| Respected blogger in an email to me: As for network management, I agree – and have written previously – that Comcast needs to do a better job of informing users of their policies. But beyond that, I’m less concerned about, say, blocking online video competitors. Comcast is reviled as it is, and large-scale blocking of competing services won’t do it any good in either the court of public opinion or in government offices; more blocking would only result in more pressure and more scrutiny. It’s probably not worth it for them to block in most instances. (And, I should note, if they do, they should obviously inform customers properly.) But even if they did, that just creates an even bigger incentive for other ISPs to swoop in and steal their customers. Yes, the market isn’t as competitive as everyone would like in some places – but poor service from Comcast will give other companies even greater reason to enter a market, and where local regulations make that difficult, might put pressure on local authorities to open up video and data services to greater competition. |
| My reply: There is no "swooping in" because there is no competition. I live in Hillsboro, Oregon -- we're called the Silicon Forest here because technology has replaced logging as a local industry. We're second only to the Silicon Valley as to the concentration of tech workers -- all of us pretty broadband hungry (it rains a lot here). Edit: My point is that if there was going to be an incentive to invest by additional wireline carriers, it would probably be happening right here!
Competition is a pipedream or a nightmare. Let's say 12 competitors somehow are interested in serving my city. The city isn't going to allow 12 possible wireline competitors to individually tear up the streets and lay down cable or fiber next to Comcast's or Verizon's cable or fiber. The several junction boxes in each front yard would be a crazy site, too. Not to mention the constant stream of litigation resulting from claims of who damaged whose existing lines. Thank goodness it was just a dream -- it's never happened anywhere because people with capital weigh these risks as too likely and too expensive. I've read your blog and you're quite intelligent and you and I are more alike than different. I'm actually in a position of influence in this debate. I'm asking for:
This is not volumes of regulation -- it's a one pager. I don't want complete "Net Neutrality." Nobody thinks that their own P2P downloads should have equal footing with a neighbor's 9-1-1 "my house is on fire" VOIP call. The Internet has RFC 2474 (et. al.) which does discriminate based on the settings by the endpoint applications and the presence of congestion. VOIP is sent "top priority and reliability", P2P "background transfers" are sent like 4th class mail and everything else is handled as 1st class mail. The only reasons that ISPs don't use it is (1) they didn't invent it, so they don't trust it; (2) obscure-sounding free Internet Standard solutions don't arrive in 3-piece suits offering demos and lunches to non-technical executives; (3) they are told that RFC 2474 can be abused (always true with any technology) but that another solution is foolproof (always false with any technology). RFC 2474 allows prioritization without the ISP having to inspect packets and make arbitrary value decisions about what should go and what should be blocked. So, one like mind to another, how would you handle this if you were me? |
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Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon
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