net neutrality thoughts

[keith smith]

Lookout there's a pothole ahead on the mesa city internet super highway!  Sorry we're the Gov. our worker go home at 3:30pm please call back tomorrow....




Jeff Garland <jeff at crystalclearsoftware.com> wrote: JT Moree wrote:
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> IANAL or an economist or even an expert on net neutrality
> 
> I think net neutrality is great--as the market demands it.  I'm not
> impressed by legislative attempts to protect it.  Any attempts by
> government to regulate technology are fraught with misunderstanding
> (CAN-SPAM anyone) and prone to become a mess that is irreversible.
> (Aren't we still paying for the WWII tax on the phone lines or something
> like that?)
> 
> The Internet infrastructure being billed by most ISPs to date has no fee
> based Quality of Service but that's the way the market allowed it.
> There was nothing technical stopping ISP's for charging based on the
> type of traffic in the past.  They just didn't.  Likely because they
> know that CUSTOMERS will switch en masse to a competitor as soon as they do.
> 
> I wholely disapprove of any attempt by telecomm and cable providers to
> push legislation which goes against so called 'net neutrality'.
> 
> I also wholely disapprove of attempts by anyone else to push legislation
> to protect so called 'net neutrality'.
> 
> We have a free market which so far has kept net neutrality on its own.
>  As long as legislation does not tip the scales--in either direction--it
> will continue to do its job.

Quite wisely, Congress agreed with you when it held hearings on the subject 
over the summer.  I believe it was Orin Hatch that pointed out that the 
nano-second after one of the large telecomm/cable providers does any of the 
'evil things' that various legislation advocates fear, they will do they will 
either be chastised by the market place as a million blogs light up with the 
transgression OR the congress is then still perfectly free to step in.  And at 
that point when the bad behavior is really well understood some rational 
legislation can be drafted.  Trying to pre-emptively legislate this would 
undoubtedly lead to something worse than letting things play out in the 
market.  Anyway, after watching 2 hours of the hearing on CSPAN I was firmly 
convinced that doing nothing now was the only reasonable option...

Just as an aside, in Utah they have done something very interesting.  The 
local gov'ts around Salt Lake have banded together to create a truly 
high-speed fiber network to the curb (not fully implemented yet), but coming 
along quickly.  Gov't owns the pipes and rents to service providers.  True 
2-way broadband that can support telecom, TV, internet etc.  Prices, as I 
recall we quite reasonable (full internet, telecom, TV for like $40/month as I 
recall...don't quote me on that).  To me, this is an interesting model -- just 
like the city maintains the streets and sewers, they would maintain the data 
pipe to your house. Then the ISP's can fight it out over other features 
layered on the network.  Of course, if your gov't doesn't do a good job 
maintaining the infrastructure it could be a really ugly mess...

Jeff
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Keith Smith 
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