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Thread: Internet Freedom

  1. #1

    Internet Freedom

    Thought you might be intrested in this one
    http://www.savetheinternet.com/
    Reg
    Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

    --Albert Einstein

  2. #2
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    Ten years ago the Internet was mostly in the hands of over 24,000 local Internet Providers. The public decided to support the telecom monopolies and our local ISP's were gone almost overnight. Now there is concern by a few that the big Telecom companies might not be fair with their new found ecconomic power, do ya think?

    Do we need to be reminded that the company who owns the pipe has every right to do with it as they please? All the regulation in the world won't change that. The Internet we enjoy today will be very different in ten years because the public has decided to trust a group who has a history of enjoying a monopolistic protection scheme and providing services based on profit not what the public wants. People have long forgotten the 25 cents per minute long distance telephone calls.

    .

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten
    Ten years ago the Internet was mostly in the hands of over 24,000 local Internet Providers. The public decided to support the telecom monopolies and our local ISP's were gone almost overnight. Now there is concern by a few that the big Telecom companies might not be fair with their new found ecconomic power, do ya think?

    Do we need to be reminded that the company who owns the pipe has every right to do with it as they please? All the regulation in the world won't change that. The Internet we enjoy today will be very different in ten years because the public has decided to trust a group who has a history of enjoying a monopolistic protection scheme and providing services based on profit not what the public wants. People have long forgotten the 25 cents per minute long distance telephone calls.

    .
    Exactly. You can also bet that whatever they come up with will be 10 years behind the rest of the technology available to other industrialized nations. They'll also have congressional protection to recover their costs.

    As far as "owning the pipe". Don't get rid of your public utilities commision, or vote for 'de-regulation" in Va. That state is getting set to be bent over the proverbial barrel. They're standing between you and the "pipe owner" right now.

  4. #4
    It's hard to talk about this without getting political, but I believe this is one of the most important issues facing the United States. The Web is a place where a citizen can make an impact based on ideas. I believe the United States has moved away from the principles on which it was founded, but I do believe that a network neutral internet has the potential to help bring us back.

    I encourage everyone to investigate this issue and contact their representatives.
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten
    Ten years ago the Internet was mostly in the hands of over 24,000 local Internet Providers. The public decided to support the telecom monopolies and our local ISP's were gone almost overnight. Now there is concern by a few that the big Telecom companies might not be fair with their new found ecconomic power, do ya think?
    I think a lot of people would rather not give money to the local telecom, but they are the ones with inexpensive high speed access.

    About the only way local ISPs can offer high speed Internet without telecom is via wireless.

    I ran an ISP for a number of years and sold out because the future didn't look too bright for the little guy. Six years later I can see I was right as there are almost no local ISPs left.

    Brian Elfert

  6. #6
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    5 years ago I paid twice as much for of 1/100 of the bandwidth.

    56k then 6000k now. I'm happy.

    To bad about the little guys, but this happens.

  7. #7
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    One fine point...the "Net Nutrality" issue is related to the ISP serving the end user and content providers, not the "Internet" in general. Specificially, the issue of concern is whether an ISP, such as AT&T, Verizon, Quest, COMCAST, Time Warner, etc., will be allowed to either charge content/service providers for "equal" or "special" treatment for traffic that traverses the ISP's network to the end user in comparison to its own content and services or be able to degrade performance or otherwise prioritize performance lower in comparison to its own content and services without those payments. VoIP and video providers are particularly concerned about this...those content streams are very sensitive to delay, varience in delay and packet loss. The argument basically says, that if the ISP causes voice traffic, for example, from an alternative provider to perform poorly as compared to a similar offering of its own, the end user may be compelled to buy the service from the ISP directly in order to get acceptable results.

    There is a lot going on here that makes it even more complex. Only the largest providers can put out the capital to build networks capable of supplying the large bandwidth that video, in particular, requires. Verizon is spending billions to roll out fiber optic to the premises "as we speak". AT&T is making similar, although lower investments, in fiber to the node. The cable companies (of which there are a very few at this point) are doing similar investments to move toward newer technologies in an effort to throw off the poor performance they suffer under load due to the "shared neighborhood" design they work under. Naturally, they want to make money.

    On the other hand, Google and others have incredible market growth in areas such as streaming video. The more folks who view that content (because they can with high speed services), the more ad exposure they get and the more money they make. Having to pay for "priviledges" on the ISP networks to get the necessary quality of service that will make end-users happy cuts into revenue on that side.

    And then there are the Vonages...alternative communications providers who have been taking market share from traditional telcos big time. (COMCAST has been doing the same with their "Digital Voice" offering) Margins are slim. If they have to pay to ride the ISP networks (run by the traditional voice carriers and cable companies) they don't generate the revenue to grow or stay/get profitable. End users have less choices then.

    And we all are paying our providers $29, 39, $89 a month for high speed access and expecting to be able to use whatever content we choose to...

    What a mess!
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  8. #8
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    Simply put part of the problem is pitch and catch. The Pitch ISP lets say Google gets paid via advertisements to stream video. The catch ISP's have to provide expensive bandwidth for their customers to download video from Google and they don't share in Google's revenue...so they don't get paid.

    This has been going on for ages with email. The spamming email servers are paid to send spam all over the world. The remaining ISP's have to build larger email servers and increase their bandwidth just to keep their email servers from being overloaded catching spam in order to receive real email their customers want.

    Nic, its not the little ISP's that are the only ones to suffer. Now it is our turn to take a major hit and we can expect prices to rise as the big companies adjust their pricing policies to deal with the problems like Pitch and Catch. Sooner or later there is going to be a metered system that charges for bandwidth consumption the same way we pay for electricity. This could never have happened when the local ISP's had control. Now that they are gone we have placed ourselves in the hands of a small group of large businesses, they don't like the current pricing model and they never have.

    .

  9. #9
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    Keith, I think it's almost inevitable that eventually everyone will pay relative to consumption over and above an "access charge" for the connectivity...much like many commercial connections have been billed for years. "Flat rate" is already something becoming more unique to North America (and the US specifically) for communication services and I think that trend may reverse at some point.

    In the end, I'm personally less concerned with paying for real usage than I am with potential issues with quality of service as demanding content becomes more and more a part of the equation.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  10. #10
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    PBS had something on this a while back. I knew about the 87 BILLION that the "comunications industry" got to wire fiber to all the holmes, but one jurisdiction that was trying to do it, themselves, after the industry didn't (becoming their own pipes), has been facing legal battles ever since.

    You can also read some about this over at I, Cringley.

  11. #11
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    That's pretty much how every economic wave ends up. You start with gobs of independent entrepreneurs, and over time, things settle into an oligopoly.

    The day is not far off when all services, electric, phone, internet, tv, enter your home over a single wire.

  12. #12
    I think that it makes sense to pay for the quantity of the bandwidth I consume. If I am downloading movies, I am using a lot more infrastructure than someone sending and receiving text email. I don't have any trouble paying for that. It also encourages and rewards ISPs for providing high quality - high speed services

    What I worry about is the ISP deciding what services I can access through their pipes. They are capable of editing my access to the web and they have done so to people in the past. The potential for a few giant companies to control the communication infrastructure frightens me.
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  13. #13
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    Several years ago some of the large providers started a major push to adopt a metered access model. I was receiving what seemed to be an invitation per week to attend conferences designed to get smaller ISP's to adopt the new payment system. Like most small Internet Providers I refused the program and their invitations. The metered system failed because there were so many small ISP's who refused to participate.

    Now that we are all but gone from the business it will probably be easy for the large Providers to make changes. Quality of Service has always been a major variable in the Internet equation. There has never been a legal requirement for an ISP to provide any measurable quality of service. It has always been accepted as normal in the industry for ISP's to oversell their bandwidth. I refused to do what many of my competitors claimed was good business practice and I always provided twice my network bandwidth consumption so my customers never experienced a slowdown during peak load periods. In the end quality wasn't what the majority really wanted.

    In my opinion a metered system isn't necessary if we could find a means of stopping a very small minority from abusing the current model. Allowing any provider to decide or apply a preference to whose data packet receives the highest priority is a serious threat to the existence of the Net.

    .

  14. #14
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    Competition is the best filter. It has worked well for the USA for a long long time.

    The trick is to keep our wonderful bureaucrats out of the mix. There are enough of the big boys out there. Let them fight it out.

  15. Had we treated the internet and cellular telephony in exactly the same manner we did HAM radio as regulated undertakings with barriers to entry and licensure we might have cut some off at the ankles as they'd have a vastly lesser opportunity to proliferate and communicate.

    What that says about a pay as you play internet I can't say.
    Last edited by Dennis Peacock; 01-04-2007 at 1:59 AM. Reason: Removed political words.

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