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.

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.

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?

.*IF* we can find a way to open the physical access network up to much more competition,

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?

I disagree. The slamming of your network is happening not because of the content provider existing, but because consumers are requesting the data.

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.

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.

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.

As someone has already pointed out, there are no problems with interior routing of our data, only its final mile delivery.

Citation needed.

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.

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.

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.

flashoverride on October 26, 2009 at 5:16 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.

kanda on October 26, 2009 at 11:37 AM

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

kanda on October 26, 2009 at 10:47 AM
See my comment at 12:05AM. We’re on exactly the same wavelength.

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 10:47 AM

See my comment at 12:05AM. We’re on exactly the same wavelength.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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”.

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.

The government sold the “public” TV bandwidth to corporations for a pittance and forced the populace,

profitsbeard on October 25, 2009 at 4:19 PM

The public never owned the air waves.

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.

{^_^}

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.

Why, that sounds remarkably like the government run health care programs, doesn’t it?

How remarkable!

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)!

landlines on October 25, 2009 at 8:49 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.

including tax breaks and changes in state laws lifting limits on their profits

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.

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.

Only $200 billion plus since 1996.

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 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.

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