What Network Neutrality Is REALLY About

When all else fails refer to something as socialism. Lame right wing talking point.... being overused. As long as Insurance Companies, Banks, Telephone Companies continue to screw their customer base by nickle and dimeing them and out and out screwing them the less sympathy their get from consumers and I believe the word "socialism" is starting to backfire on them. What's the alternative? Let all of you continue to screw us unabated? People are viewing "government intervention, regulation" as not such a bad thing these days. Please keep calling everything socialism and we will delight as we watch it blow up in your face. The tide is slowly turning. Everyone other than Teleco's and their shareholders knows there is a need for regulation... You lost your trust from us. Did I hear someone mention Public Option? The mere mention of the word "socialism" now means it's good for consumers.

Maybe we should open an editorial section? This really isnt "News"

Though, the real question is, who does the internet belong to? The people? The ISPs? The backbones? The companies are the ones who have invested the money and time; shouldnt they have SOME right to dictate what goes on with their networks?

By the Pigs, For the Pigs.

pay this retard for writing retarded stuff?

Next February the FCC will present a national broadband plan and if it's the exact opposite of what AT&T wants it will be wildly successful and envied by the rest of the world. Let's hope our bought and paid for leaders realize that the cost of turning our nation into a third world country just for the sake of short term profits is way too high.

The original article is a train wreck. Taking from it,Another way to refer to AOL users is "customers of the phone company." Every one of them were making these calls over the telephone system, sometimes paying a toll when no local phone number existed with the free zone. My first dial-up bills were hundreds of dollars.

When the dial-up networks expanded and bought accounts in nearly every prefix zone, those toll incomes evaporated. People could stay on longer. Suddenly the phone companies started complaining about the disproportionate capacity. Funny, they weren't saying anything when many users were paying tolls!

I see the Op/Ed flag.The Internet belongs to The Internet Society and is made up of public and private networks who all have agreed to work together. It's a co-op. This co-op has standards and rules and handshake agreements and just plain-old custom. The access providers are just a part of the Internet ecosystem.

Can ISPs dictate? To a point, yes. But the Internet stops being the Internet if the access providers start acting in non-Internet ways. Blocking or degrading connectivity to some in favor to the traffic of others isn't what made the Internet great and it isn't the kind of service that those seeking Internet connections want.

They also complained because their business model was becoming obsolete: no longer could they expect and build for 30% peak usage at any time. They now had to plan for 40% and were pissed that they had to do that.

You're correct: Mr. Jenkins' article shows he both does not fully understand the "net neutrality" debate and is probably being paid to whip up (what's apparently becoming right wing) supporters against rational debate on the topic.

But here's where you're wrong: Wireless carriers that provide wireless broadband service have no choice but to implement some version of "per-byte" billing. "Unlimited" wireless bandwidth for a fixed monthly fee is 100% out of the question, with or without "net neutrality" legislation, or the threat thereof. You guys are smart enough to know that spectrum is limited and wireless carriers cannot build fiber-served cell towers every 500 meters.

You opine that (US) telecom carriers have a tendency to "overcharge" customers. I happen to agree. But, again, "unlimited" bandwidth for a fixed monthly fee is impossible. Think AT&T is hurting because of iPhone traffic? Just wait, wireless broadband hasn't even begun yet.

Since wireless carriers cannot "shape," "block," or otherwise "manage" Internet traffic (and I don't think for a second they should be able to!), they're left with but one option: metered billing (of some sort). And keep in mind, this can be implemented much more elegantly than it is today, to the point where a customer can easily manage how much money they're spending.

I know because I'm working on it.

»What Network Neutrality Is REALLY About [125] commentsMr Jenkins background does nothing to justify the attempt to portray him as a tool of the telco lobbyists. But when your argument is based on the premise that "profits are bad" and corporations are evil, I guess you have to use questionable methods to make your point.

The internet belongs to everyone.

"the debate has always been driven by phone and cable company lobbyists, who aren't paid to compromise. They're paid to win by any means necessary, which includes the endless repetition of already disproven concepts."

Excellent post. This is a comprehensive explanation of the net neutrality issue. It really comes down to the insatiable greed by the phone and cable companies.

I'm so glad you read that entire piece and your over-arching conclusion was that it argued that "profits are bad." Unfortunately, you missed the part where it argues that puppies and picnics are the work of the devil.No, you're right. His words do a fine job.

I like how when a company wants to *gasp* make money it's automatically called corporate greed.

Not that I disagree with net neutrality, but it's phrases like this that really turn me off to an argument.

The ANSWER to your question of who 'owns' the internet, can only be answered by THE CUSTOMER. The CUSTOMER is WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM. PERIOD. Without the customer, there is no backbone, no ISP, no nothing.
Why is that? Lets see now. If say, AT&T got it's way, and made google double pay, and google chose NOT TO, then google would die. simple. Do the math. There are 50 million broadband accounts. Call it an average of $50.00/month. That is a total of $125 TRILLION DOLLARS. With 125 Trillion PER YEAR, WHY doesn't the government just lay fiber to every single home in america, and charge a $10.00 'access fee', and THEN let providers sell you an IP Address. I guarantee you, you would see the average broadband bill drop to about $30.00 a month for data. AND, if we break up the media megacorps, and force them to sell channels via a-la-carte, I suspect the average person would pay about $20.00 month for channels, and call it $10.00 for Voip. So, your total monthly bill would be about $60.00, for PHONE, TV, and DATA. That's a HELL of a lot cheaper than the $150.00 comcast charges.

Call it socailism if you will. The government, in my view, exists to provide services when the scale is too big for anyone else to do. RE: National Defense, Highway Network, Security.

The problem is the republicans sold everything else off. I sure as hell would love to pay a $10.00 'connect fee' for my electricity, and be able to BUY electricity from anywhere in the country, from whomever sells it cheapest.

So, Lets call this new place 'A better America'. The governement owns and maintains the roads, national defense, electric grid, data grid, water grid and health care. Everyone pays an ''access fee' to get on these grids, and then buys whatever they want from whomever they want it to. I guarantee you I could buy electricity from the Midwest at a fraction of the cost we pay in the Northeast, and I would cut all my bills in half.

Guess what, $10.00 per service (road/electric/water/data) would run you $40.00 a month. Health Care, probably about $200.00 per month. So, I am telling you right now, for $7 trillion a year ($250*125Million households), you could have dirt cheap electricty, good roads, great data, good water, and top notch health care.

Today, the average SINGLE american pays $8000.00 a year in health care. In 1970 (40 years ago), we paid an average of $350.00 a YEAR. In todays dollars, that's about $2000.00. Under my plan, everyone pays about $2500.00 a year, and everyone gets coverage, but you buy it from REAL competing insurers (or the government, if it's cheaper). Under My plan, you will pay about $70 a month for 100/100, 50 channels, and all you can talk.

Call it a tax, call it a $3500 tax for every man, woman and child. And then eliminate all the other fees. We would come out way ahead.

So who owns the internet, the megacorps, which is wrong. WE the people should own the backbone, and use whatever provider gives us the service at the level we want to pay for,

Which isn't being done. And some of the proposed net neutrality proposals go way beyond prohibiting such activity. They want to get in to requiring ISPs to provide unlimited bandwidth without regard to cost or practicality. If such proposals become law, only the very rich would be able to afford to use this idealized internet because of runaway costs.

Yes, I agree to some degree about wireless networks. Most of this was written with terrestrial networks in mind. Per-byte billing is already fairly established with 3G service.

Keep in mind I'm not wholly against network management or even caps in some instances (wireless being a particularly good one). I do oppose metered billing and overages on terrestrial connections, though, and any and all limits need to be made perfectly clear to the consumer.

You'll have to show me which proposal does that.

Uh huh. Jenkins is a kook. Either that or customer service is overpaid at Comcast. Didn't realize one telephone call costs them $3000.

From the time internet service providers began offering internet access until about 1997 the local exchange carriers loved the ISP's. All that new revenue coming in made the commissioned employees, from account executives to the CEO's drool.

Unfortunately all good things come to an end. In this case the traffic generated by all of the dial up customers on line at the same time caused network blockage. As a result of the increased traffic the telephone companies would be unable to maintain the service objectives set forth by the state public service commissions. They would be forced to upgrade their switched networks if traffic continued to increase. Who was going to pay for the upgrades?

The Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers had the answer. Convert all of the ISP's modem access lines from flat rate service to measured rate service. That way the ISP's would have to raise prices and make internet access financially prohibitive by forcing consumers, to pay through the nose.

The lobbyists for the telephone companies and the FCC got into a brawl. Fortunately for consumers the telephone companies lost the battle otherwise the internet would have died on the vine.

Why did the LEC's loose the battle. It was simple. Telephone Companies had always under designed their networks assuming that each residential subscriber would be on the line no more than 250 Seconds per Hour. (2.5 CCS per hour.) When dial up internet subscribers began staying on line 1,800 Seconds an hour the switched network took a crap. Fortunately the government took the position that the ISP's should not be held responsible because the Local Exchange Carriers had under designed their networks, The FCC required the LEC's to fix the problem by upgrading their networks at their expense.

It appears that Mr. Ed is taking the same position the Local Exchange Carriers CEO's took in 1997 when it comes to upgrading AT&T's broadband networks to meet increased traffic. Make content providers and customers pay more so the AT&T's does not have to pay for upgrading their networks. It is time to take the feed bag away from Mr. Ed.

So then, anyone who agrees with telcos, even if they have no affiliation with them, is by your definition a tool of said telcos. Well that certainly makes it easy to defend your position. Telcos are wrong and anyone who agrees with them is also automatically wrong.

Probably the best article I have ever read summarizing network neutrality.

Who is the leader of the Internet Society? Can we nominate you Rob

No, though I really appreciate you assigning me untenable logic positions for me that I'm subsequently forced to deny. No, agreeing with telcos is fine. Repeating incoherent and incorrect positions I know are created by phone company lobbyists is not so fine.

It sure is easy to throw meaningless numbers around. So where's you're "plan"? You've intrigued my interest.

Actually...the investors paid to build the network. Us customers are helping pay the investors back. So by your logic, the investors should dictate how it is managed, and (to a degree sadly) that's exactly what is happening.

Maybe because after the tolls disappeared, people disproportionately consumed more of the limited resource????

Simple when you expect someone to pay twice or more times for the same thing it's greed.

Here is 1 example. The key was prohibition of QOS and admission control of data to the network.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In ··· _of_2006
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne ··· islation

quote:

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prohibits the use of admission control to determine network traffic priority.

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Net Neutrality proponents are still trying to put things like this in to law. The network either is completely unmanageable or so cost prohibitive to make the net non-blocking.

Statements like that are a slippery slope. There is a difference to make money to enhance the business and build it, then there is to prevent innovation in the industry just to make sure you don't loose profit margins.

Now, if facts were shown that the ISPs have to pay per byte and they were overselling for years - then ISPs have a leg to stand on for charging insane pricing per byte. But, the fact is ISPs DO NOT pay per byte, they pay by the bandwidth. If I bought a T1, there is no limit on how much I can download or upload, period. Same thing goes with an OC line. The only limit is how much data I push down the pipe at any given time.

This is where the ISPs are being greedy because they don't pay per byte, but yet they want the customer(s) to. You see where I am going with this?
It's similar to a concept of a buffet. The buffet pays $X for the food. You pay $Y to eat as much as you want. Now, what if you walked in tomorrow and they said they are still a buffet but you can only get 2 platefuls and you have to pay for platefuls after that because there is a limit. And lets say that another plateful costs MORE than what you paid at the door. At that point you would find another buffet right? Well, taking the buffet example to what ISPs are trying to do - I think we can agree that an ISPs usually have a monopoly or duopoly and even rarely a "triopoly" (sp?) but most of the time you don't have much of a choice for high speed internet, that is a fact. Now, lets say ISP X started to charge after the "2 platefuls", in a normal buffet you would just goto the competition....but in the real world there are no competition for high speed internet. See what I did there?
Paying-per-byte would only be appropriate if there was proper competition to keep the rates at a fair level that the ISPs competed for. But, since there is no competition - ISPs can charge whatever they want for overages and who is going to stop them? High speed internet is unregulated so they government wont, there is no competition so there is no incentive to keep the rates low.
Do you still think that pay-per-byte or overage charges is fair to the consumer?