Net Neutrality and Carrier Incentives To Invest 170
An anonymous reader writes "In policy debates before Congress and the FCC, the big ISPs and wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Sprint) argued that net neutrality rules would give them less incentive to upgrade their networks. The reality is just the opposite, says Infoworld's Bill Snyder, citing a game-theoretic work done by two researchers at the U. of Florida's business school. If carriers can charge premium prices for expedited service, they have an incentive not to invest. Hmm, this reminds me of the agriculture business, where prices are sometimes propped up by paying farmers not to grow crops."
Open source internet? (Score:2, Interesting)
With wireless technology developing as it is, is there any chance that some day we can create our own ad hoc internet without relying on expensive cables and thus expensive carriers?
I suppose we would still need some kickass routers, but it's not like open source projects are completely devoid of money. Wikipedia has tons of hardware, no?
Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP (Score:4, Interesting)
The crazy thing about the subsidies is that they encourage the growing of things like maize over vegtables and healthy alternatives.
Maize- yes that wonderful grain that contains almost no healthy nutrition compare to other grains that is often served instead of vegetables.
From which at subsidized prices we get artificially low sweetners such as corn syrup, and because it is used as animal feed (cattle, pigs)- meat prices drop.
Not that there is anything wrong with protein- but it is the high fat that goes along with it that would be missing from more veggies instead of a 99cent ham burger- or a steak.
The subsidies, especially the ones tilted towards encouraging farmers to grow maize of all things does nothign but encourage the obesity epidemic.
Cut the maize- grow healthier grains, healthier fruits and veggies- why are my tax dollars going towards making my neighbours into fat pigs?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Not hard to incentivze them (Score:4, Interesting)
Require some truth in advertizing from them. Enact legislation where if they do not meet there advertized speeds one average during peek times they are fined and eventually loose there monopolies. There networks are cash cows network upgrades are a simple matter of trending and re engineering for wired networks. They want to suck all the money they can out and avoid capx purchases to make there bonus bigger. Honestly most monopoly services should be bid out where the carrier offering the most for the least gets the contract. I would love to see AT&T loose out on DSL and have to give up that franchise, they have no cost of bandwidth (paying your sister company does not count) but aggressively limiter there subscribers.
Re:Open source internet? (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet is Open. The specs to communicate over TCP/IP are quite clear. The problem is who owns the infrastructure. Cables, Satellites, and the ability to bring them to peoples location costs money. Then they have the cost of maintaining their routing to other providers.
An Add Hock network can only go so far, once you scale larger then you get into more issues.
100 people all maintaining their own routers is fine.
1000 people you may need to find a good techie and pony up to give him a good router.
10000 More techies that you need to maintain the router. And you are start having complains on who's cable go where. Or crazy nuts afraid that their house is getting too much wi-fi radation.
The bigger it gets the most it costs and the more issues that happen. You will start to need Full time people working on this stuff, and they can't starve for the glory of keeping your internet up, they will need to be paid for their work...
Then when you are done you either have a set of big ISP that you probably need to pay $20-60 a month too or a government controlled internet, where you will get think of the children people yelling at the government to block whatever seems bad information to them at the time.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Farmer subsidies need to STOP (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong.
Many starving areas don't invest because they have no stability to invest. Food is't a problem, delivery to the people who need to east it is.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)