It’s a series of tubes!
posted at 2:45 pm on October 25, 2009 by MadisonConservative
Years ago, along with many others, I heard the words that would come to immortalize Alaska disgrace Ted Stevens:
And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.
Hence, the occasional reference to the internet as “the tubes”. For those unfamiliar with what net neutrality is, I’ll try to explain in a more coherent way. Internet providers like Comcast, Charter, Road Runner, etc. sell access to the internet through their networks. If you subscribe to their services, everything you access on the internet first goes through their private property. Now, theoretically, as it is their private property, and you’re choosing to pay to use it, they can make the rules on what you can access. However, historically, they haven’t. Why? Well, they know that if you can’t access what you want using their service, you can go find another.
Sadly, for some, this isn’t an option. Lack of coverage by multiple companies in many areas restricts consumers to one provider, and in some rural areas, broadband still isn’t available at all. Compared to areas of the world like Europe and Japan, the United States lags quite a bit in its internet infrastructure, both in coverage and pipeline speeds. While we’re paying upwards of 50 dollars a month for 5-10 megabit connections, 50 megabit connections are standard and much cheaper overseas. I’ve never been able to find a coherent answer as to why, but government restriction on expansion comes to mind. With that in mind, I’ll continue.
Despite these conditions, internet providers like AT&T and SBC have been lax in restricting content. Comcast took a good deal of heat for throttling, and in some cases blocking, peer to peer network traffic. This is more commonly known as torrent activity, or file sharing networks. Now, these networks are best known for their pirate traffic, although there is plenty of legitimate material that passes through as well. Most other providers do not exert any control over these networks. They’re making their own choices on what to do with their private networks…and this pisses off proponents of net neutrality.
Net neutrality is the proposal that the FCC prevent internet providers from making choices about content control on their networks. Their fears are that in the future, providers could set up tiered systems that dictate content delivery. Large companies and corporations could pay a fee to have their content would be delivered with top priority to their customers, while smaller companies or private individuals would have to settle for a less expensive option that would deliver their content with slower speed. Those that don’t pay a fee could possibly not have their information accessible at all, or at a very slow speed.
Now, I don’t see these fears as irrational, personally. I’ve worried about a similar situation, but based more on political motivation and leanings of providers, that might block out content they find “offensive” or “objectionable”. However, there is a single point that overrides both my concerns and the concerns of net neutrality proponents: the proposed solution is to have the government dictate what private internet providers can or cannot do with their private property.
This is where the whole concept falls apart. People who don’t trust corporations instead want to place control over the internet in the hands of the government. Sound familiar?
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Good account. This series of tubes doesn’t need regulation.
darii on October 25, 2009 at 4:04 PM
Well you can’t have it both ways. A Gov’t protected monopoly comes with strings attached.
ronsfi on October 25, 2009 at 4:07 PM
We are running out of tubes!
Demand is growing far faster than bandwidth.
It’s perfectly reasonable to offer tiers for bandwidth usage. Additional fees for increased usage will help fund more tubes!
jhffmn on October 25, 2009 at 4:18 PM
The government sold the “public” TV bandwidth to corporations for a pittance and forced the populace, which was not consulted, to junk tens of millions of perfectly good TV sets (an environmental mess still in the pipeline) when the broadcasters digitized the new area of the spectrum they were using. Or the people had to buy converters (which are mediocre at best when using over-air signals) to be able to continue getting some of their original channels. And most of the smaller portable TV’s will just be trashed, since the costs to convert are prohibitive, and the coverter boxes are too cumbersome for these sets.
There was no appreciable media scrutiny of this massive boondoggle, which weakened the nation’s ability to communicate (SEE: EMP threat), since digital signals are more succeptible to disruption than the cruder, older analog versions.
A rational plan would have been to co-broadcast both signal types, since redundancy in an emergency is the norm in security arrangements. And communication is essential to national security.
Having demonstrated their corruption and lack of foresight in this vital realm, we can expect no better when they venture into the “tubes”.
profitsbeard on October 25, 2009 at 4:19 PM
In the late 90′s UE (a Missouri power company) was working on broadband over the power lines that looked promising for bringing everyone high speed access. I don’t know what happened but Net Neutrality is designed not to provide equal access but to provide some ones idea of proper access.
fourdeucer on October 25, 2009 at 4:21 PM
Seriously, it is at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger cost to upgrade network capacity than it is to upgrade content provider infrastructure, especially with the goal of universal distribution.
Meanwhile I have buried in my front yard three bundles of presumably fiber optic high capacity data cable, and I can’t even get DSL from my local telecom because I’m too far from the Central Office.
Skandia Recluse on October 25, 2009 at 4:25 PM
Sorry to say this but that’s flat out wrong !
The price can sometimes be +/- 25% cheaper in Europe (depends country) but the speeds are about the same as you guys have in the US, except maybe in Sweden or in the center of some major cities…
In Switzerland, where I live, the standard speed is about 10 megabit/s but again, ONLY for those who live in cities. In the countryside it’s more like 4 megabits/s, that is, if you are lucky enough to be eligible for DSL or cable…
mosxquito on October 25, 2009 at 4:28 PM
MC,
What’s the sq mile area of Europe and Japan? The US? What are the population densities? Are the least densely populated areas served? Can I get service on the slope of Mt Fuji or in the Alps?
Tom
marinetbryant on October 25, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Back in 1996, the baby bells promised 45-50 mbps by 2006 in DSL. Where is it?
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 4:32 PM
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 4:36 PM
Since there is no there there, in the world of the internet, other than the ‘pipes’ they have nothing else to grab at. In fact, with wireless access, even the pipes are gone. As we have seen, the various technical issues regarding line speeds and access is best solved by innovation and competition. Personally, I have flipped through 3 different carriers over the last few years and I am considering changing again. And yes, at one point I was told I was to far away for certain access levels, magically this changed with third party access becoming available.
There is clearly some other hidden agenda at play in this ‘net neutrality’ game. Could it be some sort of ‘redistribution of the internet wealth’? Is this really just an attempt to create a new tax structure for content providers to pay into? Maybe a scheme to tax by the byte?
Freddy on October 25, 2009 at 4:40 PM
One of the biggest reasons we lag behind Europe and Asia in broadband speeds and infrastructure is as easy to see as this map.
Keep in mind that many advanced countries whose density supposedly compares with ours may have a pattern like Canada’s or Australia’s where the bulk of the population hugs a piece of the landmass with the rest barely populated.
In Tokyo, you can put in infrastructure and know that unless your technology sucks, you can get enough subscribers per unit of infrastructure to be profitable. You don’t have that guarantee in Dallas.
Sekhmet on October 25, 2009 at 4:41 PM
back to the smoke signals to get our word out.
suzyk on October 25, 2009 at 4:42 PM
So sleazy Ted thinks that the internet is battery of artillery?
MB4 on October 25, 2009 at 4:45 PM
I love having this kind of political debate. This is the twenty-first century. These are the things that will be issues when the Boomers are long in their graves.
One of the most annoying things about leftist fascism is its focus on re-fighting and re-fighting all the battles of the 20th century. This is how we move into the future. This is one of the ways to survive—having the new ideas, thinking about the future.
Just an aside.
Sekhmet on October 25, 2009 at 4:47 PM
Except we paid them 200 billion to do it.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 4:48 PM
Up one tube, down the other. all with a happy smile.
hawkman on October 25, 2009 at 4:50 PM
It would have but they have GREAT lobbyists here.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 4:51 PM
with wireless, the cables are replaced by towers and transmitter/receiver.
Those same towers that many/some people do not want in their neighborhoods.
Those cable in my front yard were buried there without my permission though technically they are on the highway right of way.
Personally I blame the monopoly attitude of the telecos, and their resistance to innovation because of the uncertainty and cost of innovation, their long history of government regulation, and their believe that government should regulate and pay for infrastructure.
Skandia Recluse on October 25, 2009 at 4:53 PM
I’m totally for net neutrality because the only thing worse than government is the cable company. And the telephone company built all that infrastructure they “own” while playing the regulation game to kill any competition and manage an above average profit.
Keep in mind that these companies were against net neutrality long before P2P existed. They make more money selling content than internet access. They want they want the ability to hinder access to any content but their own so we have to do business with them. On this we should say no. I consulted to these bastards. That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.
I’m not asking for any serious regulation on the internet here. I just want there to be a level playing field so I can access what I want when I want without monopolies controlling my access and gouging me in the process.
Oh, and this issue has nothing to do with providing broadband to underserved areas. The telecos are just using that as the excuse de jure. Even if defeat net neutrality, they have no incentive to offer broadband where it’s not offered, particularly in areas where they don’t think they can make enough profit.
Strick on October 25, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Why?
Jaibones on October 25, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Fiber is just fiber. It isn’t switches, it isn’t NOC personnel, it isn’t the guys who come by and fix the fiber if some j-hole with a backhoe doesn’t watch what he’s doing. Wires aren’t a power station.
That backhoe brings up another point. I’ve known telecom repair guys. The Good Fairy they ain’t. Someone pays their salaries. And that somebody isn’t going to pay their salary to fix the fiber if they don’t have some ownership of that fiber.
Sekhmet on October 25, 2009 at 4:56 PM
If the cable company sucks, I can go with Hughes.net satellite, my telco’s DSL, or do all my net surfing at work.
I can only chase government bureaucrats out with a gun.
Sekhmet on October 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM
The argument about rural areas and no options — well, we’re used to it. I have exactly two choices for high-speed internet: My phone company and some satellite option.
So, I get stuck for high phone and internet bills — already. All those “special offers” — heck, they don’t apply in areas with no competition.
But, as I said, we’re used to it (or should be.)
Because, on the other hand, I paid under $60 K for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-car garage ranch home on a 1/2 acre lot. I get my beef from a neighbor for about half the cost and much higher quality than you can get at the supermarket…. You get the idea.
Life is full of trade-offs, at least in a free-market system.
I’d rather my internet access fees double than that the government step in to make things “fair.”
notropis on October 25, 2009 at 5:03 PM
You said it way better than I did. Thanks.
notropis on October 25, 2009 at 5:06 PM
Odds are, we get both.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 5:12 PM
You’re right.
notropis on October 25, 2009 at 5:17 PM
You have those options, so good for you. But tens of millions of people do not. I live in a small-to-medium size city of 30,000 people.
DSL is not available here.
My work computer is for work, I use it for personal stuff and I get fired.
Hughes.net charges $350.00/month for worse speeds than my cable company.
My cable company is the only game in town, and if they decide to shut down access to parts of the internet they don’t like, I have no real options. Period.
Now, you could argue that in a perfect world there would be competition. The world is not perfect, however. So we do the best we can, and Net Neutrality is it.
AngusMc on October 25, 2009 at 5:25 PM
Thanks, Madison. Very well done.
Yes. It does sound familiar to Obamacare and many other programs supported by liberals and extreme leftists. And of course, from their point of view, asking about the applicability of the First Amendment to what I can and cannot read or write via the internet would not be a “serious question.”
Loxodonta on October 25, 2009 at 5:33 PM
No one was assuming the world was/is perfect. What is being discussed (and always should be) are the implications of government having a stake in the flow of free information unparalleled at any point in history (amongst other things government could have a stake in.) This isn’t a little thing. The role of government is also at the heart of the question: what, precisely, is the role of the government and what are the inherent rights of its citizens? Is the internet to be included in infrastructure needs/responsibility? Does that make internet access a US citizen’s right? If so, does that mean that the internet is property of the US government, subject to oversight, however slight? How much do you trust the government?
I realize that your business (and others) struggle without this technology. But, I can’t help but think there is some other solution than allowing the government the access to such a precious resource in any capacity.
Diane on October 25, 2009 at 5:47 PM
There’s the “little” matter of population density and distance between major population centers.
steveegg on October 25, 2009 at 5:54 PM
I note the story that is cited comes from the UK, one of those places with lower-cost and higher-speed last-mile (i.e. retail) broadband. Remember, folks, it’s not just the last mile that matters; it’s the entire network.
steveegg on October 25, 2009 at 5:57 PM
For all the theoretical fears of censorship by internet provider, internet providers have been many times more concerned with content that is likely to cause them to add expenses (read infrastructure) and subject them to liability (read piracy and CP) than blocking access to stuff they merely don’t like.
Sekhmet on October 25, 2009 at 5:57 PM
You can get satellite for $60 a month.
Geography. America is spread out far more than most countries. I live near places that still don’t have cable TV because they’re just past the middle of nowhere. It just hasn’t been cost effective to run cable to them, because they’re so sparsely populated that the ROI isn’t there. However, they’ll soon have it because as part of their licensing application, Verizon agreed to reach all of their current telephone customers.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 6:07 PM
The actual reason why we don’t have analog NTSC signals anymore is money. Digital transmissions don’t affect nearby channels as much as analog signals, and the FCC wanted to be able to sell the “excess” in the TV frequency spectrum.
steveegg on October 25, 2009 at 6:10 PM
Net neutrality + fairness doctrine…
How long before the conservative sites disappear under O-Bambi?
GrannyDee on October 25, 2009 at 6:12 PM
They also charge much less than that for speeds that will satisfy most net users quite nicely. Attaining FIOS speed is not going to happen with satellite. If you want their best speed, you pay for it. If you don’t want and don’t need it, you don’t. Unless we get Net Neutrality. Then, you won’t be able to buy a premium service, nor will you be able to avoid paying for anything but bare bones service.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 6:13 PM
Lost your ballot?
And the “fears” of censorship are hardly theoretical nor are they the issue. The telecoms and cable companies are guilty of outrageous anti-competitive measures. What’s worse than an elected government regulating the internet is leaving it to the whims of an unelected oligarchy with nothing to limit their power.
Strick on October 25, 2009 at 6:16 PM
And they have us outgunned.
steveegg on October 25, 2009 at 6:17 PM
Really? Could this be a problem with local/state government hindering competition?
Buy Danish on October 25, 2009 at 6:18 PM
Exactly!
Or perhaps content that does not add to their revenue. What content is going to cause them to add expenses? Did you bother to think any of that out before you wrote that? Do you really believe that Comcast blocking or limiting access to Skype is about added expense for Comcast and not hindering a competing service?
The “private property” argument is a crock.
jdkchem on October 25, 2009 at 6:25 PM
Worse yet, an unelected oligarchy (Comcast) that benefits from tax payer dollars to build a new headquarters.
jdkchem on October 25, 2009 at 6:29 PM
I’ve only price satellite internet once or twice, and believe that it’s delivered and installed price is relative to the local market price for competing service. If there is no competing service, the sat company(ies) can charge whatever the customer will pay.
We see the same problem with firewood, when gasoline/propane hit $4/gallon, a truckload of firewood was over $1,000 if you could get it.
There are also usage caps with satellite.
Skandia Recluse on October 25, 2009 at 6:37 PM
Hughes net has flat rates based on connection speed.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 6:45 PM
My provider (AT&T) already charges more for better speeds on DSL. I pay 19.99 for 768 Kbps down/384 Kbps up. I am willing to pay more for the better speeds – baby loves those torrents – but it’s “not available yet in my area”.
salmonczar on October 25, 2009 at 6:47 PM
Pablo, for a time, Hughes net wasn’t available here. Probably no local dealer/technician. Then it was WildBlue.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Skandia Recluse on October 25, 2009 at 6:57 PM
And there’s no reason for the government to interfere in that. On the flip side of the same coin, if I just want to check my email and maybe do a little online shopping, there’s no reason for me to pay a premium for speeds I’m not going to use.
Choice is a good thing when it comes to internet connections.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 7:03 PM
Everyone is missing the main issue with net neutrality.
I’m going to say this again because it’s missing from the dialog on the issue.
Liberals are saying the ISPs should be regulated and prevented from using their own private networks how they please.
Conservatives are saying that private companies should be able to do what they like with their property.
The missing fact is that these ISPs have a GOVERNMENT PROTECTED MONOPOLY on last mile communication. All across the country there is ONE local phone company and ONE local cable company. These ISPs won’t talk about traffic filtering with big clients because they have options. There is a LOT of competition in big private internet installations. But consumer traffic flows over duel use line that either holds phone traffic or tv traffic in addition to data. Other ISPs are forbidden from laying additional wire next to the local rival and are thus shut out of the market.
It is unreasonable under those circumstances to consider the wire of the local monopoly to be private property.
IF the ISPs want to claim these wires as their own private property, then REMOVE the government protection from their monopolies so that competitors can compete with them head to head completely bypassing their networks.
Karmashock on October 25, 2009 at 7:14 PM
That’s the only coherent explanation of N N I’ve seen.
Akzed on October 25, 2009 at 7:28 PM
That’s not true. On the contrary, the incumbent local exchange carriers are required to lease infrastructure space to competitive local exchange carriers. See the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Many places have more than one cable carrier and they all offer phone service. There is more competition now than there ever has been before, especially when you add in cellular services and satellite.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 7:31 PM
Again, that’s utterly false. The law says exactly the opposite.
Pablo on October 25, 2009 at 7:33 PM
I just finished pluggin up a tube in my house. needed a plunger. Is the gov’t gonna regulate what kind of fecal deposits I place in that tube? do they have to be equal in size and frequency? should I be charged more if I make more deposits in that tube than my neighbors?
viviliberoomuori on October 25, 2009 at 7:37 PM
My primary concern is that if ‘control freaks’ in the government start to impose limitations and/or regulate the Internet it will go down the tube(s).
RealityCheck4 on October 25, 2009 at 8:15 PM
I live in a rural area about 30 mile south of Raleigh NC and more than 5 miles from the nearest town/city limits. None of the telecommunications companies; telephone, cable, DSL; have service in my area so for a time I was restricted to dialup.
Fortunately I found an ISP that provides high speed access using a line-of-sight wireless link to my house. They have tiered service plans depending on your needs and your Internet budget. My monthly fee is only 20% higher than dial-up but is at least 100 time faster. This service allows me to use a router with 4 wired ports plus 2-3 laptops and 2 wireless printers with little if any degradation of Internet access. I was never able to connect more than 2 systems using dial-up.
RealityCheck4 on October 25, 2009 at 8:41 PM
I checked, and my provider uses integrated circuits!
Seriously, though, we are NOT running short of broadband pipes. Last time I checked this (about a year ago), about 5/6 of the existing fiber backbone in the continental US was “dark” (e.g.: not used)!
So if there is a shortage of anything, it must be in the terminal equipment: switches and routers…and these are realtively cheap.
The price we pay and the performance we receive depends mainly upon the competitive environment. When a competitive cable vendor began wiring in our neighborhood, my provider immediately dropped the monthly internet fee about 30% for all customers in the area.
Europe probably has better connectivity because everything is smaller and the population is more dense…and therefore cheaper to connect.
The government should keep its hands completely off the Internet!!!! “Net Neutrality” is merely the dishonest way they sell “government content control” and government snooping. Wire, cable, WIFI, etc. will give us the competition needed to keep the net working for everybody. And the entry cost for new Internet providers is comparatively low now: new regulations would just make additional competition harder and more expensive.
landlines on October 25, 2009 at 8:49 PM
90% of the country has a monopoly. 200 Billion dollars later, where is the speed promised in 1996?
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 9:11 PM
Japan
uknowmorethanme on October 25, 2009 at 9:11 PM
200 Billion dollars times 200 million households is $1000 a home. Yah, lets feel sorry for those poor telephone companies.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 9:13 PM
We accept crap and, pay extra for what we should have had originally. Sheep…Baaaahhhh.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 9:14 PM
I have Verizon, Cox, and Cavalier in my area. Once Verizon moved in, Cox’s network speeds increased, but Verizon was cheaper. Since then, Cox has started offering different packages of 2mbps, 5mbps, or 10 mbps. I think the costs are roughly $20, $30, and $40 respectively.
But there are 50mbps networks in Asia and parts of Europe as well as the good ole US of A. However, when you look at it, it’s $140.00 a month if you’re lucky enough to live in the network, which I do not.
Verizon Extends Groundbreaking 50/20 Mbps FiOS Internet Service to Entire FiOS Footprint
uknowmorethanme on October 25, 2009 at 9:23 PM
Damn…only 4 years behind schedule. 14 Years from their promise.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 9:29 PM
Hey, it’s only money.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 9:30 PM
Why is the U.S. Infrastructure lagging behind. . . Clinton.
It had to do with all the rules surrounding “The Digital Divide.” Instead of being able to max out the high population areas and areas where people could afford broadband they had to place a node here and one waaaaaaay out there etc etc. So they couldn’t reap high profits first, allowing for more capital for investment in the lower profit area which would still bring in more money later, they had to put the nodes (remote terminals) where the government told them too.
And that’s just to start.
- The Cat
MirCat on October 25, 2009 at 9:54 PM
I don’t know where you got that from as it is completely false. Most internet providers in Europe actually limit the amount of bandwidth their customers can use per month. Anyone who goes over the bandwidth limit, similar to minutes for cells phones in the US, they charge a hefty fee, and their average speeds are not 50 megabit. Again, I don’t know where you get that from but it is incorrect.
Chaser102 on October 25, 2009 at 10:21 PM
Only $200 billion plus since 1996.
Jeff2161 on October 25, 2009 at 10:41 PM
So Jeff, I’m confused. We paid the telcos $200 Billion or, as per your citation,
Which is it? Because there’s a big difference. And of course I doubt you have any idea what the hell you are talking about. If you can explain DWDM to me, or TDM, or tell me what DTMF is, maybe I’ll listen. Full disclosure: I work for AT&T as a network control engineer. We are not primarily a content provider, we sell access to our backhaul network.
flashoverride on October 25, 2009 at 11:06 PM
Your point actually works in favor of the Government’s net neutrality position — if there’s adequate resources, then why limit your users based on to whom they are trying to connect?
I’m for a limited version of net neutrality — one which does not penalize suppliers for provision, but which can penalize consumers for overconsumption.
The reason net neutrality arose in the first place was a desire by certain ISPs (generally, but not exclusively, the last-mile ones) to find a new income source. The source they chose was an attempt to charge transit fees to well-known information providers.
Consider, for example, the mundane act of searching. You enter your favorite search provider (say, google.com), you download their search page, and you enter a search string. On your side, very little information has been entered — a few hundred bytes at most, but google provides thousands of bytes in return.
The non-net neutral method of gaining income is for one of the peers (your ISP or any ISP in the peering arrangement who’s not directly attached to Google’s intranet) to go to google and say “if you want any port 80 traffic to traverse our network with only standard metering, you must pay us X dollars per month. If you don’t pay us the X dollars, we will meter your data”. Never mind that the consumer of the information (google included) is already paying their ISP for a certain tiered service level of access to the Internet — their Google searches, youtube playbacks, etc. will be metered regardless, probably at a rate far below the service level.
This metering may also take place on a network to which neither you nor Google subscribes, due to standard peering arrangements associated with the thousands of private networks comprising the Internet.
The current internet income model involves charging fees to consumers of data, and, in addition, balancing data costs between peered private networks. In other words, the system, via a recursive model, has already properly distributed the costs of data transit via the peering arrangements.
If you like the thought that each byte of data coming into your computer, even from the same provider, may have an unknown (due to the route the packet containing the byte took to reach your computer) but possibly substantial “tax”, be prepared to pay a lot more per byte for the privilege of surfing to well known but resource-intensive generator sites like youtube. This will become particularly problematic if Enron-type routers begin showing up whose sole purpose is to enable such taxation by deliberately routing your packets through high-cost zones.
unclesmrgol on October 26, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Why, that sounds remarkably like the government run health care programs, doesn’t it?
How remarkable!
NavyspyII on October 26, 2009 at 4:45 AM
There is a basic problem with this Constitutional argument. It was lost decades ago. The FCC has jurisdiction over cable TV already, the FCC has jurisdiction over telephone company’s wires and service parameters, and the FCC already has jurisdiction over the radio frequency spectrum (at least the part not used by the government itself.)
So the battle is mooted by existing law that has been accepted for a long time. There are very strong vested interests in breaking that jurisdiction. I have a very strong suspicion that as bad as the FCC regulation has been if we remove them from the picture the net results will be far worse than what we have today.
{^_^}
herself on October 26, 2009 at 5:18 AM
The public never owned the air waves.
MarkTheGreat on October 26, 2009 at 8:45 AM
Population density is much, much higher in Europe than it is in the US. That makes it easier to provide infrastructure upgrades.
MarkTheGreat on October 26, 2009 at 8:46 AM
This doesn’t make any sense at all, and typically right wingers are way off base on this one. Net Neutrality prevents censorship by corporations, which is how the left would make it happen. Take this example, Comcast is currently wanting to buy NBC which would include MSNBC. Does anyone doubt that Comcast would have an incentive to allocate bandwidth more generously to MSNBC or its other related sites than to say Fox News, Drudge or Hot Air? If cComcast decides to do that no one will even know, none of us could independently confirm bandwidth allocation by an ISP to a particular site. If the FCC had to make that determination to cut say Drudge’s bandwidth, you would have a media firestorm. I am typically not in favor of government regulation, but in this case it is either regulate the delivery of service (net neutrality) or regulate the company structure (through anti-trust) by not allowing providers of service to own content providers silmutaneously. Just imagine what Comcast/MSNBC INC would charge us for our bandwidth here at HA.
snoopicus on October 26, 2009 at 9:14 AM
Not to mention, how much of the intertube network required eminent domain by government to install in the first place, or how much intertube network installation was subsidised by the gov. I don’t know, but it would be interesting to see.
snoopicus on October 26, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Here is a simple understanding of what net neutrality is. Calling it net neutality is a red herring.
The internet service providers (ISP) on the one hand and the content providers (Google et al) on the other hand, are at odds with one another. The ISP’s want the content providers to pay the ISP’s to carry their content. With net neutrality the ISP’s will be required to carry the content. The catch is that they will be able to measure said content and charge accordingly. Once that happens the content providers will be forced to charge you the consumer of the content for using their content service.
For the content providers to charge us today would be suicide unless all of them did that. Once all of them are paying the ISP to carry the content they WILL all charge us for the content we use. That would be on top of the ISP access charges we pay today. The bottom line to the consumer is our costs WILL go up. For the content provider the cost goes up but is offset by our payments with a nice profit to boot. For the ISP the income rolls in and profits go through the roof. For the government the content provider and ISP pays more in taxes. Everybody wins. Except the consumer.
kanda on October 26, 2009 at 10:47 AM
See my comment at 12:05AM. We’re on exactly the same wavelength.
Yes, except that in the case of the internet, they are opposed to the private sector doing this, while in the case of health care, they are in favor of the Government doing the same.
Tremendous portions. Those telephone poles scattered about your neighborhood, or the conduit running under your street, are there because of a monopoly arrangement between the government and private industry. It’s exactly the guys who obtained the monopoly (the last mile providers) who are so upset about net neutrality. They see a potential new revenue stream (charging data providers), and they want in. It’s like the cell phone companies who used to charge you for either making or receiving a call, thus “double dipping” under a large number of scenarios. Then again, the cellphone companies still do charge for making and receiving, right? It’s why we hate those spam calls, because we’ve got to pay for them even if we didn’t ask for them.
As I point out in my comments above, the internet providers on the last mile may be dependent on dozens of other providers (peers) for the successful transit of the data from provider to consumer, and once each one of those manages to charge a toll, we will be seeing per-packet charges aggregated by our ISP. And, in such an industry, what’s to prevent the Internet equivalent of Enron from pulling a “Boomerang” on our data packets just to exact an unneeded toll?
unclesmrgol on October 26, 2009 at 11:07 AM
Yes we are. To take the point further, when have any of us ever seen the government regulate anything where they did not later come back an increase the regulation later?
In Europe the ISPs are known as common carriers. In the US common carriers are truckers, airlines etc. That difference is not widely known in the USA.
The European version of “net neutrality” is already encroaching on the individual business and comsumer in several areas.
For instance if someone is offended by the posting of someone else on Hot Air. They can complain to the ISP that hot air has content that is offensive. The ISP (common carrier) is required by law in some european countries to block access to hot air AND to block that users internet access. All it takes is a complaint and you are off the internet. They are also considering metered services at the consumer level. An example is you can purchase a 10 mbs conection and 2 gig of throughput. Exceed the 2 gig and you are either charged per meg additional or shut off entirely for the remained of the month.
Think it won’t happen here? Some US ISPs are already offering tiers of service with various download/upload speeds. Some even limit or throttle those speeds in you exceed certain limits. Today consumers can force the issue in court and typically win on that. Tiers and restricting services will become law one day with net neutrality.
kanda on October 26, 2009 at 11:37 AM
I didn’t read all of the comments to see if this has been said or not, but the reason America lags in internet availability and high-speed capability behind Europe and Japan is fairly simple. The U.S. is much more spread out than our friends over seas, with much more rural areas. There are many parts of our country where cell phone coverage isn’t available. We still have wide open spaces here, and if you happen to live smack dab in the middle of one of them, the money that you would pay an internet provider for access to their system would not be enough to cover their costs of laying out the wires to connect you. Thus, no coverage.
You CAN still get satellite in most of those places, provided you have a spot close to your house for a dish that will be able to point in the right direction. Satellite isn’t super fast, but it is something.
Jewels on October 26, 2009 at 12:00 PM
No you won’t win that court battle. Currently any US ISP can allocate bandwidth as they see fit. If an ISP decided to cut bandwidth to all conservative sites to crawl they could do so and neither you nor the sites have any legal recourse whatsoever, they own the damn tubes! Net Neutrality is not the “fairness doctrine”, that forced radio and tv to air “balanced points of view”. NN says that ISP’s cannot discriminate against a website or user they disapprove of for any reason at all. NN means that traffic to drudge or hot air has to be treated the same as to whithouse.gov or any other site. Given this administrations penchant for corpratism, i think it is much more likely thety would lean on ISP’s to remove content to appear politically correct than have the FCC do it. Under NN rules if, Soros (hypothetically if he owned an ISP) would have to allocate bandwidth to users wanting to stream Beck and Olby equally, with out NN he could always give priority and extra bandwidth to Olby.
Net neutrality prevents ISPs
snoopicus on October 26, 2009 at 12:14 PM
Net Neutrality a government solution looking for a problem that does not exist.
Dasher on October 26, 2009 at 4:25 PM
So… given that the ILECs who ran all of that are required to lease it to CLECS, so what? We should allow more tearing up the street? Part of what seems to cloud this argument is that AT&T used to be what was known as a regulated monopoly. That changed in 82-84, when it was broken up in the RBOCs. Further reforms to “open up” the market occured under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which brought about classifications as ILECs and CLECs. There’s also IXCs, which is most of the big ILECs (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest) serve as.
When a new content provider appears and begins slamming your backhaul network, disrupting data services for the rest of your clients and forcing you to build out more bandwidth, you are damn right you want to be able to A) charge them for it (building the cost of production into the price of the product) or B) limit the amount of bandwidth they are using.
Are you accessing their radio network? The cellphone company has to pay for the spectrum, pay for electricity, pay for equipment, pay for personnel, pay for the radios, and oftentimes pay another carrier to carry that traffic back to its BSCs and RNCs. Building the cost of production into the price of the product.
flashoverride on October 26, 2009 at 5:16 PM
And, right on time, the Wall Street Journal punches in with a fairly balanced article on net neutrality
They pitch it rightly as “AT&T vs. Google”.
I think that they (AT&T et al.) will not cap data quantity, because there are other competitors who won’t do that. There are three broadband technologies in the marketplace — copper/fiber (the telcos), coaxial (cable), and satellite. Any attempt by the telcos to meter the final mile to their customers will result in defections galore. Look for them instead to mine out the interior — the guys who peer with Google through those who peer with the final-mile providers. That way they can tax all final destinations (be they from telco, cable, or satellite) equally, and nullify the problems with defection.
unclesmrgol on October 26, 2009 at 5:21 PM
I disagree. The slamming of your network is happening not because of the content provider existing, but because consumers are requesting the data.
Your argument is nothing more than the AT&T cellphone argument (that they should tax both the provider and the consumer) for delivery of every byte of data.
It isn’t going to fly — not when the current pricing models are predicated on tiered pricing against all connectors, with the tiering charges of all peers already based on resource consumption.
The content provider is already paying their peer for the problem, and their peer is already paying their peers for the problem. It’s recursive. The charges for youtube and google are already built into the system, except for the final mile guys, where one port on a router might do 95% of the traffic, disrupting the internet experience of all the other ports.
As someone has already pointed out, there are no problems with interior routing of our data, only its final mile delivery.
Fine. Charge me if I consume too much and belch all over my neighbors, but don’t charge the restaurant serving up the meal.
My point, and I stand by it.
unclesmrgol on October 26, 2009 at 5:33 PM
You’re missing the point. If the content provider wasn’t creating and or providing content, there wouldn’t be any content for the consumer to request. These networks take time to build and deploy, whereas content creation is far less reliant on things like right-of-way, land use rights, etc etc.
Put it this way: If Ed wants to create a web page on Hot Hir, all he has to do is some coding, and presto it’s done. If Ed wants to deliver that content to… say… Nome, AK on an OC-192 connection, well, that’s a bit trickier, not to mention ridiculously cost ineffeicient.
Okay, first off, it’s not a tax, it’s an access fee, and there’s a huge difference which you ought to know better. Second, what are the provider and consumer both doing? Accessing the AT&T network and utilizing the network in delivery of their payload, be it voice or data. That consumes bandwidth.
Citation needed.
You’re missing the point. The problem isn’t final mile guys. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding on how bandwidth is built and allocated in a telecommunications network. The higher links up the chain aren’t based on the aggregate of all lower links. Telecom network capacity is engineered based on the idea that sometimes people won’t be using it. With all the constant on connections, and the content generators generating new content and driving higher demand for resources, the problems start to show up higher up the network architecture.
flashoverride on October 26, 2009 at 6:48 PM
Can\’t quite agree with you here. While I\’m always in favor of free-market solutions to problems, we don\’t have a free market for access to your property. That is, the control of the physical wires leading into your home is so regulated as to all-but eliminate any possibility of your ever having any choice in who your very limited set of service providers will be.For an analogy here, imagine you had a local phone provider that only let you call a specific set of approved people. That would be unacceptable, but because of the way the phone service is regulated, you\’d be screwed.*IF* we can find a way to open the physical access network up to much more competition, then I\’m all for allowing the free market to dictate whether filtering is acceptable to the network-using population. In the absence of free competition in the access network, however, I would vote for net neutrality.
PersonalLiberty on October 26, 2009 at 8:50 PM
FOR THE LAST GODDAMN TIME, that would be ILLEGAL. As in NOT LEGAL. As in if that happened, you could lawyer up and sue the company. As in the FCC would do bad things to them.
Christ, can you people actually read the goddamn telecom act? Please?
INCUMBENT LOCAL EXCHANGE CARRIERS (AT&T, Verizon, et al.) are *REQUIRED BY LAW* to lease facilities to COMPETITIVE LOCAL EXHANGE CARRIERS at market rate.
Do you even know what laws *currently* regulate the internet?
flashoverride on October 27, 2009 at 12:18 AM
As to this notion of leasing lines that assumes that their leased lines are as good and as cheap as secondary lines. It also effectively still forces the other party to pay the “incumbent” money. Pepsi doesn’t have to lease machines from Coke when they replace them. But small ISPs have to lease lines from the bells.
Further, the spectrum available for wireless internet is very restricted. Wireless stations in flat rural areas would be perfect. Wireless is less useful in urban areas because of the limited bandwidth.
Let ANYONE run a line with the only payment/stipulation being that they either lease space in pipe to run the cable or otherwise contract with the city to get the cable run on a pole.
We should have dozens of competitors in every city… and that’s big competitors… you could have hundreds of small competitors.
The communication acts are a dodge because they ultimately prop up the established telecoms companies and don’t allow people to bypass them entirely.
Karmashock on October 28, 2009 at 2:27 AM