calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| If you read the article, it's clear that Chairman Martin considers blocking to be anticompetitive behavior. His stance is that rules trying to define it and prohibit it aren't appropriate now.
The FCC, including Martin, did act quickly in the instance of a small ISP blocking VoIP earlier.
In a way, I see his point--if the ISPs are going to start anti-competitive behavior, it may be easier to stop them if there isn't already a rule that they can avoid while claiming to be legal, but this depends on the FCC consistently acting quickly in the future, which isn't really realistic.
This isn't going to be easy--as bandwidth usage increases, various throttles, caps, and forms of incremental pricing will be applied. Although I find it appealing to say that all such usage limitations should be based on the user end, rather than based on the content transmitted or the internet server/peer/whatever reached on the other end, some ISPs may have valid marketing approaches based on such factors ("use SaintNet for porn-free browsing", etc.) and those will take time to develop.
Maybe we would be better off with an active FCC ready to jump on "anticompetitive" practices--if only we had one--but like most posters here, I've usually felt more comfortable with more explicit rules to govern sleazy incumbent conduct.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
