[Eug-lug] Mr Smith goes to Washington to address net neutrality

[Brian Gallagher]

Thanks for the follow-up.  I knew this was a complex issue...a few years 
back I recall an issue with ISPs and carriers like ATT complaining that 
they were not getting Quasi Rents, if I am using that term correctly, 
from the ISPs use of their preexisting phone lines.  I do feel that the 
wind is blowing in the direction of corporate benefit...they have full 
time bean counters on the payroll.
 
Did you want me to post the body of the letter?

Brian

Quentin Hartman wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Brian Gallagher <baggab at pacinfo.com> wrote:
>> I actually heard back from Senator Smith, in writing, in response to the
>> e-mail I was persuaded to send to his office about net neutrality.  I
>> feel that the response was subtly worded to promote the aims of the big
>> players in this debate.  I don't have the time to investigate the
>> subtleties of the legislation and I was wondering if someone had a
>> comment.  I wanted to know if he turned the argument in on itself, but,
>> I don't want to slight him if he did not.
>
> I'd liek to look at it, though I'd hardly consider myself an expert,
> this is one of my pet subject areas.
>
>> excerpt: "Some companies who plan to provide these [broadband] services
>> want Congress to create Internet regulations know as "net neutrality" to
>> protect them from paying more for increased bandwidth."
>>
>> I thought it was more like the creation of a two tiered bandwidth
>> delivery system that would allow moneyed players to leverage business
>> advantage that inherently establish monopolies.
>
> Your understadning is one possible outcome. All of this has come up
> because the FCC lifted some regulations recently that basically
> allowed "common carrier" status to extend to data networks. This has
> opened the door to the data carriers, allowing them to look at and
> classify the traffic, and then charge different rates for different
> kinds of traffic, or traffic with different destinations.
>
> So, if they do this, the potential exists for all sorts of
> fragmentation within the internet because of how the data network
> providers have decided to treat different kinds of traffic.
>
> At least, that's my understanding of it. This is a highly
> controversial and mis-understood subject, and I've found getting to
> the heart of the matter to be difficult. Espeically with all the FUD
> and atro-turfing both sides of the argument are doing.
>
> Leave it to the FCC to overregulate some areas and under-regulate
> others. It saddens me that the FCC's goals no longer have anything to
> do with the public, and instead are all about making things as easy as
> possible for the big corporate players. Normally I favor less
> regulation over more, but in the case where the entities being
> regulated have proven over and over that they can't be trusted to act
> ethically, it's neccesary. But that's another discussion entirely....
>