Steve Forbes on Net Neutrality: “A net disaster”
From Forbes’ June 5 issue (subscription may be required):
….. The major U.S. telecom firms, such as Verizon and AT&T, are pouring billions of dollars into building extensive fiber-optic networks. Among other things, they are beginning to provide television programming to compete with cable companies, which, in turn, are going into the telephone business. The telecoms also want to offer new services with which providers, for a fee, could have certain kinds of traffic move faster than others. It would be similar to sending a letter via FedEx versus traditional mail. You pay a premium to FedEx for speed and reliability. But net neutrality regulations would bar this kind of tiering.
Why are outfits like Google pushing the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to bar such practices? Because they fear that Verizon et al. could discriminate against them by arbitrarily charging them higher prices or by not offering them on their networks.
Networkers shouldn’t be permitted to discriminate against particular Web sites or services, but they should otherwise be free to do as they see fit. Only in this way will the necessary investments be made to bring us out of our high-tech Stone Age.
Net neutrality would discourage the kind of investments Verizon and others are making. It would be equivalent to the disastrous 1996 Telecommunications Act, which forced the telecoms to provide access to competitors at below-market prices, a critical reason that we haven’t developed broadband the way numerous other countries, such as South Korea and Japan, have. Experts say we are technologically years behind. Net neutrality would require voluminous regulations to ensure that all traffic is priced the same.
Even today there’s not true net neutrality. People and companies have developed elaborate firewalls and filters to combat viruses. Individuals pay premiums to get DSL.
Net neutrality would be a net disaster.
The analogy of the net neutrality crowd has been slow and fast lanes on a highway. The better analogy is the difference between using a bike, a car, or a jet to get where your going. Why shouldn’t you be willing to pay more to get there by car or jet? And how many cars or jets would be available if providers were only allowed to charge bicycle prices? Technology would, as Forbes indicated, stay in the Stone Age.
Here are a couple scenarios for you.
If you are a large company, you already pay a premium to initially install your ISP circuit, then the high monthly price for the amount of bandwidth that you need. So ISP’s want to charge more, but in some cases could be offering services that compete with yours. What is their incentive to offer a similar level of bandwidth?
You are a blogger named Tom. People have high speed internet and are looking for blogs. Your blog is too slow, because you are too cheap to pay the ISP’s premium. They visit daily kos instead.
Comment by Kevin Irwin — June 3, 2006 @ 11:21 pm
#1, I understand the argument, I just don’t want to reinvent the telecom regulatory mechanism that held back technology for 50 years during Ma Bell.
Supposedly AT&T’s Whitacre backed away from his previous statements in the last day or two (not that I place supreme trust in him).
What’s interesting, though, is that I’m already having to make that business decision, because if I get an Instalanche or Malkinized some people can’t get to me now. To change that, I have to move from VPS to dedicated hosting (unless you know more than I do), and pay about triple what I’m paying now (and hopefully to accommodate a couple of other biz initiatives). So the hosting world is already charging me more for the throughput I need.
Your question is whether one dedicated hosting or VPS customer gets treated differently from another, based on whether the telcos treat ISPs differently or offer multiple speed options to ISPs. I don’t think that will happen, and if you REALLY think net neutrality is necessary to ensure that, I’d have to for the moment disagree, BUT argue that regulation should be an lurking threat if it turns out that it is not happening.
As to VPS, I’m already at the mercy of the others who are sharing “our” computer at the host. If I’m lucky and I have a bunch of companions who do very little, I’ll get great speed compared to if my companions burn through a lot of bandwidth all the time.
Comment by TBlumer — June 3, 2006 @ 11:27 pm
You are having to pay more for hosting because a) you need more bandwidth and/or b) the server(s) that you are hosted on are not able to service all of the requests for your blog. That’s not the question. The telcos are seeking to tier (as a verb) their networks so that companies not only pay for bandwidth, but also pay for access to those faster tiers.
Comment by Kevin Irwin — June 4, 2006 @ 10:15 am