"Suddenly, the TV image goes pixilated, and then dark. The phone call drops. You hear yelling from your teenagers' rooms. But that's not all.
Across town, police on the beat suddenly can't reach headquarters on their radios. In an ambulance, the EMTs are trying to call in vital signs for a patient they are transporting to the hospital, but they can't get through.
Is it an alien invasion? A convergence of planets or some other astral phenomenon? No, it's a convergence of a different sort. Turns out that tonight is also the night of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, as well as the night Coldplay releases its latest song online. And YouTube has just released embarrassing video of a major Hollywood star having a ``wardrobe malfunction.'' Extremely high demand on the Internet is overwhelming available bandwidth, and regulations passed back in 2006 make it illegal for network operators to differentiate and prioritize content."
That's right folks network neutrality is GOING TO KILL PEOPLE!!!! Google must be stopped. Think of the children!
This scenario of course would never happen. All telco have packet throttling already. Users exceeding their limits often find themselves cut off. His scenario actually highlights the real problem - telcos consistently over sell their bandwdith at a 10 to 1 ratio. They want the government to come and protect this practice as it's actually quite expensive to provide what you actually promise users. Additionally there are already of dealing with his proposed meltdown. Simple content cacheing solutions have been available for over 12 years now. Telcos aren't going to melt under the new traffic load. Phones will continue to work fine. As I noted in a previous post non discrimintory networks are more efficient from an engineering prospectative.
Here is my favorite quote from this article
A world where somebody decided that a stupid network is better than a smart network. Well, how well did that work out?
Well Tom that was a decision decision made 36 years ago about the Internet as dumb networks as he calls them are more flexible and robust than networks that attempt to prioritize traffic. The terms "dumb" and "smart" are inherently biased and more importantly isn't accurate. The Internet isn't "dumb," currently it is non discriminatory. What would you rather have a network that discriminates against or one that doesn't? It's sorta a no brainer. But Tom makes the argument that in a bandwidth starved world, we need to manage these packets.
Maybe someday we'll have the techno-utopian world of infinite bandwidth, but the last time I checked, there isn't an infinite supply of anything. So, in a world with limited bandwidth, should traffic from an Internet-connected toaster have the same network priority handling as the VoIP traffic from police and fire departments?
Network neutrality proponents answer that question ``yes.'' But the correct answer is so obviously ``no'' that there is clearly some other agenda at work.
Notice that Tom betrays what the telcos really want to do. They want to make bandwidth artificially scarce so they can charge more for it. Bandwidth shouldn't be scarce for two reasons. First off there is a massive amount of fiber that is currentl y dark. Roughly 90% of ALL fiber in the US is dark and not in use. Why? Well having this much bandwidth available would case prices in the local telecommunications markets to drop through the floor. Remember almost all telcos have local monopolies on the fiber or in the case of DSL the copper. So after accepting billions from the federal government to bring symmetrical fiber optic cable to the American consumer,the telcos didn't. In the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, the major U.S. telcos promised to deliver fiber to 86 million households by 2006. We paid them 200 Billion dollars to do so. They simply pocketed the money. Read more here.
What's really going on is that major content companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon.com want to use the strong arm of government to lock in the certainty of their existing business models. And they've enlisted an army of anti-corporate activists to stir up a frenzy in the name of ``saving the Internet.''
But government should be about fostering a dynamic and risk-taking economy, not preserving the certainty of anyone's business models. Net neutrality regulations would severely restrict broadband providers' right to enter into contracts and to try new business models while protecting the business models of Google and Ebay.
Well he's right about one thing. It is about preserving someone's business model but it's not the companies that are incredibly successful internet startups. It's about preserving the telcos' ability to ration bandwidth. Let's keep in mind, according to the 1996 Act, 86 million American homes are supposed to 45Mbit connections. Yet after pocketing $200,000,000,000 from the American consumers we still don't have it.
I find it amazing after calling for the government to protect the poor telco (by staying out of the market and not regulating it) that if the telcos discriminate, why
". . . the FCC, the FTC and the Justice Department, which all have existing authority should a telco or cable company misbehave."
Except of course when in this current regulatory environment you can count on them to do nothing. This has allowed Cox Cable to cut off access to Craigslist for it's users. Cox which also owns a large number of local newspapers (which derive their revenue from classifieds) for which Craigslist is a very large competitor. If telcos act this way during the age of net neutrality what would it be like if the telcos get their way. Far worse where we wouldn't have the Internet net we now have and would be somehting resembling the propriatary online services of the 80s - which consumers have soundly rejected.
