rahvin112
join:2002-05-24
Sandy, UT
| reply to JasonD
Re: Wow.
The problem with what you think is good is that you don't think beyond what you are told. The high end consumption drives the costs down long term, it also causes the networks to be structured such that future heavy demand services will be possible. Someday we all might buy the TV channels we want (and only the ones we want) on the Internet and stream them to our TV's directly.
Without P2P driving the cost of bandwidth down the demand ceases and the internet never moves beyond web and email. Looking at countries where lots of bandwidth is available and cheap (Japan and Korea) and you will see countries with rapidly developing new interactive markets. Markets the US will be excluded from if we choose to take the path that providers can discriminate against the type of traffic they carry.
In the long run the excess consumption of a few drives down the costs and availability for everyone. But why would we want to advance right? Horse drawn carriages are fast enough and why on earth would we want to buy channels directly rather than being forced to buy them as a package from a middleman? Many technical advances come about with the availability of high bandwidth, without the P2P driving the curve the bandwidth will never happen and the interactivity and cheaper systems that would result will never happen.
I'm astounded at times how many people fail to realize that this debate about filtering is nothing more than a debate about net-neutrality. The pipes should be dumb, they should provide and serve ANY data the customer wants and any attempt to interfere in that is an attempt to insert or preserve a middleman that doesn't need to be in the system. Opposition to Net-neutrality (or pro "network management") is about preserving and enhancing revenue streams and has little to nothing to do with network management. Comcast and other don't want you to have unrestricted data because then they become a dump pipe and you could buy services (phone, video) from anyone on the network. That's the greatest fear of the providers and the reason they use P2P as their sounding board for network-neutrality opposition. The minute it's a dumb pipe is the minute the information becomes a commodity sold to the market at the lowest acceptable price.
When you realize what's at stake, that's when you'll realize how important network-neutrality is and why P2P filtering is the step in the door (and the first nail in the coffin) to charging companies to access you, and limiting what you can do as a consumer to maximize the revenue of the pipe provider. Don't fall for the BS, network-neutrality is probably the single most important debate in this country regarding the availability and access to information. |
|
KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
 ·Cox HSI
 ·AT&T Southwest
| said by rahvin112  :Someday we all might buy the TV channels we want (and only the ones we want) on the Internet and stream them to our TV's directly. You've just described a Cable TV Company Exec's worst nightmare.... and now, a Telco Company Exec with new TV services worst nightmare.
Why do you think they want to push caps, throttling, and pay-per-byte? To make sure that consumers can NOT go to such a system, and WILL have to stay paying them for content. It's designed to be anti-competitive, and block consumers choice.
--
"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) |
|
RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
| Yep. Except that the telco IPTV model scales directly to the pay per channel market. It's damn close to that now. Even at this point I can order programming to my TiVo or a MPC and play it in as good a quality as standard cable gives now. All we need are more like the Fox/Universal 'hulu' and others to provide more content and speed up the process. The seeds are already planted.
This is indeed the NCTA's worst-case scenario and as you said they will do anything to prevent it. It's the VoIP to their outdated Video on Demand cash cow long distance, to use a familiar analogy.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange. |
|
