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DOJ: No legislation for Network Neutrality
Along with the Web 2.0 movement came a huge push for Network Neutrality, a cause whose proponents demand that all access to the Internet occur as equally as possible. In other words, AT&T can't charge Google more to transfer a byte of data because Google has figured out a way to make more money off of AT&T's bandwidth than AT&T themselves can do. Likewise, a cable Internet provider can't provide better bandwidth to users of its VoIP phone service than to non-using subscribers. That's the concept. The ideal? Make the Internet a great place for competing service providers to flourish.
In reality, Network Neutrality, or Netnoot, as some have taken to calling it, was a flawed concept from the beginning. DSL carriers already charge premium fees for preferential treatment by way of imposing often-arbitrary speed limits (768k DSL is more costly than 256k dsl, etc.) even when no technical reason exists to impose such limits. Plus, the big Internet providers who count among their customers gigantic bandwidth hogs like Google and MySpace are already gleaning more revenue from them than they are from Joe Bob's Bicycle Shop. So the folks who consume more already pay more. As such, consumers demand that, at least in matters of speed, the Internet be non-neutral.
Wise to these realities, the Department of Justice today announced that they will not be pursuing any further legislative attempts to regulate carrier activity on the Net. Good move. If people want to pay less for bandwidth or choose a different provider for phone service than for data access, they'll do it. We don't need laws to enforce what consumers already do.
Comments
12
Subscribe to commentsdigitalriftSep 7th 2007 9:07PM
Your examples, and therefore conclusions, are fundamentally flawed.
Charging consumers different prices for different levels of service has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality. There IS a technical reason for doing so, and that's that the higher the bandwidth supplied, the more infrastructure required to reliably provide service.
In addition, you seem to have the concept of Net Neutrality backwards.
What the ISPs, and large corporations, want, is for there to be a better, faster internet for those that can afford it, and for all other traffic to be capped. This is a privelege that large corporations drool over, not an anti-trust handicap against them. Those companies that don't have the money to shell out for the shiny premium internet are the ones that are penalized.
Net neutrality is designed to keep the playing field even for the smaller players, and for ordinary people like you and me.
Granted, not that you need to worry, because AOL will obviously shell out for this blog to be high-prioritized.
Please do more research before posting misguided articles in the future.
digitalriftSep 7th 2007 9:12PM
privilege*
WizzySep 7th 2007 11:52PM
Makes me wonder about AOL's corporate policy regarding net neutrality. I wouldn't be surprised if this blog is echoing the company line.
Ted WallingfordSep 8th 2007 1:42AM
As far as AOL goes, they have very little to know editorial control over this blog, as far as I know. I'm not a netnoot supporter. So we have a difference of opinion. Access providers should have the same freedom to set prices as you and I have to choose access providers. Legislating rules into the system takes away both freedoms.
digitalriftSep 8th 2007 2:58AM
This is, however, about access providers setting prices. You're stating it backwards still; this is about restricting those without deep pockets. I completely understand this from a capitalist point of view, and economically; this is completely proper laissez-faire economics. However, if we start penalizing independent and small companies, we start down the slippery slope towards making the Internet simply interactive TV, with a limited number of channels provided only by large corporations.
digitalriftSep 8th 2007 2:59AM
This is not*
I really need to proofread before posting.
dancnpeteSep 8th 2007 10:18AM
You are painfully mistaken if you believe consumers have a real choice between isps. In broadband you're lucky if in your area you can choose cable or dsl. This isn't the hey days of the 90's when there were literally isps blocks apart from each other, that was true choice. Without some sort of regulation for profit corporations have little incentive to improve their networks and *gasp* lower their prices. look at japan if you want to see a true competitive market. You'll see better service with less restrictions because the regulations prevented single company dominance which by the way is the purpose of regulation, and netnoot (god do people really call it that now).
Ted WallingfordSep 8th 2007 1:36PM
The other piece of this issue is preventing access providers from penalizing their customers who choose to receive competing services using the bandwidth they provide. This is probably the only area where noot legislation makes any sense. But on the issue of competing access, I'll suggest that our "lack of choice" is caused by the following problems:
1. The telecommunications industry is regulated 'too much' by the fed, and tariffs regressively set prices because access providers are subsidized through the fed by means of USF, abatements of tax based on volume of business, and other unfair policies which would be considered absurd in other service industries (mass media, for example).
2. The ILECs were hamstrung by Telecom 96, which was a bad law, plain and simple. Artificial competition is the same thing as no competition. Say it's Green Bay versus Baltimore, but the Ravens get to use Brett Favre on all their offensive plays. That's essentially what CLEC colocation, established by that law, means. So the costs to the subsidized players (ILECs) are driven up, their tax abatements likewise rise, and they have no incentive to reduce prices. The result? Hundreds of repetitive CLEC bankruptcies, stock devaluation and wasted effort. Customers still pay buku bucks for access, bottom line.
3. Independent WiMax has promise but isn't completely there yet due to a lack of consumer-grade equipment that will allow the public to adopt the technology, freeing them from copper.
4. The fed "regulated" a solution to encourage building out a last-mile fiber infrastructure by cutting a deal with incumbants stating that their fiber access network could be free of competing information services as long as it merely gets build. Wow, nice job Uncle Sam.
That's why I'm against regulation. It never works as intended in this industry.
ThundercrossSep 8th 2007 2:59PM
I'm against regulation too. But not the kind of regulation that you put it.
Without Net Neutrality, we're all going to be regulated by the telecoms. They'll be able to regulate what sites we go to, where we get our music, what games we play, and all kinds of stuff.
They'll be able to regulate our entire internet experience. And there's no guarantee that someone who's been blocked off completely from the userbase of a major broadband ISP can simply pay their way back to merely the slow lane.
If we have to choose between a balanced regulation imposed by a democratically elected government and an excessive string of regulations that only benefit major corporations and politically correct blogs, I'd pick the government regulation in a heartbeat.
ToddSep 8th 2007 3:24PM
Mr. Wallingford.
I don't know what medication you are on, but apparently you have completely forgotten the Cogent vs. Level3 and TimeWarner vs. Level3 disasters back in 2005:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5890424.html
...now with the the government completely in the pocket of the telcos, it is going to get much, much worse. Without Net neutrality, you can expect all manner of greed to hinder the use of YOUR Internet.
chris josephSep 9th 2007 7:33PM
The free market will always conspire to screw the consumer, collude to put those who don't out of business. It's called GREED, and deregulation of the energy industry has pretty much borne this out.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I hope for your sake that Nick Denton doesn't catch wind of your idiocy. He's ill served by where your logic leads.
JeebusSep 11th 2007 12:21PM
Amen.