AT&T's Net Neutrality Doublethink 215
GMGruman writes "George Orwell would be proud of AT&T, as Bill Snyder explains in this blog post, for its new ads saying it supports Net neutrality when in fact it is working actively to scuttle proposed FCC rules that would clearly ban discriminatory practices against different types of data, such as video streaming or VoIP. It's also trying to get government subsidies to build a substandard broadband network for the under-served areas of the US. If it and its carrier partners win, 'Internet freedom' will mean freedom for carriers to be the 21st century's robber barons."
I'd like to see... (Score:2, Insightful)
...electricity companies trying to charge you different prices for using different applicances. We already have "electricity neutrality", why isn't net neutrality taken for granted?
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there's no 'unlimited' plan for electricity.
If ISPs charged people according to usage, there would be no need for a 'net neutrality' bill... ISPs would be loving people who used more, instead of hating them. But then the users would be angry because they've had 'unlimited' so long.
Don't get me wrong, I'm one of those people. And I'd love to have my cake and eat it, too... But the simple truth is that I use WAY more than most people and they get to pay for some of it and that kind of thing is going to come to an end one way or another.
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The flaw with your reasoning is that ISPs are already undercharging. So there's no "spare money" to decrease rates. I'm personally paying $15/month - how much cheaper can it get? Instead people are using more data, which will require laying more lines, and therefore require higher rates for those demanding users while everyone else holds steady.
ALSO FROM THE ARTICLE:
"AT&T is asking asking the government to define broadband as anything over 768Kbps downstream and 200Kbps upstream." What's wrong with
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Depends on the existing lines.
In many rural areas they have party-lines (not usable for DSL...) or lie at a distance from the CO that's well beyond anything other than iDSL rates if that. They'd have to spend a bit of extra money that the profit margins aren't "high enough" for them to bother with- there's a reason that the rural areas have Internet access problems in the first place. Nobody wants to serve the areas because they're less profitable.
If they're wanting to define Broadband as 768/200k, I'm al
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The distance for 1.5 Mbit/s, using a DSL repeater, is 10 miles. For 768k it's almost twice that. Worst-case the phone company could do for a rural town what they did for my old coworker - run a fiber line to a DSLAM, and then use the DSLAM to provide DSL over the existing phone lines.
As for cost, it probably will be higher for rural users. Oh well. They choose to live there, which means having some inconveniences like having to drill wells for water, bury tanks for sewer, and pay $30 for 768k instead of
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Just... Wow. What's wrong with having the government define broadband as anything over 768Kbps down and 200Kbps up? I'll tell you. The rest of Earth will laugh at us. That's what's wrong with that. I realize the size of the US puts a different burden on network deployment here, but please stop pretending like we don't know that pretty much all of South-East Asia is now on DOCSIS 3.0 and/or fiber-to-the-door.
I offer to /. again my anecdote about Comcast changing my plan from unlimited to hard capped at 250GB
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I would have to guess that since Comcast is really the US Government, that this is not what we call a healthy business model. Rather than spend their money marketing and lobbying, they should have spent it on their network. I think it's absolute horseshit, and I feel cheated every time I pay the bill.
Right on brother. I dare anyone to disagree with that. If they spent half of the money they are spending on lobbying and advertising, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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I know this is all anecdotal, but I'm in a rural area, paying about $50/mo
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Wholesale bandwidth costs less than $10/Mbps in the quantities they buy. Since they oversell it by a factor of 100, that's WAY less than $1 out of the $15 you pay.
The bulk of that $15 is to maintain the connection between your house and their facility. That cost is the same if you saturate your connection or never use it at all.
I doubt very much that they take a loss on you.
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot of buffet restaurants in the U.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Actually, many of them DO go out of business because it's really, really hard to get 'unlimited' right, including making it a good deal for the light eaters as well as the gluttons. Sometimes it's not even possible.
But those restaurants don't implement a 'neutrality' scheme, either. Many of them put up more of the cheap food than the expensive food. (No, not all... But then, not all ISPs will limit, either.)
I never said ISPs would go out of business. I said they would solve the 'unlimited' problem in s
re: no unlimited plan for electricity (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope... you're correct, but metering electric usage is, IMHO, a little more of a necessity than metering Internet usage. Electric power generation involves very real and substantial costs that aren't really a matter of one-time investments and minimal upkeep to "upgrade" so more power is supplied. EG. If I put several large businesses on a power grid and they start drawing a lot of electric power, I very well might be looking at putting another generator online to handle the load. Every hour that genera
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The economics are all different. Speed (Mbps) in the internet world is economically equivalent to KWh in the electricity world. The routers don't consume any more of anything if you push your connection 24/7 than they do if you don't even use the net.
The ISP's upstream is billed on 95th percentile of the data rate rather than on megabytes as well. The telecoms providers have had a sweeter deal than the power company from day 1. The power company never ever gets to bill you for a MW/hr every month even thoug
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I am on the carrier's side... But can you possibly explain the logic in this position other than that you want it?
I pay extra for a faster connection and a higher total download capacity per month. That seems entirely fair. The problem comes when carriers try to limit what kind of data you download within that limit. They are effectively trying to make it impossible for you to actually get what you specifically paid for. That is what net neutrality is about. Not just letting you download as much porn as you want while still only paying the basic fee.
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're paying a monthly fee to use that service, it should not matter how much or how little you use it. ISPs have no right to bitch and moan about high bandwidth users.
That's not logical. It makes sense that people who use more should pay more. Why shouldn't the people who use more, pay more? If I use more water, I pay a higher water bill; if I use more electricity, I pay a higher electric bill.
It seems that the problem is that word "unlimited." If the sales pitch says that you're buying "unlimited" internet, then you've got an argument that they're doing false advertising when they then say "...but that doesn't mean unlimited".
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you use more water, or more electricity, you're consuming finite resources that wouldn't be used otherwise. The same isn't true of bandwidth--the ISP is paying for a certain amount on their outgoing connections, regardless of whether or not uses are actively using it.
You need electricity to use bandwidth... Even so, water and electricity are not finite.
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Electricity and water are limited in practical terms. There's finite generating and transmission capacity. Every switching station turns some of the transmitted electricity into heat. You running your TV turns that electricity into projected light and heat, this is electricity I can't use to run my microwave. Data transmission is quite different, data packets can be duplicated an infinite number of times. Downloading a file from a server doesn't affect the availability file for anyone else. The only resourc
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'd like to see... (Score:5, Informative)
WIth water, you get a specific pipe at a specific pressure (and temperature, probably) that yeilds a MAX of the water you can use.
With electricity, you get a specific MAX amperage of service that can be sustained.
Both utilities will charge you huge fortunes if you use the maximum output 24/7.
With broadband, you get a pipe that's capable of a sustained data rate. Upstream, however, data will come when it will come, subject to QoS or packet shaping. If you download at the max rate, 24/7, it's likely your hard disk will simply fill, and that's that-- your capacity has been reached.
What net neutrality does is to forward the idea that no matter where you want your data from, the carrier delivers a best-effort to deliver that data to you. In this scheme, it doesn't favor its product over another vendors; it's neutral as to the destination. Certainly latency, routing, and congestion issues apply, but it doesn't squish YouTube in favor of NBC (are you listening, Comcast?).
The aperiodicity of transaction means that congestion could be a problem, especially during the Superbowl or other 'events' where everyone's downloading at once. Otherwise, there's a fairly random distribution of duty cycle that allows bandwidth to be shared. However, older network designs, like ATM and a few others that are still carriers of data, aren't very good at doing that. Older routing equipment and ancient equipment (by modern standards) still presents a non-neutral bottleneck, although not one that's deterministic by data source.
So it's not like water and electricity, although it could still be considered a utility by other definitions. Communications ought to be a utility, and ought to be product source (e.g. the water, and the coulombs) neutral.
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Throttling users below the limit of what they'd actually paid for isn't a net neutrality issue at all unless they are discriminating.
It is however a fair trade issue and the FTC should be going after them for fraud.
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That would be true if there were no costs for providing that.
Bandwidth is connected to the use of electricity and the price of employees, which aren't unlimited resources.
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I forgot to mention the investment price of buying bandwidth providing appliances
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If you use more water, or more electricity, you're consuming finite resources that wouldn't be used otherwise. The same isn't true of bandwidth--the ISP is paying for a certain amount on their outgoing connections, regardless of whether or not uses are actively using it.
Not only that, but unused bandwidth is essentially wasted. Water that isn't used can be saved for later, as can fuel that's used to generate electricity. You can't have a 1 Mbps line idle for a day and then get 2 Mbps from it the next day.
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If you use more water, or more electricity, you're consuming finite resources that wouldn't be used otherwise. The same isn't true of bandwidth--the ISP is paying for a certain amount on their outgoing connections, regardless of whether or not uses are actively using it.
That's not the issue : what AT&T wants would be like : paying more per liter because you are using water to fill your bathtub , rather than taking a shower.
Which means you will pay twice , because you are already paying more , because you use more water , and you know you will pay even more , because it will cost more.
But it's ideal for the water company , because he gains a lot of money , while at the same time keeping usage down , so he doesn't have to upgrade anything.
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but they have a finite amount of bandwidth to slice up at any given point in time
Which can easily be increased with a negligible investment over time by those ISPs, that for some reason, they refuse to admit and/or subsidize.
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Which is rather interesting considering that it is the receivers of traffic and not the senders that benefit the most.
When you enjoy a webpage or watch a movie, you are receiving traffic.
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Precisely. If my ISP told me up front that I am paying for a maximum amount of data transferred per month, I would have no problem with it. When they tell me my plan is "unlimited," I assume they mean, "as much as you want and your equipment can handle."
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When you're paying a monthly fee to use that service, it should not matter how much or how little you use it. ISPs have no right to bitch and moan about high bandwidth users.
That's not logical. It makes sense that people who use more should pay more. Why shouldn't the people who use more, pay more? If I use more water, I pay a higher water bill; if I use more electricity, I pay a higher electric bill.
It seems that the problem is that word "unlimited." If the sales pitch says that you're buying "unlimited" internet, then you've got an argument that they're doing false advertising when they then say "...but that doesn't mean unlimited".
Well, it kind of depends on your service model, "fair" is a lot trickier concept to nail down than you think. As a practical matter, there is a cost in even making internet service available and providing bandwidth even if it isn't used. If others "borrow" the bandwidth you aren't using, then there *might* be no harm. (please note I said might)
For example, it is perfectly valid to offer a service plan like "I am going to put a T-3 line into your neighborhood, charge everyone $100 per month to connect and
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But the deal is that's what they're selling "unlimited".
Like GrantRobertson pointed out, the metrics that the telco sells to users are monthly payments and an amount of bandwidth. ISPs drastically oversold...they're passing out 3, 5,7+ Mb pipes then complaining when people use them "full speed" more than an hour or two a day. That's what these artificial limits amount to.
If ISPs needed to reduce usage they could easily adjust the bandwidth plans to be more appropriate. Businesses pay $1000+ for 24x7 3MB pip
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>>>ISPs themself do not pay anything based on amount transferred.
You're going to sit there and tell me there's no difference in electricity usage for a Server to feed me 1 gigabyte versus 1000 gigabytes each month? C'mon! Of course high-usage costs more money, and I see nothing wrong with passing that on to the high-usage customer.
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You're going to sit there and tell me there's no difference in electricity usage for a Server to feed me 1 gigabyte versus 1000 gigabytes each month?
Only if you're going to tell me that it's not covered by the $50/month I pay. I mean, c'mon. You're talking about the POWER on a network switch? Really?
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Yes, that's exactly true. There is no significant difference in electricity usage.
Here's the problem... (Score:5, Informative)
ISPs DO IN FACT have to pay for the data you send and receive. Yes, they do.
Peering arrangements do not cover the cost of the connection to the NAP. If, say Cox Cable in Arizona wants to interconnect to the other Cox state networks, they can do so and it's just their way of dealing with interconnection. But when they decide to connect so, say MAE-West, they pay for the connection into the NAP. It may be an OC-148, or something truly studly, like a really hot fiber. These circuits are not free, as they require right-of-way, actual genuine fiber (which they may share sometimes with others in the jacket - true), and of course the hardware to make it work. Price out some of that some time.
Now, true, the cost is shared amongst the many many subscribers, and they could choose to peer in one NAP, though in fact that would be bad practice, with single point of failure stuff and all.
But the reality is that not only would Cox (as an example) have to provision enogh connections and capacity to at least prevent customers from flooding the lines with 'I can't get' calls, but most peering arrangements at the NAP require you to provide enough bandwidth to actually receive what other peers send to you (on request from your subscribers, usually) or they see you as not playing fair. This gets you either booted off the NAP or throttled (or ignored, see Cogent v Sprint) and your users get poorer performance. Providing adequate service in a NAP peering is non-trivial, and the big carriers do not let you off. If you're a small ISP, you usually partner with a bigger one to avoid this sort of thing. I know. I was a small ISP. My carrier was MCI for a long time, and they had me 3 hops from MAE-East, a nice multi T1 connection. When we downsized to BBN, we got a dual T1 that was 25 hops away from a midwest NAP, which was a little off the beaten path and increased our latency about 12ms on average. But it was cheaper. Boss wins.
The concept that somehow your ISP doesn't really pay for their ultimate connection to the 'Internet' is ludicrous and misleading.
And having said that, Cox cable is probably more interested in the high-volume users that 'distort' the local networks and might be causing congestion. This is where most 'oversubscribing' is noticeable, and where the pproblems for the ISP are most difficult, IMHO. And where they need to decide what level of service they wish to provide.
That should be interesting. That's where individual customers will be hurt, and will fight back.
And you wrote:
"ISP's per-MB usage charge is just added there to discourage customers to actually use their connection."
That's one pricing formulation. Another would be to price higher volume users to recover costs, while not discouraging them or losing them to competitors. This formula is not so commonly used, since real competition is ineffective in most of the U.S., though there are other pressures and this is not nearly so simple as most of us would like to believe. Of course, the impact is plain and obvious, so we tend to think that the cause is also plain and obvious.
Don't think I am defending packet inspection and service filtering, nor am I defending the US ISP marketers. But let's keep our focus on reality. They should be expected to carry any traffic their users request, without discriminating on the basis of volume or source, and they should either price their service as necessary (or desireable) or describe their services accurately so customers can make informed decisions and have reasonable expectations. And MOST importantly, they should not discriminate on the basis of the source of the data. For instance, throttle based on URL (hulu.com, for example) or traffic type (H.323, for example) and then offer an unthrottled service of their own which is substantially identical (HD video streaming, for example) and delivered via the same method (TCP/IP). This would be discriminatory in a way we should not accept - like restraint of trade, the ISP could throttle some vi
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Re:I'd like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we don't have "electricity neutrality" - you've never heard of "off-peak" KW/Hr rates? It only makes sense to offer it to commercial consumers of electricity, but they pay less for electricty used during off-peak hours...
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But at least those rates are based-upon a realistic limitation (it's cheaper to run generators at night rather than shut them down, and that benefit is passed to the consumer). With internet non-neutrality, we're discussing Comcast ISP charging 1 dollar per gigabyte to access youtube.com, but providing comcast.com at no cost. It's using monopoly power for an unfair competitive advantage.
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P.S.
My electrical company is discontinuing nightly rates, and I'm not happy about it. My home would heat a tank of water at night, and then use virtually no electricity during the day, but now it won't matter when I run my heat - it will all cost the same. :-( Talk about a step backwards!
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...electricity companies trying to charge you different prices for using different applicances. We already have "electricity neutrality", why isn't net neutrality taken for granted?
Actually, they do charge more for locations with a worse power factor [snopud.com]. A lower power factor is caused by inductive loads, so you are charged extra for using too much inductive loading.
That said, it doesn't matter if this is caused by a large motor or what the motor is used for, which is how the ISPs would love to regulate. The utility companies also tell you up front what PF results in which charge, while the ISPs may not.
So, the utility companies are actually fantastic examples of neutrality. Limits a
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>>>A lower power factor is caused by inductive loads, so you are charged extra for using too much inductive loading.
In other words they discourage the use of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Interesting. IMHO that's a good thing, because Edison resistance bulbs eliminate mercury poisoning, dim turnons, premature heat-death, and high cost.
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However, power factor can be corrected and unlike the distinction between a server and a client, a poor power factor actually costs the power company more to provide for.
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This is a weak comparison you're trying to make. Electricity is usage based which means you ARE charged for using different appliances. A lightbulb is going to be inexpensive to operate. But run something like a clothes dryer and your usage rises dramatically, meaning you're going to pay significantly more. Run something like an electric welder and you pay even more. This is how pricing for all utilities work.
With Internet and television, on the other hand, you pay a monthly fee for with is, in theory, pers
lies, damn lies, and advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
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False advertising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising [wikipedia.org]
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i wish there was a tractable way of making lying in an ad a criminal offense punishable by death for all those responsible...
He's obviously not completely serious, but he makes a good point. We do need more enforcement and harsher penalties for misleading advertising.
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I think that once they're on public record, they should simply be required to either make good on their promise or publically recant.
Politicians too, for that matter.
That would totally kill the lobbying industry. That or politicians would have to shut up and only speak when they absolutely had..... to......
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Where would we store all the convicted politicians once your proposed law goes into effect?
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Bottom of the ocean seems to be available.
Under-served (Score:5, Funny)
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* Where available.
Subsidies ok. (Score:4, Insightful)
Broadband is one of those cases where experience matters more than ideology. Ideologically, we might say we should have no government interference in the broadband market, or the government should provide broadband to everyone, but what really worked is the government giving the carrier a measure of guaranteed returns on their investment in exchange for satisfying some general social obligations. This worked stunningly well in the old electric industry, where state PUCs did regulate rates, for sure, mandated service levels, for sure, but, at the end, the shareholders of the electric company got a nice dividend check every year. Not a growth stock, but a reliable dividend stock, a good service for consumers, a good company to work for in the community, and it was really about as much of a win-win deal as anyone could get until everyone got greedy - consumers and shareholders alike, and screwed it all up with electrical deregulation.
To wit : I really don't have a problem with taxpayer subsidies for rural broadband IF the broadband companies subsequently tie themselves to Public Utilities Commissions for the setting of rates in the way electricity worked in the better and pre-deregulation days. Give the rural carriers the monopoly, have the government set the rates. That provides badly needed service, the government gets its social responsibilities fulfilled, and the carrier owners get a nice dividend check.
This isn't rocket science. But we just have to get rid of this awful grip of capitalism / socialism black and white thinking that has seized our minds and focus instead on historically that which has worked to build our communities.
Re:Subsidies ok. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why subsidize when you can own instead? It is just a waste of tax payer money. If you want broadband built, you buy the service of putting cables into the ground from companies, and end up owning the cables, which you can then rent out to ISPs who want access to end customers. To separate concerns and reduce centralization, you place the ownership in city/state owned non-profit businesses created for the purpose of maintenance and fee collecting on said broadband.
What you don't do is give big companies 200 billion dollars in tax relief and tell them to build broadband if they want. Because that way you don't get anything in return. Because once the money has been given out, the companies accepting the subsidies have no reason whatsoever to keep a low price. They can just go ahead and charge as much as the market can bear. And there won't be many competitors because the subsidized will have an unfair competitive advantage.
Re:Subsidies ok. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why subsidize when you can own instead
Because you want the private sector to come up with the capital for initial construction and by doing so, assume the risk for construction delays and other problems.
The reason a government has a private sector, isn't ideological, or rather why a private sector works, is sound risk management. If the King wants to build a tower, and screws it up, the King is out the money. If the King goes and says, "I'll tell you what, build whatever you want, but I get a piece of the income", well, the King doesn't have to assume any risk, at all. He makes the barons, if you will, eat the risk and the capital costs, and gets to collect. When you socialize something, you have the government absorb all the risk. Tis much better to let the government work through monopolies, and just collect the money.
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Being a customer of the Uncle Sam Monopoly is even worse than being under the Comcast monopoly. At least I can tell Comcast to go "frak off" and not use their service. Try that with a government-owned ISP and they'll just suck the money from your paycheck instead. Like the U.S.P.S. and Amtrak does.
And if you think RIAA is bad.....
Wait until the government becomes your ISP and spies you downloading a movie or song (or worse: porn). They won't just send you a nasty letter; they'll have the cop
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>>>hahahaha, tell me more about how the united states postal service is fucking you over.
They are asking Congress for billions of dollars to pay off the post office's (again) (and again), so even though I don't use the USPS anymore, I'm still getting billed by them. I bet Comcast and Microsoft and Apple wish they had that kind of deal where they could charge people who aren't even their customers.
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P.S.
A better solution, now that we have fiber optic, is simply let as many companies enter a neighborhood as desire. Fiber is so narrow you could run a dozen companies in the space of a centimeter, and then just let each customer decide which company they like best (Comcast or Cox or Charter or AppleTV or LinuxISP or MSN or AOL or...). And before you say it can't be done, some towns already do have multiple ISPs. You pick your ISP the same way you pick what brand of car you want.
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>>>screwed it all up with electrical deregulation
It works well for me. My natural gas + electricity bill dropped about 10% when I switched companies. That may not sound like much but when multiplied over a year that's ~$250 saved.
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It works well for me. My natural gas + electricity bill dropped about 10% when I switched companie
There's a looming reliability problem in the works.
Best get this out of they way.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Robber Barons? You, sir, slander the good name of brilliant men like Jay Gould and Daniel Drew. How dare you! [mises.org]
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This is the same Thomas DiLorenzo that published a book critical of Lincoln that was rife with misquotes, mis-attributed quotes, and misleading anecdote use? [claremont.org]
The same Thomas DiLorenzo that accepted funds (not just accepted -- billed them for it!) from RJR (tobacco company) to write a book called Cancerscam: the diversion of federal ca [sourcewatch.org]
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Some of the de Mises articles remind me of The Money Programme [youtube.com]
will be? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it and its carrier partners win, 'Internet freedom' will mean freedom for carriers to be the 21st century's robber barons
What do you mean - will be? We already pay a ridiculous monthly fee for piss poor access that you can't even get in most parts of the US. The areas that do get broadband access are all carved up into local monopolies so that users can stay crowded on the same cables as 10 years ago that can no longer carry the load and if you do try to use the broadband you paid for you get disconnected or throttled by the carrier. So how is this any more than business as usual?
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Providing basic access to those currently with only dial-up access is a reasonable goal, even if it doesn't meet the highest definition of "high-speed broadband."
Your real issue is within the realm of the state and local regulatory agencies - your town, state enables monopolies, not the federal gov't.
They didn't mind taking the infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when the internet first went private. None of the telecos minded inheriting the original infrastructure. But now that it's time to invest in new technologies, they whine like a spoiled little kid. Somebody call the whaaaambulance.
They're trying for the same deal the big banks get. Taxpayers shoulder the infrastructure investment, but the telecos get to run it and make obscene profits without any real oversight.
Our 40 year "government regulation is bad" experiment ended with disastrous results. Without a referee looking out for the interests of the public, which has a lot of skin in this game, the telecos are going to ride us all like a carnival pony, just like Wall Street.
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Uhm, there's been NO INVESTMENT in the infrastructure since "the internet first went private"? Really? The network hasn't been upgraded or backbone capacity hasn't increased since then?
What a simplistic view of the telco/internet infrastructure...
Re:They didn't mind taking the infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the failure of our 100+ year experiment whereby the government hands out favors to some entrants, giving them a tremendous marketplace advantage with the full power of a gun behind it? That experiment has a long history of failure world wide. It shouldn't surprise anyone that it is also failing here.
We have had a mixed economy for a very long time. The #1 trick of the statists and their useful idiots is blaming all of our problems on what we continue to have a shrinking share of - marketplace freedom.
One would surmise that if unregulated markets were actually a problem, the amplitude of our cyclic economic destruction would be ever decreasing as the benevolent weight of regulatory graft piled ever higher. Yet this has not been the case. And in light of experimental results that contradict the hypothesis thus far tried, a scientist, or a policy maker who's aim was economic success, would be willing to modify their approach.
But that's not what we have. We have a government that is it's own end. It exists for its own power, and any course of action not commensurate with the increase of power and the subjugation of man isn't realistically considered.
Re:They didn't mind taking the infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not a matter of free market or not a free market. It is a matter of what regulation.
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Why?
Monopolies that help the monopoly holder sustain unnaturally high profits are unsustainable without coercion, and in western society, coercion is done by governments.
IOW: if there is a monopoly out there that is over charging you and reaping huge profits, they are not long for the world unless they have a government propping them up somehow.
If it was truly an issue of the profits being too high, a different market place
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I think the two axioms are useful:
- all transactions between individuals legally allowed to own their own decisions [i.e. we can exclude "children" or "mentally handicapped" people] are fundamentally ethical, assuming they are conducted without force or fraud
- a man owns himself, and the output of his mind and his hands
I think if you start with these two axioms, it's hard to explain why a marketplace-granted near-monopoly is a problem.
I think if you aren't willing to start with these two axioms, you should
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Government regulation of the Telco's has caused this, so we need more regulation?
40 year experiment? (Score:2, Informative)
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>>>Our 40 year "government regulation is bad" experiment
You have it backwards. Most of the ills of the last 20 years (back to the Savings-and-Loan Crash) were caused by regulation. For example, it was government regulation that caused the current economic crash. I know you won't believe me, but here are the politicians in their own words *encouraging banks to make high-risk doomed-to-default loans* (or else face being drug into court).
Clinton-era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64 [youtube.com]
Bush-e
YOU let this happen (Score:3, Interesting)
They'll be robber barons because like in the 1800s, they bribed/gamed the governmental control system in place to achieve monopoly power.
Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would it not be nice for consumers in these rural towns to be able to vote with their dollar and pick the best carrier.
"Hmm, I could choose AT&T who wants $60 to be able to browse 4chan, or, I could choose INTERNET4YOU who will give me free access to every site for only $40"
Why is the government supporting the creation of bigger and bigger monopolies?
"Net Neutrality Doublethink"? (Score:2, Funny)
Don't get it (Score:2)
Net Neutrality means the Internet backbone carriers should operate just like the post office - everyone buys a 44 cent stamp and takes their chances with delivery, you can't pay for better service, and there is no lower class of service than first class.
And substandard broadband? By who's definition? If I listen to some folks almost all US broadband pales in comparison to hand-picked alternatives (Finland, Japan), other folks think that anything that is several times faster than dial-up is better.
Wait, I ge
Re:Don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Actually...the Post Office is a poor analogy.
1) You can buy better service (Priority Mail, Express Mail...).
2) There IS a lower class of service than First Class (Parcel Post...).
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Many people connected to the Internet do so through an effective geographic monopoly, so at this stage there are no market pressures to prevent them charging what they see fit, and never improve the situatio
there is no such thing as net neutrality (Score:2)
unlike regular electricity you can do a lot of things with the electrons coming over the internet wires
Google and the rest of the silicon valley upstarts want to stream all kinds of data and grab most of the profits while avoiding large capital investments into low return markets like broadband access for people. the ISPs are in a constant upgrade mode and want to stop the cycle. every time they upgrade their networks and start to pay the interest on the bonds some other company makes up some new service to
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i guess the google profit margins comes from them running their own "isp", thanks to grabbing dark fiber left over from dot-com and similar...
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they own the fiber for their own network, not for the last mile to people's homes. that is the most expensive part of every network to lay, maintain and support.
the ISP's are always complaining with the bandwidth problems at the last mile or on their networks a hop or two from the last mile. In AT&T's case it's at the tower level since you need thousands of towers to serve some markets. and AT&T's profit margins are a lot lower than Google's. Maybe Google should start their own cell phone service an
Where are the ads? (Score:2)
Bill Snyder writes a long post, with meticulous footnotes, criticizing certain AT&T ads, but not once does he link to the actual AT&T ads! Where are the ads so we can judge for ourselves?
Editors for nerds? (Score:2)
TFS talks about the discrimination against "some types of data", that is QoS and generally accepted to be a good thing. In the other hand, TFA talks about different service providers (true net neutrality issue).
Giving the number of times these terms have been discussed, it is annoying that an editor still bri
Orwell proud? (Score:5, Insightful)
BS (Score:2)
No he wouldn't. Describing something in a work of fiction isn't the same as advocating it.
Fascism Is not right of Center (Score:2)
the Internet Freedom Act of 2009 (Score:2)
Open Source Telco (Score:3, Funny)
I've got it! We can create our own open source network lines. Each person will go to the hardware store and buy 10 meters of fibreoptic cable and dig a trench in front of their house. We can take our spare parts and combine them and make servers! Power to the people! Stickin it to the man! Yeah!!!
Not Doublethink (Score:2)
You can be against regulation while still being for the principals of what people think they are getting when they say "Net Neutrality".
Being opposed to regulation does NOT mean you are opposed to what the regulation is trying to accomplish, you just see a better way to achieve the same effect.
the debate about Net neutrality (Score:2)
If a carrier can pick and choose among different types of content and different types of applications, its competitors (and, ultimately, the users [infoworld.com]) are severely disadvantaged.
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