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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Washington, DC
    Posts
    450

    The Battle for an Open Internet is Not Over

    Congratulations on a hard-fought victory on net neutrality this week.

    Unfortunately, much hard work protecting the open Internet remains to be done. The longstanding fight to protect the Open Internet will continue to be hashed out in court rooms, on Capitol Hill and FCC over the next few years. We need to be diligent about staying on top of this issue, and ensure that the progress made yesterday is not lost.

    Many specifics still need clarity. We will not know precisely how the rules address several specific issues concerning treatment of discrete “applications” or content. It is not clear how they will protect privacy and in particular encryption. The particulars will remain uncertain until at least when the report is actually released, and some matters may have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis as they arise. We also do not yet know exactly how the Commission will address and resolve disputes over what it calls “interconnection” and “traffic exchange” between ISPs, edge providers and other Internet players. It does appear that the treatment of this issue was beneficially changed in the last few days, but once again many important legal and technical specifics remain unclear, and will hopefully be fleshed out in the order and rules.

    We are glad that a majority of the Commissioners recognized that regulating non-competitive “access to the Internet” is not regulating “the Internet.” These are two different things. The dominant last mile providers couldn’t be more different from the rest of the Internet infrastructure industry. Cloud and hosting and edge and data center providers work*incredibly hard to thrive in a ridiculously competitive field, where by most*estimates there are around 60,000 global competitors – most of them small to medium sized*businesses – pushing each other to be better through competitive market forces. Companies*that survive in this space do so because the market requires them to be good to survive.*We need to keep our prices competitive and our services high quality or we won’t survive in the*face of stiff competition.

    According to the FCC,*67% of U.S. homes have just one or two service*providers to choose from. Broadband access is not a competitive market; only a few major corporations build the necessary last-mile facilities that service end users. To be honest, it’s kind of*natural that the broadband market has ended up that way. It doesn’t make sense for lots of*different companies to dig up America’s neighborhoods to run their own last mile fibers to try*and compete with each other. It wouldn’t make any more sense than having lots of different*electric companies run extra power lines to your home – or gas or water and sewage. And yet*until the ruling last week*broadband wasn’t being treated as a natural monopoly even though it exhibits almost all of the hallmarks.

    In short, the last mile providers were seeking to take maximum advantage of their dominance and market power, and were finally told they could no longer do so. That is great news. But as we solve this huge problem, we need to make sure that we protect the*whole Internet ecosystem. We do that by standing up for an open Internet, but we also do that by*teaching people how the Internet works – because what we DON’T need is FCC jurisdiction*and new regulation across the entire competitive Internet.*Last mile access to the Internet isn’t like the rest of the Internet, and it must be treated consistent with its attributes. We also need to make sure that ‘interconnection’ isn’t a slippery slope that will ultimately add a FCC regulatory framework around the rest of the competitive Internet, and that’s going to take years of education and effort in courtrooms and in Congressional offices.

    We should all be relatively pleased with the progress made. But this fight has been long and arduous, and it isn’t over by any means. We must continue to be leaders during the next stages. We hope you will join us as we continue to fight for an open Internet, innovation, customer choice, security and privacy.

    Photo Source

    Co-Author: Andy*MacFarlane

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2000
    Location
    Lake Geneva, WI.
    Posts
    1,370
    "Victory" and "neutrality" are not two nouns I would use together in the same sentence to describe what happened here.

    There were already existing laws and existing regulation of the existing (already defined as) "utilities" on the books.

    Now the average ISP is lobbed in with the utilities and subject to the same regulation.

    What was at the crux of Net Neutrality was the throttling of bandwidth across various networks as it concerned various internet protocols. One of these was the throttling of "streaming" audio/video via certain "streaming" companies.

    In short, the government is saying that as a public utility we will now regulate you to ensure you provide the facility for these services to be streamed at (whatever the FCC) deems is the full and true data rate.

    The problem? What grandma downloads in the way of email is very different from what little Johnny spends all day bit-torrenting.

    You cannot expect every ISP to allow people to use more bandwidth than they are paying for. More bandwidth than the law of averages allows given the model ISP's have created for a "shared" network. It stands to reason that not everyone will use all of their bandwidth allotment, nor will everyone use all of it, all of the time. Some use more, some use less.

    The model in use is a buffet. An "all you can eat" buffet where the buffet owner (ISP) knows that some will eat very little, some will eat more or less and a few will eat a whole lot. The model dictates that one flat rate be charged for this. Rather than charging based on usage, e.g. the total amount of food you ate/took - or in the case of the Internet, total bandwidth used.

    The problem however is that the larger "utilities" took it upon themselves to create the illusion that your "one low rate" would include UNLIMITED resources. It does not. The FCC intends to change that.

    I can guarantee you that if you abuse a buffet, the buffet owner is going to kick you out. Throttling avoids the complete ban of the buffet abuser by limiting their ability to abuse the buffet. However the FCC and the consuming public does not see their usage as abuse (or overeating in the case of the buffet). They, because of the false advertising and egregious claims made by both big telcom and cable, feel it is their RIGHT. They are paying for it, so they have the RIGHT to use it, as much of it as they want.

    The solution to the "Net Neutrality" issue was to:

    1.) Address the "truth in advertising" as it surrounds big telcom and cable's misconception of reality.

    2.) Regulate the "existing utilities" committing this obvious false advertising.

    3.) Require "usage based" pricing for buffet abusers.

    At the other end of the spectrum you have the "streaming services" rallying to the side of the consumer when they are paying NOTHING for the bandwidth costs associated with transversering various internet networks. At the moment, streaming is a very inefficient way of delivering audio/video data. A lot of bandwidth is required to move even the most compressed of video signals. These services are profiting off of the investment of ISP's the world over and clogging their networks as a result.

    The throttling of bandwidth is what ISPs use to manage all this traffic. Without those throttles in place? The Internet would get so clogged you'd not be able to send one word though email, much less get pirated copies of Windows 10 or watch Season 800 of the Simpsons.

    The Congress, the FCC, the Public are all completely oblivious of and ignorant to these realities.

    The picture being painted for them is that tried and true long tested mantra that states "the mean nasty big telephone / cable company is at it again".

    No one even once thought about the thousands of small family owned ISP's that put their money, future and lives at risk to provide these services and build the Internet we have today.

    That Internet was built on the buffet model; law of averages. Or, "a belief that the statistical distribution of outcomes among members of a small sample must reflect the distribution of outcomes across the population as a whole."

    In other words. Some eat very little. Some eat a little more or less. And a very few eat a whole lot.

    The Internet has always been "shared" not dedicated (unless you are paying for it). That's why it works. I am fairly certain that if the guy that got kicked out of the buffet went up the buffet owner and offered to pay for everything he ate, he'd be back at the buffet line.

    The same is true for those that use a $50/mo. Internet account to stream the same amount of data that, on a dedicated line, would cost upwards of $2,000/mo.

    Net Neutrality is a sham. This is about truth in advertising and abuse, not regulation of private business.
    Last edited by rasputin; 03-02-2015 at 04:36 PM.
    Jeremy Kinsey (jer@mia.net) - 262-248-6759
    Dedicated Servers - Web Hosting - Colocation HostDrive.Com
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