open access environment. So every attempt to “manage” P2P taffic, or VOIP traffic, or locked cell phones is simply an attempt to revert the world to one they understand. To believe otherwise is foolish, especially if you have never listened to an internal telco/cableco discussion of such issues. Bottom line: unless Congress wises up to the real state of affairs, bandwidth will remain a scarce and rationed commodity in the US, while other countries with more enlightened telecom policies develop a surpluses (France, Korea, Japan, Scandinavia, etc.).
These people cannot even turn on their own computers!
FGS! Keep them away from the web!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Yep, Net neutrality is actually big issue without intervention from internet community and Government it is harder to implement.
Net Neutrality and more regulation are not good. Period.
Look at the vast amount of innovation that occurs because people are (relatively) free to move around and take risks. Many people complain about the oil companies. Imagine if they were less regulated and execs saw opportunities to make money by, say, building new refineries? They’d leave and create start-ups. That doesn’t happen because the barriers are too high. Even with the vast amounts of money to be made, the local, state, federal, etc. regulatory environment makes it difficult. Then, add in the environmentalists/socialists and the legal world and you can see why we’re stuck with very large oil companies. People complain about them being so big, but our own system creates this mess and no one talks about it!!
If there is some continuum that covers the amount regulation of the big internet companies, moving to more regulation is only going to hurt us all in the long run as fewer people get involved in startups that compete or tangentially compete with these companies (Comcast, Verizon, etc.)
This is not rocket science. Regulation generally favors the big guys and puts a damper on the ability of smaller players to compete. Regulation also invites the legal system to slow things down: more and more attorneys will be going after companies – which further solidifies the big guys and keeps out the small guys.
Adeline (from a previous post) said, “the telco/cablecos excel at one thing and one thing only - manipulating the regulatory bodies”. While I wouldn’t be so one sided that they don’t do anything else well, the reason they are so good at manipulating the regulatory bodies is because the regulatory bodies become close to being single biggest aspect of operating the business. We read all the time about how Intel, etc. has Moore’s Law to deal with. Throw regulation at Intel and the wheels will come off the track. So we want more regulation for telcos/cablecos????
In short, we should resist this Net Neutrality and many regulations.
The 1000lb gorilla in the room is encryption. http://www.copowi.com has just launched a campaign to ‘become invisible for net’s sake’. Seems to me the logical solution to the whole net neutrality issue.
Just a bit more on to my post above….if you look at this:
http://www.techdispenser.com/slots/view/2921
you’ll see that there are now 40 laws for security breaches. While these notice regulations are probably good, do we need 40?
All this does is increase the sophistication required to jump-start a business that conducts sales on the web. The big guys like it because it tends to limit the smaller, more nimble start-ups from sprouting. Lawyers like it because it generates hours of time.
We need to realize that business is good. I say this because there are the socialists out there who love regulation because it actually does slow things down - that’s what they want.
For the rest of us, we need to keep educating the public and try to do a good job of being stewards of people’s money, privacy, etc.
I generally put the die-hard Net Neutrality crowd in the Socialist realm. The rest of the people who buy into Net Neutrality do it because it sounds good.
Moving forward, we not only have to educate the public, but we have to push for regulations that consider and acknowledge that “business is good” and reject regulations that have side effects that hurt business. (Using the words “unintended side effects” is wrong, because for some people, the side effects that negatively affect business are a main driver.)
Hey, loving the buzz around net neutrality. It’s been a matter of time, and the first shoe has fallen.
If you were hired today as a consultant for Comcast PR and Corporate Communications, what would you do?
I’m holding this survey over at: http://jburg.typepad.com/futur.....212;i.html.