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Net Neutrality Nonsense
By Larry Hendrick | May 20, 2006
Arpan Sura writes an excellent piece on an issue that is gaining much buzz lately. The previous article (here on Business Unusual) is also about “net neutrality” and along with this article is meant to bring a voice of reason to the discussion. Head over and read the article in it’s entirety. It’s good stuff.
Net Neutrality Nonsense by Arpan Sura
To grasp what net neutrality is, it’s important to understand a little about how the Internet works. Think of the Internet as a network of pipes — these pipes could be made of cables, phone lines, fiber optics, or they could even be invisible wires (WiFi). People are constantly sending each other information through these pipes, which happen to be privately owned by broadband companies like Cox, Comcast or Verizon. There is a limited amount of bandwidth, which is just another way of saying that the pipes are only so wide. Because bandwidth is scarce, it can’t carry all the information through the web as fast as we might like it to.…The Internet is abuzz with hysterical cries from Internet socialists like MoveOn.org that “Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it.” But “the Internet as we know it” is actually one without network neutrality regulations. It’s MoveOn and its ilk that wants to end the Internet as it is by granting the federal government new expansive powers.
Topics: Business, Technology |
May 21st, 2006 at 8:37 am
If there were competition for last-mile services to consumers, you’d have a reasonable point. But we don’t. 98% of Americans have two or less choices for broadband. The potential for abuse is therefore great, if the carriers are not regulated.
What evidence do we have for that? For one, the history of the carriers’ behavior related to net neutrality is not proud. Columbia’s Tim Wu points out that before net neutrality was enunciated as an FCC principle and enforced:
- AT&T warned customers that using Wi-Fi home networking equipment was a ‘federal crime’
- Cox Cable disciplined users of virtual private networks
- Comcast blocked Internet VPN ports, which prevented Washington state workers from telecommuting
Now revisit the COPE Act and try to find the following words:
- block
- impair
- degrade
If the carriers don’t intend to discriminate (block, filter, degrade, or impair various content providers), why have they wall-papered Washington with green and, coincidentally, had those very words omitted from the COPE Act?
And when the carriers — and not the consumers — get to discriminate between content-providers, what happens to ventured-funded innovation, startups, and America’s technological leadership position?
So, two guys in a garage — who can’t afford to pay the tiering tarriff to each and every telco and cable company — won’t invent the _next_ Google.
And those four nerds down the street, the ones with a brand-spanking new AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 auction service? Well, they’ll never get any venture funding because eBay can afford to pay the tarriffs and effectively block upstarts.
Oh, and that peer-to-peer company that came up with a new VoIP alternative to challenge Vonage and Skype? Well, they’re dead in the water because that treads on the telcos’ turf.
Until there is true competition for last-mile services, the carriers _must_ be prohibited from tiering. Long live network neutrality.
May 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I appreciate your comments and will respond to your points as soon as I can. The short answer is that all your points are refutable, but on a quick note, The very reason you have no choice on the “Last Mile,” is because the government wanted to guarantee that service was available to everyone, thereby creating monopolies of the ILECs in each geographic area. Again, thanks for the comment…