ISPs and the gov't

[solypsist]

The US Congress is currently in the process of rewriting the 1996 Telecommunications Act. One of the issues under debate is the issue of Network Neutrality. Network Neutrality or Network freedom is basically the following 4 ideas expressed by the FCC in an August 2005 policy statement:

Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and
Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The debate is that ISPs want to move to a 2-tiered broadband system. Where you'd have Tier A at 1 speed & Tier B at a faster "premium" speed. Consumers would have access to both tiers, but websites like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, even the .org would have to pay ISPs money to access the premium speed tier. So for example, if Yahoo paid an ISP (such as SBC) to get on the premium tier & Google did not, consumers would have faster access to Yahoo than they would to Google. The ISPs argue that they need the content companies to pay because the ISPs have high costs with expanding their infastructure and providing faster speeds to customers in the future.

Do you support the 2-tiered system where content companies would pay ISPs for access to the premium speed tier?

Discuss?

Here are some links on Network Neutrality:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700430.stm
http://www.publicknowledge.org/cont...whitep-20060206
http://www.democraticmedia.org/issu...neutrality.html
http://faculty.virginia.edu/timwu/wu_lessig_fcc.pdf

[Papewaio]

There is a form of that in how much content you can upload in a month, how many concurrent users can connect to a site, server side power etc.

The issue is that it would require dedicated bandwidth for the premium sites from the servers to each user. Otherwise what is stopping a non premium user connecting faster to a non premium account that is cached on their local server or ISP?

It would be hard for the ISP provider to prove to the client that the premium upgrade will work faster for all customers.

It also breaks a basic design paradigm of the internet ... the web part of the WWW that all information will take whatever routes are available to get to the destination. This means that email may go around the world 3 times and take a day to get to you or it could just take 5 minutes.

The other side of this is that VoIP has already broken this paradigm. The whole concept of Quatlity of Service (QoS) means that voice calls are delivered just like a phone call and hence go directly to from caller to caller, they don't take 3 days to hear the next sentence. This means the QoS has to take precedent over other traffic... this could be the model for premium traffic.

This is not a good thing for competition. It could mean better security and responsiveness of internet applications. A good thing for stock markets and services that need to be up continously. However these things have their own dedicated backbones. What this premium service may do is hijack the general shared internet and give the best speed only to those prepared to pay a toll. So the ISPs want others to pay a toll to them for an infrastructure that they have not themselves put in place... nice gig.

[rory_20_uk]

I have to say that recent activities by ISPs in America (as that is the only ones I have heard of - not nessicarily the only place it is occuring) are trying to lock down competition and gain profit at the cost of the user.

That the government is not able to give low bandwidth wireless access to cities as it is unfair is understandable but not in the interest of the poorer consumers who only use the internet for internet.

This appears to be another device to make money and stuff the user. A better way to increase speeds would be to roll out improvements that have been made in the "Internet 2". Some of the basics of the internet have been there from the beginning and require updating urgently which would have the same results, although might not be as profitable for the companies.

I was under the impression that after the Internet boom there is masses of unused optic cable that was placed in the hope of perceived demand basically to increase stockmarket value. Now the bubble has burst, but the cable is still there...

[BDC]

Google will be in charge soon anyway. Hail our new overlords!

[Kanamori]

So -- to make sure I'm understanding properly which doesn't necessarily relate to the core issue -- we as singular people would not have to pay more, it would be the companies who wish to get their information out more quickly that would have to pay?

[rory_20_uk]

Even so, the end result would be having to pay in some form as no company does anything for nothing.

The ISPs have plenty of spare cable already, and so their argument seems highly suspect. If they were advocating implimenting changes that would have a significan impact on the speed of the internet I'd be more agreeable to the idea.