The broadband infrastructure providers, cable and phone companies are another group that doesn't want to lie in their own bed. They're watching Internet startups eat their lunch, both with interesting content and VOIP services like Skype. They got themselves into this problem by relying on canned content, failing to innovate in time with society, and overcharging for phone calls. Of course, entrepreneurs stepped into the void.
Now, broadband providers are inventing new ways to charge content and application providers, because they're watching the innovators get rich. A new bill just passed in the House would allow "phone and cable providers [to charge other] Internet content providers a premium for carrying services like video offerings that could rival those of the telecom companies." Get it? If Google offers movies competitive to AT&T's movies, and they want those movies available over AT&T's broadband, they'll have to pay AT&T whatever AT&T wants just to be able to show them. A toll for offering competitive content or applications. Over and above the high prices they already pay to use the infrastructure.
In the future, going online may well be just like ordering a cable channel. You won't ever see the "whole internet" again; instead you'll see certain websites if you have one broadband provider and other websites if you have a different provider. If you live in a place where one broadband provider has a monopoly (newsflash: most places in the US), that "other Internet" won't even be available to you over broadband. Of course, many innovative Internet applications and content providers - like you perhaps, with your video of your gravity-defying tricks - will never even get started, because the costs of going into business will be too high.
Why do I consider this (information super)highway robbery and not just free market goodness? The companies that manage the Internet infrastructure have already taken our money based on common carrier assumptions. They've been paid to provide something that they never provided. They made their bed; they should lie in it. If they're not going to be common carriers, then we should get our money back. But government officials will probably help them out of it, because our representatives know what gets them elected. "The House bill reflected the considerable clout of the telephone industry in the House, and in particular its ties to the Republican leadership there", says the NYTimes.
Do you want General Motors to buy up America's roads, and prevent you from driving on them if you have a Honda? Do you want Sony to own our power lines, and charge extra to power up non-Sony appliances? Do you want Continental and United to own all the airports, and charge USAir and Jet Blue planes exorbitant prices to take off and land there? It just doesn't make sense for the government to give the utility companies control over the content and applications that run on top of the network backbone. Internet connectivity should remain a utility-like, common carrier infrastructure. This "Barton bill" should be voted down, or the Markey Net Neutrality amendment to it supported, despite its flaws. Or, give me my money back, AT&T.
The medicine you propose - Markey - is worse than the illness. Markey wants to treat the Internet as if it were a monopoly telephone network, a huge mistake.
What we need to do is go in the other direction, realize that it's a new multi-purpose network, and figure out what regulatory support it might need to get really good at that.
Spouting slogans and repeating hysterical claims isn't really helping this debate.
Posted by: Richard Bennett | June 16, 2006 at 11:45 AM
The reason you're seeing so many hyperbolic posts is because everybody is writing from their fears. Fears don't come from reason. Fears come from darkness. My fear is that my ISP won't actually build out new bandwidth to sell to the people whose websites I visit -- but will instead sell the bandwidth I've already paid for to someone else. Every TCP connection has two addresses, right? So from their perspective, they should be able to charge two parties for every TCP connection. See? All you have to do is refactor "Internet Service" slightly, and an ISP can charge more for exactly the same thing they're already doing.
Maybe they won't do that -- but I FEAR that they will. What's to top them? The other half of tweedle-dumb: tweedle-dumber? I don't think so -- particularly since my house is too far from the CO for DSL.
Posted by: Russell Nelson | June 19, 2006 at 11:29 PM