Net Neutrality bill gets defeated

We talked about this a bit on G'Day World today like with Brenton Perry from Dallas. The bill was defeated in Congress, which means the path is open for the telcos to kill the net. No, I am not exaggerating. It's a slippery slope from here people. Pray to Google. Pray. Is it a coincidence that this bill was passed only 3 days after 6-6-06? I think not. It takes this kind of evil a few days to come to the boil.

Comments

[John Evans (Syntagma)]

Cameron, it's not anything as bad as that. There's a lot of hysteria going on around this. For a reasoned view, try here.

[Cameron Reilly]

that link isn't working for me John, got another one?

Don't worry, found it at your main site. LOL, i like the way you advertise your perspective as the "reasoned view".

John, the problem with your argument about the net being slow is that bandwidth is there to be used, to drive new services, yes, like bittorrent and like video podcasts. The telcos are ALREADY getting paid more from the people using the most bandwidth. It's a user pays system. Giving them the ability to charge the content providers is not only giving them the ability to double charge, it's giving them the ability to effectively block the services that are innovating on the edges of the media, startups without the dollars to buy special access. We've already heard the CEO of telcos like AT&T say he wants to block Skype from his network. What next? Any service that competes with AT&T? Any service that competes with a tier one company that can strike a special deal with AT&T?

You may think it's no big deal, but if this bill doesn't get stopped in the US Senate (I believe that is still an option), then the Net, as we have known it for the last 30 years - the Net where anyone can freely publish anything, provide any service, and make it available to a global market, the net that was a level playing field for the distribution of content and services - is no more.

[John Evans (Syntagma)]

Cameron, the US is a weak link in the world's bandwidth resource. Its demand is high and its supply is on the low side. The new IPTV and video services are causing all of us problems, even in the UK, where we have 8-12Mbs available. Only a market-driven system will work.

To say that Google/Apple etc shouldn't pay for using the telco's pipes to distribute terabytes of content around the world is like saying that a manufacturer shouldn't have to pay the haulage companies to deliver its goods to the customer.

Net Neutrality is a great, altruistic concept, but its limits have been reached and we now need the US to finance a massive increase in its bit haulage infrastructure. That will require the big streamers of movies and videos to pay their share. We, the smaller content providers, can only benefit from better service.

[Gnoll110]

the US is a weak link in the world's bandwidth resource

Are they? My understanding is the there was huge amount of 'dark fiber', the result of the dot bust. That after the dot bust, the US had by far the largest supply overhang.

Have they managed use that supply overhang up?

[gnoll110]

John, I'm sure Google pays for their pipes into the net too.

What we are talking about is the Telco's blackmailing, or should I say greenmailing other companies. "Google, pay us a premium, or we will degrade your traffic across our part of the net, so that M$ search is faster for anyone routing through our net"

If this pattern get established, there will be non disclose clauses in the contracts. It will syphon money into the Telco’s pocket, as Cameron says, stifling innovation.

We know that Telco’s chronically over bill, just like banks over charge. ‘Bugs’ get fixed when they in the customers favour. ‘Bugs’ in the Telcos/Banks favour only get fixed when its gets noticed and become public information. Such is human nature.