[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

Because if you look at something like Net Neutrality, it's a very specific piece of legislation that requires somewhat of a technical understanding of how the internet works, and it's going to become a larger issue.

Define net neutrality. What do you know of it and where do you stand?

McCain has stated that he believes government should stay out of it and added that he believes the moratorium on taxation be extended. Over and above this crude opinion of the matter, neither Obama nor McCain are very clear on their stances and I don't see technical prowess making much difference in either view.

Besides, your concern in this context would be the FCC, not the President. Both parties will be virtually ineffectual in this debate.

[besson3c]

Isn't the problem that corporations want to shape traffic to shape big companies that are using more bandwidth? Isn't Net Neutrality regulation to prevent this? So, if I'm understanding the issue correctly, government regulation of this would be desirable. Everybody should be on a level playing field as far as the bandwidth that is available to them, as long as they are willing to pay for the pipe to their door.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Define net neutrality. What do you know of it and where do you stand?

You act as though net neutrality is a simple issue.

Net neutrality refers to many different plans to use the government to benefit consumers and guarantee open competition on the internet. My personal preference is that the government should manage the wires all the way to the home, and allow the consumer to choose whatever ISP they want, thus creating an entirely free market, and a neutral internet. However, I doubt our buddy McCain would like that idea, given that the government would be the one managing the fiber.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

McCain has stated that he believes government should stay out of it and added that he believes the moratorium on taxation be extended. Over and above this crude opinion of the matter, neither Obama nor McCain are very clear on their stances and I don't see technical prowess making much difference in either view.

Which already shows McCain's lack of understanding on the issue. The government themselves is already entering into censoring the internet with the wireless spectrum auctions, which will interfere with the companies they auction the wireless spectrums to.

McCain needs to get on the ball. The government is already moving into regulating internet companies. I, for one, don't want private companies to be able to use public spectrums without some guarantee of service quality.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Besides, your concern in this context would be the FCC, not the President. Both parties will be virtually ineffectual in this debate.

Any potential net neutrality legislation has to go to the President. I would prefer a President who doesn't veto legislation because "this here legislation is complicated and this new fangled email thing smells like a pork project."

You should know that for someone to understand a technical concept, they need some technical ability. It's common sense. And McCain passing the buck to an advisor because he doesn't know what he's doing doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

You act as though net neutrality is a simple issue.

Conversely, I asked your definition of it because it is 10 different things to 10 different people. I realize it is a relatively complex issue.

Net neutrality refers to many different plans to use the government to benefit consumers and guarantee open competition on the internet. My personal preference is that the government should manage the wires all the way to the home, and allow the consumer to choose whatever ISP they want, thus creating an entirely free market, and a neutral internet. However, I doubt our buddy McCain would like that idea, given that the government would be the one managing the fiber.

You should try to refrain from using terms like "our buddy McCain" as this sounds more like opposition to a candidate than an informed opinion on policy. By giving government oversight (control) over the "wires all the way to the home", IMO you fail to account for the governments of tomorrow and worse; assumes the government could somehow be a more effective administrator of broadband technologies. Interestingly, in one breath we talk about how McCain has simplified the term and yet here again we're talking about the differences between more government and less government. There's 'net neutrality', then there are basic principles of freedom and market choice at play here and as always; words that invoke emotions. Words like "neutrality" when there's absolutely nothing neutral about a broadband network, the demand of some over the demand of others and the amount of traffic and backbone infrastructure necessary to deliver it effectively.

Which already shows McCain's lack of understanding on the issue. The government themselves is already entering into censoring the internet with the wireless spectrum auctions, which will interfere with the companies they auction the wireless spectrums to.

Wireless spectrum auctions do not "censor" access. i.e. what sites can you not view? This is a government "solution" in search of a problem. It makes sense to me that you'd want an "internet-savvy" Washington bureaucrat, but only if you intend on giving the government additional control over broadband technologies. I'd much rather our politicians remain "dumb" thank you.

McCain needs to get on the ball. The government is already moving into regulating internet companies. I, for one, don't want private companies to be able to use public spectrums without some guarantee of service quality.

There is spectrum and then there is the technology used to administrate that spectrum and deliver its capacity to your home. I'd much rather this remain in the hands of the commercial provider, accountable to its consumer; not a government entity that has proven time and again that it is not responsive to the needs of the collective should I need to remind you not only of Bush's approval rating, but the approval ratings of Congress.

Any potential net neutrality legislation has to go to the President. I would prefer a President who doesn't veto legislation because "this here legislation is complicated and this new fangled email thing smells like a pork project."

This is a caricature of the position. The principle is as fundamental as any free market principle. I don't need to know how a watch works to tell you what time it is.

You should know that for someone to understand a technical concept, they need some technical ability. It's common sense. And McCain passing the buck to an advisor because he doesn't know what he's doing doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Newsflash, there isn't a Presidential candidate alive that will not be relying on a host of advisors. You're of course aware of how many campaign advisors Obama is using? I'd rather the President be more aware of how a democracy works as opposed to how to give the government more control over the free market.

The bottom line is there are some rather large entities that plan to provide their bandwidth-hogging content at your expense. Like many other things, they're going to let the broadband providers invest in infrastructure, then hand it over to the government. They're lobbying for government administration "neutrality" to stick you with the bill for providing their content. Connectivity or 'QoS' has increased exponentially, cost has dropped substantially and yet we need government to save the internet? I'd rather they not solve this "problem" thanks. Bumpkus.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You should try to refrain from using terms like "our buddy McCain" as this sounds more like opposition to a candidate than an informed opinion on policy. By giving government oversight (control) over the "wires all the way to the home", IMO you fail to account for the governments of tomorrow and worse; assumes the government could somehow be a more effective administrator of broadband technologies. Interestingly, in one breath we talk about how McCain has simplified the term and yet here again we're talking about the differences between more government and less government. There's 'net neutrality', then there are basic principles of freedom and market choice at play here and as always; words that invoke emotions. Words like "neutrality" when there's absolutely nothing neutral about a broadband network, the demand of some over the demand of others and the amount of traffic and backbone infrastructure necessary to deliver it effectively.

I assume that the government will make a better administrator because of places like South Korea. South Korea's government handles their network (but they are not an ISP), and they have some of the fastest internet around.

By ensuring open access to fiber, it dramatically reduces the costs to startup an ISP, and makes for fair competition between ISP's. As it stands, it's far too expensive to start an ISP. Verizon spent $18 billion as of 2006 on FIOS, and they still aren't deployed many places. The exclusivity of fiber is a big reason for this.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Wireless spectrum auctions do not "censor" access. i.e. what sites can you not view? This is a government "solution" in search of a problem. It makes sense to me that you'd want an "internet-savvy" Washington bureaucrat, but only if you intend on giving the government additional control over broadband technologies. I'd much rather our politicians remain "dumb" thank you.

You need to do some research. The government has mandated that whoever it sells wireless spectrums to cannot allow access to "indecent" material. So the need for net neutrality is already here.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

There is spectrum and then there is the technology used to administrate that spectrum and deliver its capacity to your home. I'd much rather this remain in the hands of the commercial provider, accountable to its consumer; not a government entity that has proven time and again that it is not responsive to the needs of the collective should I need to remind you not only of Bush's approval rating, but the approval ratings of Congress.

And again, history disagrees with you. Most Asian and European nations have better quality of service than we do. And you know what they all have in common? The fiber is all federally owned and operated.

You could even make the fiber layouts by the government cheaper by having the end user pay for the tail to their home. This would be a one time payment, but it would add equity to the user's home.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Newsflash, there isn't a Presidential candidate alive that will not be relying on a host of advisors. You're of course aware of how many campaign advisors Obama is using? I'd rather the President be more aware of how a democracy works as opposed to how to give the government more control over the free market.

I'm sure, but I'd like a president, that unlike Bush, knows when his advisors are full of crap.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

The bottom line is there are some rather large entities that plan to provide their bandwidth-hogging content at your expense. Like many other things, they're going to let the broadband providers invest in infrastructure, then hand it over to the government. They're lobbying for government administration "neutrality" to stick you with the bill for providing their content. Connectivity or 'QoS' has increased exponentially, cost has dropped substantially and yet we need government to save the internet? I'd rather they not solve this "problem" thanks. Bumpkus.

I don't think you understand. Once you lay the wire, the only cost past that is maintaining the wire in case it gets broken. The government doesn't pay anything for bandwidth shot over their wire. The ISP might have to pay for that, but I'm not many people are talking about the government becoming an ISP. Comcast et all would still exist. They would just supply service over government wires. It would make it far simpler for new ISP's to start up, and lower the costs of monthly internet service in exchange for a one time large fee.

I think you need to do more research on the topic. Which kind of proves my point. If you don't understand all the intricacies of net neutrality, how would someone like McCain who's never used the internet have a clue?

[Butt Sauce!]

Wow you guys are very political

[besson3c]

I'm starting to think that conservative Americans tend to want to apply the same solution to every conceivable problem, and that is rely on the free market. Yes the free market is great, but just because we are good at running free markets doesn't mean that it is the solution to every problem. I agree with everything GoMac has said here... With universities, it is a little different though. We have different high speed networks setup for research primarily that we call Internet 2, and these pipes are not controlled by corporate interests. If a corporate interest wanted to compete with this network, they would have to lay their own cable, and a competitor to them would have to lay their own as well.

We don't have all sorts of different telephone polls for all sorts of different carriers because the telephone companies are a regulated monopoly. Either we need to regulate the use of the major backbones, or the government needs to provide their own. Either way, leaving this solely at the hands of the unregulated free market to do with as they please (including traffic shaping, censoring, whatever) is not a good idea.

Am I missing something?

[goMac]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

We don't have all sorts of different telephone polls for all sorts of different carriers because the telephone companies are a regulated monopoly.

This is what makes the situation so much more absurd.

Comcast lays down their network. Consumer gets stuck with the bill.
Qwest builds a DSL network. Consumer gets stuck with the bill.
FIOS lays down a new network. Consumer gets stuck with the bill.

Do we see the problem here? Every company is laying down their own network, and the consumers get stuck with the bill. Again. And again. And again. All for the same f'ing internet.

If we laid a standard network, we'd only have to pay for it once. Not only that, we could move to IPTV, ending the again redundant TV networks. VOIP would eliminate the phone networks. Using one standard federally maintained network would could complete eliminate corporate idiocy induced redundancy.

The liberal viewpoint in this case bring consumer freedom, fair market competition, cheaper prices, and standards. I seriously don't expect McCain to understand that (McCains position seems to be basically "GOVERNMENT BAAAAAD"), while Obama does. Does age play a factor in this? I think so.

[Chongo]

If we laid a standard network, we'd only have to pay for it once. Not only that, we could move to IPTV, ending the again redundant TV networks. VOIP would eliminate the phone networks. Using one standard federally maintained network would could complete eliminate corporate idiocy induced redundancy.

and would be ripe for spying on those who use it.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

and would be ripe for spying on those who use it.

If the government wants to try to decrypt SSL traffic from the deluge of TCP packets sent at any moment of time, they can have at it, but they probably won't get very far. They would fare better working with ISPs directly.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

and would be ripe for spying on those who use it.

Not that the current network isn't so as it is, but you're right - a federal network (assuming you're talking about the federal government doing the laying of the infrastructure) would give the government all the rights in the world to surreptitiously spy on traffic. Plus, a whole new class of federal Internet laws would be created, and those found in violation would suddenly find themselves up on federal charges. Plus, that kind of Internet would be highly censored, akin to China's Internet. Yeah, no thanks.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If the government wants to try to decrypt SSL traffic from the deluge of TCP packets sent at any moment of time, they can have at it, but they probably won't get very far. They would fare better working with ISPs directly.

We're talking about goMac's proposed federal Internet connection. The government would be the ISP in that situation.

And by the way, you say that if the government owned the network it would give it away for free after paying initially to lay it. Are you naive, goMac? When have you ever seen a government service provided truly from Uncle Sam's pool of generosity? We'd either be taxed regularly and increasingly for it (which I assume you'd like), or we'd pay a monthly fee, or more likely both. Every service or good produced has a cost, and usually with government the costs are steep.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

We're talking about goMac's proposed federal Internet connection. The government would be the ISP in that situation.

No, they wouldn't. Read what I said. The government would not be an ISP. No more than your electrician is your power company.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

And by the way, you say that if the government owned the network it would give it away for free after paying initially to lay it. Are you naive, goMac? When have you ever seen a government service provided truly from Uncle Sam's pool of generosity? We'd either be taxed regularly and increasingly for it (which I assume you'd like), or we'd pay a monthly fee, or more likely both. Every service or good produced has a cost, and usually with government the costs are steep.

Again, you don't understand at all what I said. I didn't say you wouldn't have to pay monthly for it. In fact, I said you would, but I don't think you've really read a thing I've written.

The government would not be your ISP, and they likely would not be able to read your traffic. Not that ISP run internet connections have stopped them anyway.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Not that the current network isn't so as it is, but you're right - a federal network (assuming you're talking about the federal government doing the laying of the infrastructure) would give the government all the rights in the world to surreptitiously spy on traffic. Plus, a whole new class of federal Internet laws would be created, and those found in violation would suddenly find themselves up on federal charges.

No, they wouldn't. I don't think you understand the concept. The internet would be wired by the government, and then the traditional ISP's would use those wires. The wires would go directly from your house to the ISP. The only difference is that the government ran one wire for any ISP to use.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Plus, that kind of Internet would be highly censored, akin to China's Internet. Yeah, no thanks.

Again, I don't think you understand the concept. The government would not be your ISP.

[zombie punk]

Originally Posted by goMac 

Again, I don't think you understand the concept. The government would not be your ISP.

He doesn't understand what you mean - there is no reason why even if the infrastructure were publicly owned it would be any more censored than it is. There are far more restrictions on the way govt can interfere with freedom of speech than private corporations.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by zombie punk 

He doesn't understand what you mean - there is no reason why even if the infrastructure were publicly owned it would be any more censored than it is. There are far more restrictions on the way govt can interfere with freedom of speech than private corporations.

I think censorship and monitoring is a moot point in this discussion. With the ISP's in control, the government has already succeeded in wide scale monitoring of the internet. It's a problem that is separate from net neutrality.

A publicly owned internet wouldn't even go through government switches. Each community would get an uplink center where ISP's would come and install their own switches, at which point they would uplink to where ever they need to via government supplied fiber. This would reduce the cost of starting an ISP down from billions, to maybe less than 100k for a small to medium city.

Sure, the government could tap the fiber somewhere (which would still leave them unable to censor, only monitor), but as I've pointed out, they're doing that anyway with the ISPs.... Separate legislation is needed to address this, but it shouldn't effect net neutrality.

[zombie punk]

Originally Posted by goMac 

I think censorship and monitoring is a mute point in this discussion. With the ISP's in control, the government has already succeeded in wide scale monitoring of the internet. It's a problem that is separate from net neutrality.

It's possible that it's mute, also could be moot. Regardless, the govt is snooping widely on privately held networks - it is, in fact, even easier this way, because the regulations on what corps can do are less strict.

Originally Posted by goMac 

A publicly owned internet wouldn't even go through government switches. Each community would get an uplink center where ISP's would come and install their own switches, at which point they would uplink to where ever they need to via government supplied fiber. This would reduce the cost of starting an ISP down from billions, to maybe less than 100k for a small to medium city.

Indeed.

Originally Posted by goMac 

Sure, the government could tap the fiber somewhere (which would still leave them unable to censor, only monitor), but as I've pointed out, they're doing that anyway with the ISPs.... Separate legislation is needed to address this, but it shouldn't effect net neutrality.

Indeed.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

I assume that the government will make a better administrator because of places like South Korea. South Korea's government handles their network (but they are not an ISP), and they have some of the fastest internet around.

Give it some time.
Policing the Internet/South Korea
Former CEO and current South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is at the center of a controversial new set of laws aimed at policing the country’s internet space. Once accused by the Korean blogosphere of supporting foreign beef imports, Lee is fighting back with the Justice Ministry to create a Cyber Defamation Law. The law would guard against what Lee dubs “Infodemics”— inaccurate, widely disseminated information that prompts social unrest.
The examples of oppressive cyber-policing are far more prevalent than your examples of "faster speeds".

*P2P will either become extremely unreliable due to being "non-priority" traffic for a municipal provider or filtered out entirely. Go ahead, google P2P and bandwidth management. Entirely open content and P2P will be at odds. One of 'em has got to go. I don't know if you use P2P, but it can comprise up to 50% of traffic at any one time. I'm starting to think maybe you haven't done as much research as you claim.

By ensuring open access to fiber, it dramatically reduces the costs to startup an ISP, and makes for fair competition between ISP's. As it stands, it's far too expensive to start an ISP. Verizon spent $18 billion as of 2006 on FIOS, and they still aren't deployed many places. The exclusivity of fiber is a big reason for this.

This is unfortunate, but why is it the responsibility of the government to reduce the cost of starting up an ISP? BMWs are expensive too. How much should it cost to start up an ISP?

You need to do some research. The government has mandated that whoever it sells wireless spectrums to cannot allow access to "indecent" material. So the need for net neutrality is already here.

You need to employ some common sense. Let me summarize your statement; "the government mandates regulation based on what it deems 'indecent'. Is the problem in the above scenario Verizon or the government? Now let me ask you; what content are you unable to view? Who is at the bottom of that inability, your ISP or the government? How does this change?

Also, Verizon has bid $9.5 billion to win a block of spectrum from the FCC auction that would be open to all devices and software applications. They see this as an opportunity to innovate and provide better service, unregulated. As it should be of course.

Let there be no more talk of how incompetent the Bush Administration is, fraud, waste, privacy violations via wire tapping and email snooping while touting the merits of 'net neutrality'. BTW, the Christian Coalition stands behind you in the fight for 'net neutrality'. I wonder what they know that you don't.

And again, history disagrees with you. Most Asian and European nations have better quality of service than we do. And you know what they all have in common? The fiber is all federally owned and operated.

History may disagree with me, but the future doesn't.
Cyber Policing on the Rise Across Asia: Report

You could even make the fiber layouts by the government cheaper by having the end user pay for the tail to their home. This would be a one time payment, but it would add equity to the user's home.

Not when it's been sitting on the ground for a week. With my luck it'd be the week the house went on the market.

I'm sure, but I'd like a president, that unlike Bush, knows when his advisors are full of crap.

You're all over the place. I say we give the Bush Administration as much access to our home as possible. Let's give 'em energy, healthcare, and transportation too!

I don't think you understand. Once you lay the wire, the only cost past that is maintaining the wire in case it gets broken.

I don't think you understand. Doesn't cost me a dime now. Do you know how much money is spent annually on drop and feeder replacement because of squirrel chew alone? Much of our infrastructure locally is still aerial, how about yours?

Worse, now I think you're guilty of over-simplifying this debate. There is already Federal legislation guaranteeing open content and there are reforms that seek to streamline video franchising for example to allow for more competitors in the market. I'd be much more in favor of some of these smaller proposals than giving the entire networking infrastructure over to the government. It will be yet another example of good intentions gone bad. I'm sure there were a great many promises that the Social Security lock-box wouldn't get raided for special interest also, but I'm sure you know how that panned out. The large corporations providing the content they want you to see should shoulder the cost of the bandwidth necessary to carry it, not you. You think this will be cheaper for you? How much cheaper? I think you'll find that this side of your argument is really a red herring and there can be no such guarantee to the end-user. Period.

The government doesn't pay anything for bandwidth shot over their wire. The ISP might have to pay for that, but I'm not many people are talking about the government becoming an ISP. Comcast et all would still exist. They would just supply service over government wires. It would make it far simpler for new ISP's to start up, and lower the costs of monthly internet service in exchange for a one time large fee.

How much? So... instead of tiered pricing, everyone pays over $70/month? Again, by imposing net neutrality, how much will your bill decrease per month?

I think you need to do more research on the topic. Which kind of proves my point. If you don't understand all the intricacies of net neutrality, how would someone like McCain who's never used the internet have a clue?

This whole; "you need to do more research" is a bully tactic that IMO is beneath you. Besides, I'm not sure you understand as much as you think you do. You seemed to have jumped on to the "save the internet" bandwagon when there's nothing in need of salvation. Your proposal is nothing more than action against a "perceived" threat of a problem that does not exist evidenced by your inability to provide any examples. Worse, your proposal basically puts a lock on current technology/advancement and hands it over to an already proven unresponsive government. No one is talking about the government being an ISP, but architecture is everything. Your proposal is nothing more than a preemptive measure against a concept not yet conceived in practice. The market will decide what it thinks of ISPs controlling content. After all, it did with AOL, it will continue to happen with others. While there may very well be need for Telecom legislative reform, net neutrality is an A-bomb for an ant hole. The threat of legislation may be good, but the legislation itself leaves too many opportunities for governmental abuse.

[besson3c]

So the extent of your argument is basically privacy issues, and the old standby "the government sucks at providing services, the private market can do this better", and perhaps "if the government did this they would censor our stuff"?

Privacy: like I said, this is done at the ISP level. ISPs will not go away. Next...

Private market being superior: this is very well one of those things that the greed of the private market does not cover well for the reasons that GoMac has laid out. Why is it that you would trust the government to pave roads, regulate utilities, but not this? Or, do you think the private market should take over for these areas too?

Like many things, it is all about the most effective tool for the job.

Censorship: if the government really wanted to censor stuff, couldn't they just order this upon the ISPs we have now?

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Give it some time.
Policing the Internet/South Korea
Former CEO and current South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is at the center of a controversial new set of laws aimed at policing the country’s internet space. Once accused by the Korean blogosphere of supporting foreign beef imports, Lee is fighting back with the Justice Ministry to create a Cyber Defamation Law. The law would guard against what Lee dubs “Infodemics”— inaccurate, widely disseminated information that prompts social unrest.
The examples of oppressive cyber-policing are far more prevalent than your examples of "faster speeds".

Why would government run internet give the government the ability to do this? They're only laying the wires, they're not doing any switching... That would all be done by the ISP.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

*P2P will either become extremely unreliable due to being "non-priority" traffic for a municipal provider or filtered out entirely. Go ahead, google P2P and bandwidth management. Entirely open content and P2P will be at odds. One of 'em has got to go. I don't know if you use P2P, but it can comprise up to 50% of traffic at any one time. I'm starting to think maybe you haven't done as much research as you claim.

Again, that ISP's would be running the switches, so this wouldn't be controlled by the government...

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

This is unfortunate, but why is it the responsibility of the government to reduce the cost of starting up an ISP? BMWs are expensive too. How much should it cost to start up an ISP?

Why wouldn't you? It's a win-win situation. You'd increase the equity of your home by adding an internet line, broaden your choice of internet providers, and cut your monthly bill by a few times.

Should the government not lay roads anymore either?

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You need to employ some common sense. Let me summarize your statement; "the government mandates regulation based on what it deems 'indecent'. Is the problem in the above scenario Verizon or the government? Now let me ask you; what content are you unable to view? Who is at the bottom of that inability, your ISP or the government? How does this change?

I think this just demonstrates that the government doesn't need to run any wires to control what people can do on the internet. Verizon would be deploying the entire network themselves, yet the feds can mandate what Verizon does with the spectrum. There's nothing to stop the government from doing something similar with existing networks.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Also, Verizon has bid $9.5 billion to win a block of spectrum from the FCC auction that would be open to all devices and software applications. They see this as an opportunity to innovate and provide better service, unregulated. As it should be of course.

This only strengthens my example. There will be a lot of innovation because everyone has access to the spectrum. It won't just be limited to Verizon. It's somewhat akin to the government run fiber plan.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Let there be no more talk of how incompetent the Bush Administration is, fraud, waste, privacy violations via wire tapping and email snooping while touting the merits of 'net neutrality'. BTW, the Christian Coalition stands behind you in the fight for 'net neutrality'. I wonder what they know that you don't.

I don't really care who else is behind it. So far, you've come up with no way the government could even censor the internet. Again, the ISP's would still control the switches. The government would have to directly order the ISP's to start censoring, which is exactly where we are today.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

History may disagree with me, but the future doesn't.
Cyber Policing on the Rise Across Asia: Report

Please explain to me how the government could do this if the ISP's control the switches.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You're all over the place. I say we give the Bush Administration as much access to our home as possible. Let's give 'em energy, healthcare, and transportation too!

If you're worried about this you better drop your current internet connection now, because the government has already weaseled their way into the gigapops and are monitoring your internet...

Government monitoring is a seperate problem from net neutrality because the government can do it either way, and net neutrality doesn't make it easier because the ISP's still control the switches....

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I don't think you understand. Doesn't cost me a dime now. Do you know how much money is spent annually on drop and feeder replacement because of squirrel chew alone? Much of our infrastructure locally is still aerial, how about yours?

Well, I'm assuming you pay for internet to your house. And if you do, you're paying for all those costs now. Your money goes towards your ISP running new wires and fixing existing wires. So yes, it does cost you a few dimes right now.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Worse, now I think you're guilty of over-simplifying this debate. There is already Federal legislation guaranteeing open content and there are reforms that seek to streamline video franchising for example to allow for more competitors in the market. I'd be much more in favor of some of these smaller proposals than giving the entire networking infrastructure over to the government. It will be yet another example of good intentions gone bad. I'm sure there were a great many promises that the Social Security lock-box wouldn't get raided for special interest also, but I'm sure you know how that panned out. The large corporations providing the content they want you to see should shoulder the cost of the bandwidth necessary to carry it, not you. You think this will be cheaper for you? How much cheaper? I think you'll find that this side of your argument is really a red herring and there can be no such guarantee to the end-user. Period.

Again, the government won't be handling bandwidth. They just run wire. That's it. No more.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

How much? So... instead of tiered pricing, everyone pays over $70/month? Again, by imposing net neutrality, how much will your bill decrease per month?

You'd pay whatever your ISP charges you. Because the ISP doesn't have to pay for laying wire, it should make ISP's much cheaper, in addition to open market competition taking it's course...

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

This whole; "you need to do more research" is a bully tactic that IMO is beneath you. Besides, I'm not sure you understand as much as you think you do. You seemed to have jumped on to the "save the internet" bandwagon when there's nothing in need of salvation. Your proposal is nothing more than action against a "perceived" threat of a problem that does not exist evidenced by your inability to provide any examples.

Honestly, at this point I'm not sure you're even reading my posts...

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Worse, your proposal basically puts a lock on current technology/advancement and hands it over to an already proven unresponsive government.

The maximum speed for fiber is the speed of light. I'm not exactly worried about advancement if the government lays fiber.

Bandwidth speeds would be dependent on your ISP and their switching gear. It would not be in the hands of the government.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

No one is talking about the government being an ISP, but architecture is everything. Your proposal is nothing more than a preemptive measure against a concept not yet conceived in practice. The market will decide what it thinks of ISPs controlling content.

You're right, architecture is anything. And you still haven't told me what magic the government would use to censor the internet if they don't control the switches.

You act as if this is just a gas station down the street, and if they have really bad service/prices, someone just opens another gas station. This really isn't the case. It takes years to lay service for a new ISP, in addition to very high cost. But by taking the laying of wire out of the equation, you make way for tons of new ISP's to spring up, creating a lot of market competition. Then the market can fairly decide what it thinks of ISPs controlling content.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

After all, it did with AOL, it will continue to happen with others. While there may very well be need for Telecom legislative reform, net neutrality is an A-bomb for an ant hole. The threat of legislation may be good, but the legislation itself leaves too many opportunities for governmental abuse.

You still having explained to me how building a neutral network will lead to government censorship. If the government doesn't control the routing of packets, how are they going to pull it off?

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

Why would government run internet give the government the ability to do this? They're only laying the wires, they're not doing any switching... That would all be done by the ISP.

If you have the pipes, you have the power. If ISPs want to play, they'll have to play on your field. The problem with ISP startup is the amount of red-tape one must go through both Federal and local to establish that infrastructure. You're essentially proposing that the government solve a government-invented problem, but the real problem will not go away. There are a great many with the means and the will to invest in this business. Regulation is the deal breaker for ISP startups. "only laying the wires" solves nothing. In that case, ISPs can still "switch" traffic, interfere with content, and price however they like. The government would have to step in with legislation which as I understand it prior to 2005 worked just fine w/o having to give the infrastructure over to the government. This isn't what you're proposing.

Again, that ISP's would be running the switches, so this wouldn't be controlled by the government...

So... what's the point then? Here's what I'm telling you, there is a limit to bandwidth and the capacity for traffic within it. The fact that packets are "prioritized" is actually better for the experience of most end-users. If the packets must be considered "equal" (which to be clear, has nothing to do with the government 'laying the wires') you're going to have to accept that your experience will be limited across the board.

Why wouldn't you? It's a win-win situation. You'd increase the equity of your home by adding an internet line, broaden your choice of internet providers, and cut your monthly bill by a few times.

First of all, let's be clear here. There's no price guarantee under NN. Never has been, never will be. A drop to my home is not going to somehow add more value to my home than the drop cable I already have coming to my home. If you want your choice of providers to increase, decrease regulatory principles.

Should the government not lay roads anymore either?

I love this argument. The government has laid roads using in most cases the absolute least efficient material for doing so, are extremely sluggish in updating those roads, takes them decades of expensive analysis paralysis for designing and planning, allows VW eating potholes to claim yet another bearing, and sometimes puts barrels and saw-horses out in order to charge double for construction-zone speeding when no work is being performed on that roadway and hasn't for months.

I think this just demonstrates that the government doesn't need to run any wires to control what people can do on the internet. Verizon would be deploying the entire network themselves, yet the feds can mandate what Verizon does with the spectrum. There's nothing to stop the government from doing something similar with existing networks.

Bingo! The problem is not the providers.

This only strengthens my example. There will be a lot of innovation because everyone has access to the spectrum. It won't just be limited to Verizon. It's somewhat akin to the government run fiber plan.

The innovation is in the hardware. The "access to the spectrum" limitation you're talking about is not the fault of the willing entrepreneur, but the government. You'd trade "access to spectrum" for "access to architecture".

I don't really care who else is behind it. So far, you've come up with no way the government could even censor the internet. Again, the ISP's would still control the switches. The government would have to directly order the ISP's to start censoring, which is exactly where we are today.

So... you want access to more censored ISPs? I've not seen this argument for NN before. I've already used the examples you've given me (S. Korea) to show exactly how the government would do so and it would most certainly occur in the laws. If they have the architecture, they have more legislative leverage. There's no doubt in my mind that providers want to provide you with what you want to see. There have been examples of abuse and those were handled both by the government and the free market without having to resort to giving the government additional leverage.

Please explain to me how the government could do this if the ISP's control the switches.

You just said above that "we're already there" with regard to government dictating what content an ISP can provide. How does giving the government the architecture solve anything? Again, the cost of "laying wires" while expensive is not the deal breaker. The regulations both Federal and local are the deal breakers. This is like claiming a problem with groping at the Toys-R-Us and hiring a pedophile to address the issue.

If you're worried about this you better drop your current internet connection now, because the government has already weaseled their way into the gigapops and are monitoring your internet...

Exactly! Why would I give them any more leverage than they have now???

Government monitoring is a seperate problem from net neutrality because the government can do it either way, and net neutrality doesn't make it easier because the ISP's still control the switches....

When the architecture has not been upgraded from 750Mhz mods because the consumer is subject to an unresponsive government as opposed to the free market of demand and supply, you can control switches all you like. The experience will still suck. You can have a sucky experience with 2 ISPs or 50 and since there's no guarantee of price under any proposed NN legislation, you may in fact be paying more for it.

Well, I'm assuming you pay for internet to your house. And if you do, you're paying for all those costs now. Your money goes towards your ISP running new wires and fixing existing wires. So yes, it does cost you a few dimes right now.

Right and as a consumer I feel I have more representation and leverage through the marketplace than I do the unresponsive government.

Again, the government won't be handling bandwidth. They just run wire. That's it. No more.

Oh see I thought we were talking about "net neutrality". Now it seems we're just talking about wire running. I wish the discussion had been framed as such from the outset, we probably could've saved ourselves some time. There's a reason why packets are prioritized and it almost always has had nothing to do with some political difference with a web host. If the ISPs maintain the switches, they maintain the right to prioritize traffic. If they can't, your experience will suck across the board without any guarantees of cheaper rates.

You'd pay whatever your ISP charges you. Because the ISP doesn't have to pay for laying wire, it should make ISP's much cheaper, in addition to open market competition taking it's course...

I don't see a difference between paying $45/month currently for my ISP or $15/month to the ISP, then $30/month in taxes to manage that infrastructure other than the inconvenience of having to pay two entities for one service. Once you've gone this route, there's absolutely no going back.

Honestly, at this point I'm not sure you're even reading my posts...

You're not consistent in your argument. You've given one example of limited access and that example comprised a wireless provider being limited by government. In the next breath you advocate giving the government additional leverage by administering the architecture. Worse, none of this matters in the least bit because the net is not neutral and any such legislation to make it neutral has no bearing on the wiring itself. (the only thing the government has under NN according to you)

The maximum speed for fiber is the speed of light. I'm not exactly worried about advancement if the government lays fiber.

Upkeep. Redundancy, modulars, special causes, etc... there's simply more administrative issues to maintaining a fiber optic network than you seem willing to accept. You should be worried.

Bandwidth speeds would be dependent on your ISP and their switching gear. It would not be in the hands of the government.

Where does the government's "wire laying" end? At the node? The Hub? The Central office?

You're right, architecture is anything. And you still haven't told me what magic the government would use to censor the internet if they don't control the switches.

You're not understanding my argument. They'd have the same magical powers you admitted they already have today with the additional leverage afforded them as the builder/owner of the architecture.

You act as if this is just a gas station down the street, and if they have really bad service/prices, someone just opens another gas station. This really isn't the case. It takes years to lay service for a new ISP, in addition to very high cost. But by taking the laying of wire out of the equation, you make way for tons of new ISP's to spring up, creating a lot of market competition. Then the market can fairly decide what it thinks of ISPs controlling content.

It already does make the decision of what it thinks of ISPs controlling content. That's the reason this discussion has even come up. Truth be told, I appreciate the "threat" existing, I just don't want it to come through fruition. There are little to no examples of content suppression at this point (the one example you gave was government suppression) and what you're proposing is no more sensible than asking a pedophile to solve a child-groping problem IMO.

You still having explained to me how building a neutral network will lead to government censorship. If the government doesn't control the routing of packets, how are they going to pull it off?

You still haven't explained to me what you hope to achieve with NN with the exception of not filtering packets. I've explained why providers filter packets and trust me, you'd want it no other way. There's absolutely nothing to suggest that a government-owned infrastructure solves this problem. There's no price guarantee under NN. There's no content protection. There's nothing, but government owned "wiring".

[Big Mac]

ebuddy wins. More government is not the solution to dissatisfaction with current providers. Such a wrong-headed socialist scheme only would inevitably result in regulation of content, legalized snooping and most likely worse service.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

ebuddy wins. More government is not the solution to dissatisfaction with current providers. Such a wrong-headed socialist scheme only would inevitably result in regulation of content, legalized snooping and most likely worse service.

I think this sentiment is basically the tired old "the private market is better at absolutely everything", which is much like saying "the Mac is the best at every conceivable form of computing". Government sponsored programs are simply another approach to a problem. GoMac used roads as an example and ebuddy refuted this, but ebuddy obviously hasn't heard of highway 427 in Toronto, which has been a complete and utter failure despite being built and maintained by a private company. Public education is another system which be very problematic if privatized. The bottom line is no matter what your funding source is, a program is only as good as its leadership, resources, and support.

Regarding the issue of snooping and regulation, I haven't read ebuddy's latest post fully yet, but again, these are ISP issues. It is simply impractical to do such a thing via a fiber tap of some sort.

We are in a period of media convergence. Everything is revolving around, or wants to revolve around the internet. The internet is, or will be depended on the same way that we depend on electricity or highways. In order to build such a system in such a way as to solve the problems we face now, it either has to be highly regulated, perhaps owned by a regulated monopoly, or by the government.

Simply solving every problem the same way is dumb. The private market is a marvelous invention, but it isn't the solution to every problem. If you want to position it accordingly, at least fairly account for both sides of the spectrum - strengths and weaknesses. We are problem solving, not applying our ideological beliefs upon the country out of some sort of emotional or personal satisfaction.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

ebuddy wins. More government is not the solution to dissatisfaction with current providers. Such a wrong-headed socialist scheme only would inevitably result in regulation of content, legalized snooping and most likely worse service.

Yes. God forbid the government run wires. Such involvement by the government in the color of wire run to my house might just be too much for me.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

If you have the pipes, you have the power. If ISPs want to play, they'll have to play on your field. The problem with ISP startup is the amount of red-tape one must go through both Federal and local to establish that infrastructure. You're essentially proposing that the government solve a government-invented problem, but the real problem will not go away. There are a great many with the means and the will to invest in this business. Regulation is the deal breaker for ISP startups. "only laying the wires" solves nothing. In that case, ISPs can still "switch" traffic, interfere with content, and price however they like. The government would have to step in with legislation which as I understand it prior to 2005 worked just fine w/o having to give the infrastructure over to the government. This isn't what you're proposing.

The problem with ISP startup is also high cost, which you've conveniently ignored in refuting GoMac even though he very clearly used this as an argument.

You're right that this doesn't solve the problem of privacy (although it isn't solved keeping things private either), but increased competition and lower prices may very well solve the problem of pricing. "It worked before 2005" is not really sufficient argument here.

So... what's the point then? Here's what I'm telling you, there is a limit to bandwidth and the capacity for traffic within it. The fact that packets are "prioritized" is actually better for the experience of most end-users. If the packets must be considered "equal" (which to be clear, has nothing to do with the government 'laying the wires') you're going to have to accept that your experience will be limited across the board.

What about the experience of those trying to offer great service as a small business whose packets aren't prioritized? What is your solution here? Just tell them they need to start competing with the Fortune 50 companies? It sounds like you don't believe in any form of market regulation, is that right?

I love this argument. The government has laid roads using in most cases the absolute least efficient material for doing so, are extremely sluggish in updating those roads, takes them decades of expensive analysis paralysis for designing and planning, allows VW eating potholes to claim yet another bearing, and sometimes puts barrels and saw-horses out in order to charge double for construction-zone speeding when no work is being performed on that roadway and hasn't for months.

Again, you obviously haven't heard of highway 427 (see my last post). A highway is only as good as its funding source, management resources, and leadership. It makes no sense to say that the problem with bad highways is its funding source, when there are no guarantees that every area will be better served by private funding sources, and that leadership and management will be superior across the board. "It's private" does not automatically make this so, and just because this government has a poor track record of doing things sufficiently, this doesn't make the fundamental concept of government provided services flawed in every circumstance. It doesn't make it socialist, or inferior, or any other label you want to assign to it - not necessarily. Perhaps the problem with many of these services is in part due to people such as yourself who want to essentially strangle the program so that it has no chance of succeeding? There is a sweet spot between underfunding something to the point that it is ineffective, and overfunding to the point that it is wasteful. This applies whether you are talking about government or private programs.

So... you want access to more censored ISPs? I've not seen this argument for NN before. I've already used the examples you've given me (S. Korea) to show exactly how the government would do so and it would most certainly occur in the laws. If they have the architecture, they have more legislative leverage. There's no doubt in my mind that providers want to provide you with what you want to see. There have been examples of abuse and those were handled both by the government and the free market without having to resort to giving the government additional leverage.

The ISPs would not be changing. This problem exists regardless of who owns the fiber.

You just said above that "we're already there" with regard to government dictating what content an ISP can provide. How does giving the government the architecture solve anything? Again, the cost of "laying wires" while expensive is not the deal breaker. The regulations both Federal and local are the deal breakers. This is like claiming a problem with groping at the Toys-R-Us and hiring a pedophile to address the issue.

Government involvement in an ISP's business is a different problem that exists regardless of who owns the fiber. I agree that this can be problematic, but I don't agree that there is a connection to the idea of the government owning the fiber contributing to this problem. Like I said, it is inefficient doing these sorts of things by tapping into the fiber, just as it is inefficient to determine what somebody is watching on TV by analyzing the electrical signal being sent to their house.

Exactly! Why would I give them any more leverage than they have now???

Because it would not contribute to the problems that you are expressing.

Oh see I thought we were talking about "net neutrality". Now it seems we're just talking about wire running. I wish the discussion had been framed as such from the outset, we probably could've saved ourselves some time. There's a reason why packets are prioritized and it almost always has had nothing to do with some political difference with a web host. If the ISPs maintain the switches, they maintain the right to prioritize traffic. If they can't, your experience will suck across the board without any guarantees of cheaper rates.

Again, how do you solve the problem of smaller companies competing with Fortune 50 companies?

I don't see a difference between paying $45/month currently for my ISP or $15/month to the ISP, then $30/month in taxes to manage that infrastructure other than the inconvenience of having to pay two entities for one service. Once you've gone this route, there's absolutely no going back.

Reread GoMac's original post about how we are paying for service many times over due to how our infrastructure is designed. This is sort of like buying a new Toyota, and having to pay Ford for the right to use your car on all highways.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I think this sentiment is basically the tired old "the private market is better at absolutely everything", which is much like saying "the Mac is the best at every conceivable form of computing".

Isn't your statement above really even weaker though besson? While I understand your complaint; you gotta know there is no shortage of tired complaints from anyone. I never once suggested the private market was better at everything, just more accountable not only to a third party such as the government, but the end-users as well in this case. What third party intervention will there be to check government? You're arguing for a relatively major governmental move. I disagree with it. I'm not seeing a good enough argument to justify it.

Government sponsored programs are simply another approach to a problem.

I agree and they may be better or worse. Perhaps the thing that annoys you about conservatism (?) is that their criteria for proposing a government approach is a little more stringent. I'm just not seeing real sound arguments for this approach and some of them I'll address in this post.

GoMac used roads as an example and ebuddy refuted this, but ebuddy obviously hasn't heard of highway 427 in Toronto, which has been a complete and utter failure despite being built and maintained by a private company.

No, I haven't. I imagine if it were truly bad enough, I would've known about it not unlike a certain bridge here in the States. I'm guessing you're aware of what I'm referring to. (not to mention the general disrepair of our bridges throughout the US)

I was curious though so I wiki'd it.
- Highway 427 is Ontario's second busiest freeway by volume, and has no fewer than 12 lanes between the QEW/Gardiner and Highway 401
Hmm. Sounds like kind of a big deal.

- Notable about Highway 427 are its several multi-level interchanges; the junctions with QEW and Highway 401 were Ontario's first 4-level interchanges constructed in the late 1960s and early 1970s while the interchanges with Highway 409 and Highway 407 are more recent and were completed in 1992 and 1995.
This actually sounds quite complex. What I found most interesting was that it was extremely innovative for its time. A trademark of free market. Do you have some examples of similar roads, handling this degree of traffic in better shape? I'm also curious who built it originally and what that company is doing today? I might look into having them resurface my driveway.

Public education is another system which be very problematic if privatized.

You bring up roads as an example of privatized folly when I'm sure we could compare "travel wounds" between the US and Canadian roadways for several pages. This just isn't a great sell to me. Then, you follow up with public education as what I can only assume is supposed to be an example of an effective government approach. An approach that facilitates a system ranked 18th among 24 nations in terms of effectiveness. A system ranked below Finland, Australia, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Netherlands and the United Kingdom in mathematics and science. If my assumption is correct all I can say is that I cannot disagree with you more.

The bottom line is no matter what your funding source is, a program is only as good as its leadership, resources, and support.

Now we can agree.

Regarding the issue of snooping and regulation, I haven't read ebuddy's latest post fully yet, but again, these are ISP issues.

I'll remember that the next time you're supporting the notion that Bush is trampling privacy rights in the US.

It is simply impractical to do such a thing via a fiber tap of some sort.

Those fiber taps will be critical for troubleshooting the architecture. I'll be thanked for fighting for reliable service and helping my fellow man avoid being absolutely spammed to death.

We are in a period of media convergence. Everything is revolving around, or wants to revolve around the internet. The internet is, or will be depended on the same way that we depend on electricity or highways.

Exactly. I wholeheartedly agree that the internet will be depended on not unlike electricity and even water. Highways carry vital traffic too, but when an ambulance comes down the road flashing its beacons and sounding its sirens; guess what the traffic does? You guessed it. It slows down and gets out of the way immediately. (or at least it should, but there's always the occasional toothless wonder). This way, the more important traffic can be mobilized much faster than the speed limit generally allows. There's a good reason for this. More often than not (evidenced by the lacking examples I'm seeing), there's good reason for packet prioritization too. There's also a good reason for charging heavier users more.

Hell, even the IRS charges truckers a heavy vehicle use tax in addition to standard road taxes. Not to mention the extraordinary amount in fuel and taxes for every state they roll through. I'd rather the government follow its own principle should it choose to adopt NN and since roads keep coming up; next time you hear the familiar sirens of the civil apparatus don't bother getting out of the way. After all, you're just as important as they are.

In order to build such a system in such a way as to solve the problems we face now, it either has to be highly regulated, perhaps owned by a regulated monopoly, or by the government.

I'm just not seeing the "huge problem we face now". Why does everything have to be a "huge problem"? Do you really see our current state of communications as a "huge problem"? Global warming must be getting boring for some folks.

Simply solving every problem the same way is dumb.

Right! We keep bringing up the same tired solutions. The intentions are always good, but the outcome? Meh.

The private market is a marvelous invention, but it isn't the solution to every problem. If you want to position it accordingly, at least fairly account for both sides of the spectrum - strengths and weaknesses. We are problem solving, not applying our ideological beliefs upon the country out of some sort of emotional or personal satisfaction.

First of all this isn't simply two sides of a spectrum. Maybe you need more time to clear your head prior to giving the sermons. I'm not proposing we employ the "private market" principle in all cases nor did I suggest it is a solution to all problems. I'm merely advocating common sense and a little more discipline before making proposed changes of this magnitude. Should I assume your opinion on this issue is simply emotional and an attempt to apply your ideological beliefs upon the country?

C'mon besson.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Exactly. I wholeheartedly agree that the internet will be depended on not unlike electricity and even water. Highways carry vital traffic too, but when an ambulance comes down the road flashing its beacons and sounding its sirens; guess what the traffic does? You guessed it. It slows down and gets out of the way immediately. (or at least it should, but there's always the occasional toothless wonder)..

And when there is actual emergency traffic on the internet, I think we should do QOS. Massive earthquake in LA? Terrorist attack in NY? Great! QOS the network for a few days so paramedics and firefighters can get VOIP through the network without someone's YouTube getting in the way.

But somehow I think you have a different definition of what "emergency" traffic is on the internet.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

This way, the more important traffic can be mobilized much faster than the speed limit generally allows. There's a good reason for this. More often than not (evidenced by the lacking examples I'm seeing), there's good reason for packet prioritization too. There's also a good reason for charging heavier users more.

And government run fiber would not stop ISP's from doing this. An ISP could QOS all they want. The difference is that when someone else decides to offer better service for a cheaper price without packetshaping, it would be far easier for them to compete with Comcast and steal their customers.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Hell, even the IRS charges truckers a heavy vehicle use tax in addition to standard road taxes. Not to mention the extraordinary amount in fuel and taxes for every state they roll through. I'd rather the government follow its own principle should it choose to adopt NN and since roads keep coming up; next time you hear the familiar sirens of the civil apparatus don't bother getting out of the way. After all, you're just as important as they are.

Great. Let Comcast use government run fiber and QOS it as far up as they want. They can do whatever the hell they want. The difference is they'll be run out of business when joe six pack invests a few hundred thousand into a competing ISP. They can whine about how impossible it is for them to provide service for their customers while another ISP steps up to the plate.

Nothing I have said means that ISP's can't restrict service. It just means we would have fair market competition that would make it... not conducive to their profits to do so.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I'm just not seeing the "huge problem we face now". Why does everything have to be a "huge problem"? Do you really see our current state of communications as a "huge problem"? Global warming must be getting boring for some folks.

Whether or not you see net neutrality as a problem, the quality of our internet is a problem. Did you know the average speed of an internet connection in South Korea is 70 megabits a second? In the US it's six. Now, you're probably thinking that South Koreans pay a lot more for their internet. They don't. On average they pay $20 a month.

In other words, Comcast is full of BS when they claim that handling large amounts of traffic is impossible for $40 a month.

[CharlesS]

I've gotta agree with goMac on this one. The only thing I miss from the dial-up era is the way we used to have a large number of ISPs to choose from and they generally only cost $20/month. Nowadays you've got Comcast or whatever cable company is in your area, and that's it. If you don't like their service, tough, because that's what you're getting. If you'd rather sacrifice a little speed and go DSL, you can do that, but once again you have one choice of ISPs, and if you don't like it, then there's not a whole lot you can do.

It's not much different to a government-run ISP in that regard. It sounds like goMac's suggestion would actually give us a free market if it were implemented.

[Chongo]

I have Qwest DSL in my area. They offer 1.5, 7,12,and 20 megabit packages, all about $10 a month less then what Cox is charging for similar speeds. I have the 7megabit line.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

And when there is actual emergency traffic on the internet, I think we should do QOS. Massive earthquake in LA? Terrorist attack in NY? Great! QOS the network for a few days so paramedics and firefighters can get VOIP through the network without someone's YouTube getting in the way.

But somehow I think you have a different definition of what "emergency" traffic is on the internet.

Yeah, email over spammers. Credit card transactions for businesses over YouTube. (https, etc...) VOIP (lifeline) over all. Yes. Prioritization is critical, not just in cases of absolute national calamity.

And government run fiber would not stop ISP's from doing this. An ISP could QOS all they want. The difference is that when someone else decides to offer better service for a cheaper price without packetshaping, it would be far easier for them to compete with Comcast and steal their customers.

What do you suppose a government-run fiber optic network would cost to build and maintain annually? What magical entity is going to pay this immense bill?

Let's address another myth about ISPs and competition. In 2004, 83% of all zip codes in the U.S. had two or more broadband providers, and 67% had three or more. It is commercial suicide to not offer the same access to content and pricing as the others and the marketplace will only continue to grow as it makes these demands.

The limited number of ISPs is not due to the "cost of startup". There are a number of players ready to join in the party. The main problems are two-fold;
1) Spectrum distribution; Congress and the FCC would do well to make more spectrum available immediately, then allowing licenses for trade. One such immediate result could be more wireless broadband options for consumers.

2) Regulatory principles; local governments often determine who can play in their city and what they can provide. Once they've attained local regulatory approval, they'll then need access to rights of way, pay fees, and meet regulatory obligations regarding service provision. For example, a telephone company wishing to provide video content must negotiate separately for each city in which their content is accessible. Congress could easily address this without assuming full ownership of all network architecture. With the Googles, Amazon.coms, etc... donating to their boys on one side and the telcos donating to their boys on the other, this makes sound legislation more difficult. This would most certainly not go away under your proposal of NN. I say "your proposal" because there are about 3 different ones and they all look a little different. Yours seems to morph the three into a more convoluted approach looking less and less like net neutrality and more like 'ACMEnet' to be honest.

Great. Let Comcast use government run fiber and QOS it as far up as they want. They can do whatever the hell they want. The difference is they'll be run out of business when joe six pack invests a few hundred thousand into a competing ISP. They can whine about how impossible it is for them to provide service for their customers while another ISP steps up to the plate.

The FCC reclassified cable modem access as information service in 2002, wireline broadband in 2005, and wireless broadband in 2007 by pulling common carriage status. This is the entire problem. You're asking for more government to solve a government-invented problem.

Nothing I have said means that ISP's can't restrict service. It just means we would have fair market competition that would make it... not conducive to their profits to do so.

You want a fair market? The answer is less regulation, not giving the government network architecture. Once you've gone this mistaken route in solving symptoms of problems and not the problem itself, there's no going back.

Whether or not you see net neutrality as a problem, the quality of our internet is a problem. Did you know the average speed of an internet connection in South Korea is 70 megabits a second? In the US it's six. Now, you're probably thinking that South Koreans pay a lot more for their internet. They don't. On average they pay $20 a month.

Well, as a Mac user I'd like to say you get what you pay for. I don't understand why so many insist on comparing the internet experiences of S. Koreans to Americans. This leads me to believe you're not really familiar with the problems they're having administering their usage. Also, do you have a link for the 20 dollar a month figure? I'm seeing an average of $32.50 for service in S. Korea. I'd also add that the number of US online users dwarfs that of S. Korea.

We could discuss the Microsoft-centric internet experience in S. Korea, but I warn you that if you're in S. Korea now and you use Vista, you may or may not be able to read my post. If you're on a Mac of course, you could probably just forget it anyway. I'd also suggest googling S. Korean laws regulating sexually explicit materials among other things. Then again, it's not like you're going to visit any N. Korean websites to kill the time because of course that is illegal and that content is blocked entirely.

In case my sarcasm is less than clear, I'd not trade my internet experience with theirs. Ever. Fast? Sure. When it works.

In other words, Comcast is full of BS when they claim that handling large amounts of traffic is impossible for $40 a month.

Of course, suggesting the government could handle large amounts of traffic with any more integrity is even more laughable. You're being lied to and "net neutrality" is nothing more than a catchy slogan. It doesn't guarantee neutrality. It doesn't guarantee lower prices. It doesn't guarantee better QoS. It most assuredly guarantees additional taxes over the ISP costs, more unresponsive infrastructure upgrades and innovation, and the continued problems of today amplified. Why? It addresses none of the problems, none of the symptoms, and offers a host of its own problems while giving the government additional leverage in communications.

I appreciate the conversation though. Prior to last week I might have been on board for net neutrality. As it stands today; net neutrality = bad, bad, worse, and horrible.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Yeah, email over spammers. Credit card transactions for businesses over YouTube. (https, etc...) VOIP (lifeline) over all. Yes. Prioritization is critical, not just in cases of absolute national calamity.

Why is Alberto's Nicknack Shop more important than YouTube?

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

I have Qwest DSL in my area. They offer 1.5, 7,12,and 20 megabit packages, all about $10 a month less then what Cox is charging for similar speeds. I have the 7megabit line.

And DSL has been a great choice to keep cable in check. The problem is that DSL is a far more limited technology than cable or fiber, and it's going to get left in the dust.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Yeah, email over spammers. Credit card transactions for businesses over YouTube. (https, etc...) VOIP (lifeline) over all. Yes. Prioritization is critical, not just in cases of absolute national calamity.

How will you be able to tell who spammers are? Why are credit card transactions more important than YouTube? Aren't more credit card transactions done over intranets anyway? What about my plan would stop a business from using an ISP that would prioritize their traffic?

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

What do you suppose a government-run fiber optic network would cost to build and maintain annually? What magical entity is going to pay this immense bill?

The cost to build is passed directly to the consumer as a one time fee to be connected (as I have said before). The fee would be for their home to be connected. The cost to maintain is negligible, and could be a either paid for by the consumer, or passed as an extremely minimal fee to the ISP's (which, when split between 20 ISP's, would be 20 time more efficient than the ISP's all maintaining their own networks.)

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Let's address another myth about ISPs and competition. In 2004, 83% of all zip codes in the U.S. had two or more broadband providers, and 67% had three or more. It is commercial suicide to not offer the same access to content and pricing as the others and the marketplace will only continue to grow as it makes these demands.

Not unless ISP's gain monopoly power. Cable and fiber and becoming the only ways to deliver extremely high internet speeds. Once Verizon and Comcast/Cox/Time Warner/Whoever controls your local cable become the only ones left, there is little competition.

In addition, most communities have exclusivity agreements with providers. In fact, one is currently hampering FIOS entering downtown Portland. Exclusivity agreements are usually demanded by the providers.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

The limited number of ISPs is not due to the "cost of startup". There are a number of players ready to join in the party. The main problems are two-fold;
1) Spectrum distribution; Congress and the FCC would do well to make more spectrum available immediately, then allowing licenses for trade. One such immediate result could be more wireless broadband options for consumers.

The wireless auctions are great, but they're still controlled by one ISP, and wireless is not as great as wired connections. In fact, the wired auctions are a great example of a government condoned monopoly.

In addition, how do you think providers are going to get internet between nodes? Magic pixie dust? No, they're going to have to run another network. Again. And again, a federally laid network would make this more efficient.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

2) Regulatory principles; local governments often determine who can play in their city and what they can provide. Once they've attained local regulatory approval, they'll then need access to rights of way, pay fees, and meet regulatory obligations regarding service provision. For example, a telephone company wishing to provide video content must negotiate separately for each city in which their content is accessible. Congress could easily address this without assuming full ownership of all network architecture. With the Googles, Amazon.coms, etc... donating to their boys on one side and the telcos donating to their boys on the other, this makes sound legislation more difficult. This would most certainly not go away under your proposal of NN. I say "your proposal" because there are about 3 different ones and they all look a little different. Yours seems to morph the three into a more convoluted approach looking less and less like net neutrality and more like 'ACMEnet' to be honest.

Even if exclusivity was lifted (federal government interfering with local government! oh no!), there is still the problem of each provider laying their own lines. If four ISP's entered a community, you're suggesting passing the cost of laying new networks to the consumer four times over. If the feds laid a network, it would only be passed to the consumer once.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You want a fair market? The answer is less regulation, not giving the government network architecture. Once you've gone this mistaken route in solving symptoms of problems and not the problem itself, there's no going back.

Nobody is talking about regulation here, only you. Under this plan the ISP's could do whatever they wanted. No one would regulate them.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Well, as a Mac user I'd like to say you get what you pay for. I don't understand why so many insist on comparing the internet experiences of S. Koreans to Americans. This leads me to believe you're not really familiar with the problems they're having administering their usage. Also, do you have a link for the 20 dollar a month figure? I'm seeing an average of $32.50 for service in S. Korea. I'd also add that the number of US online users dwarfs that of S. Korea.

Thankfully I just did a research project on this...

http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

The US is actually number 16 world wide. Japan and quite a few European nations are also ahead of us. Japan also offers far faster internet for about the same price each month, and I don't think any of your censorship concerns apply to them.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

We could discuss the Microsoft-centric internet experience in S. Korea, but I warn you that if you're in S. Korea now and you use Vista, you may or may not be able to read my post. If you're on a Mac of course, you could probably just forget it anyway. I'd also suggest googling S. Korean laws regulating sexually explicit materials among other things. Then again, it's not like you're going to visit any N. Korean websites to kill the time because of course that is illegal and that content is blocked entirely.

The big difference between this plan and South Korea is that the government would not be doing any routing, so they would not have the power to censor connections.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Of course, suggesting the government could handle large amounts of traffic with any more integrity is even more laughable.

Which is why under my plan the government wouldn't handle any traffic.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

It doesn't guarantee lower prices. It doesn't guarantee better QoS. It most assuredly guarantees additional taxes over the ISP costs,

ISP's won't be going away...

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

more unresponsive infrastructure upgrades and innovation,

The government would be laying fiber, whose maximum speed is the speed of light. The ISP's would run the actual switching gear.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Why? It addresses none of the problems, none of the symptoms, and offers a host of its own problems while giving the government additional leverage in communications.

It addresses waste in the ISPs. I thought Republicans were all about reducing wasteful spending and saving consumers money. I guess not...

[Chongo]

Qwest VDSL is FTTN ( a Lucent DSLAM)

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Qwest VDSL is FTTN ( a Lucent DSLAM)

Still far slower than either fiber or DOCSIS 3.0. I'd assume it also has serious range limits, unlike the first two technologies.

Plus, it's still bound by exclusivity agreements. Qwest DSL is actually keeping out FIOS in downtown Portland.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

How will you be able to tell who spammers are? Why are credit card transactions more important than YouTube? Aren't more credit card transactions done over intranets anyway? What about my plan would stop a business from using an ISP that would prioritize their traffic?

The credit card example was a poor one. http(s) is indeed intra. Sorry. Traffic shaping can be done using a bunch of tools. The whole reason the word "neutrality" is being used in this issue.

Some traffic is more obligatory. Traffic that requires jitter-free, low latency performance. i.e. gaming, VOIP, surfing, etc... Other traffic is considered lower priority. Crudely, traffic is compartmentalized by ports. Which ports carry which traffic is contingent upon the tags on the data itself. Spam can be filtered server-side. There are a wealth of technologies that can trace, tag, contain, and remove spam. It is not always perfect, but it exists and is being used with increasing regularity.

The cost to build is passed directly to the consumer as a one time fee to be connected (as I have said before).

This is the kind of thing that makes me believe we're talking less and less about net neutrality and more and more about gomac's net neutrality. How do you know the end-user is only going to incur a "one-time fee"? I've not seen this anywhere.

The fee would be for their home to be connected. The cost to maintain is negligible, and could be a either paid for by the consumer, or passed as an extremely minimal fee to the ISP's (which, when split between 20 ISP's, would be 20 time more efficient than the ISP's all maintaining their own networks.)

Answers like this remind me of earlier questions left unanswered. At what point does the government-owned infrastructure end? The tap? The power supply? The EQ? The node? The Hub? For you to say the cost to maintain this is negligible is... well, negligent. The costs to maintain an HFC plant (not accounting for fiber-to-the-home) are immense.

Not unless ISP's gain monopoly power. Cable and fiber and becoming the only ways to deliver extremely high internet speeds. Once Verizon and Comcast/Cox/Time Warner/Whoever controls your local cable become the only ones left, there is little competition.

That's great except for the fact that this is a non-issue. The number of ISPs are growing, not waning. There are over 6,600 ISPs and they continue to grow their business. One example is a guy who started his from a farm for $60,000.00.
small ISPs continue to thrive

In addition, most communities have exclusivity agreements with providers. In fact, one is currently hampering FIOS entering downtown Portland. Exclusivity agreements are usually demanded by the providers.

Here again the issue is framed as the "evil providers". You don't suppose there was an issue with the location that they didn't have leverage? If a provider wants to provide, they're going to need a place to do it. If they had the panache to negotiate exclusivity, more power to them. I don't see how this is supposed to instill more faith in the government entity at the table. More ISPs does not guarantee lower rates. More ISPs does not guarantee neutrality. I'll let your cited experts explain the real solutions to you a little later.

The wireless auctions are great, but they're still controlled by one ISP, and wireless is not as great as wired connections. In fact, the wired auctions are a great example of a government condoned monopoly.

Monopoly implies "one company" right? I just want to make sure we're not emotionally charging the issue more than is necessary here.

In addition, how do you think providers are going to get internet between nodes? Magic pixie dust? No, they're going to have to run another network. Again. And again, a federally laid network would make this more efficient.

At&T sublets fiber from Sprint. There's nothing to suggest similar arrangements cannot be made through providers. This just isn't a big enough problem to warrant handing it over to an unresponsive government. Your internet experience will suck. I'd rather not have to send you a letter via USPS to tell you "I told you so".

Even if exclusivity was lifted (federal government interfering with local government! oh no!), there is still the problem of each provider laying their own lines. If four ISP's entered a community, you're suggesting passing the cost of laying new networks to the consumer four times over. If the feds laid a network, it would only be passed to the consumer once.

This is BS and you know it. If someone wants you to use their service, they'd better be competitively priced. This is like charging someone for the NIU on the back of their home for phone service. Doesn't happen. Like I told you before, I'd much rather pay my ISP $45/month than pay them $15/month, then $30/month to the government the first year, $40/month the second year, $50/month the third year, $60/month the fourth year and so on. You act like we haven't seen this steadily increasing tax anomaly before. Hell, you act like you haven't seen taxes before. You truly honestly believe there's a proposal on the table for a simple one-time fee? Even though I'd be curious to see a link to substantiate this claim, there's nothing to say once they have the infrastructure, your choice of how it is charged to you is over.

Nobody is talking about regulation here, only you. Under this plan the ISP's could do whatever they wanted. No one would regulate them.

I brought up regulation as a way to argue against your supposition that the cost of a network build was prohibitive to playing the ISP game. Somehow when the government is building it, it is cheap, but when private enterprise wants to build it-they can't. This logic isn't working both ways gomac. There are plenty of ISPs that want to play, they just can't play by the oppressive legislation we have today both local and federal. Again, your proposal is not net neutrality, it's ACMEnet. Just call it what it is. It doesn't guarantee pricing, it doesn't guarantee neutrality.

Thankfully I just did a research project on this...

http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

The US is actually number 16 world wide.

Actually, the US was ranked 15th in adoption rate and 12th in overall experience according this OECD summary. Considering the fact that adoption is not the whole picture (The total number of overall users in US dwarfs your examples) this isn't that big a sell for your plan to me. In fact, I found it interesting that this is what the OECD summary recommended for our challenges;
• Congress should exempt broadband services from federal, state and local taxation and from requirements to pay into the Universal Service Fund.
• All states should enact video franchise laws.
• Congress should enact tax incentives for the deployment of new high-speed broadband networks.
• The FCC should move to a two-tiered definition of high-speed
Internet by developing a more robust 3 megabit per second (mbps) asymmetrical “broadband” standard. The FCC should collect county-level subscriber data for both speed tiers.
• If Congress fails to mandate changes to FCC local broadband data collection, states should work through non-governmental entities to collect and report local data.
• The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) should help facilitate the development of a bottom-up database of local broadband speeds and prices.

6 proposals here and ironically none of these experts came up with your plan. They did give some pretty good ideas of how the government could help the situation and how they're hurting the situation.

Japan and quite a few European nations are also ahead of us. Japan also offers far faster internet for about the same price each month, and I don't think any of your censorship concerns apply to them.

Think again. increasing censorship in Japan This doesn't account for some of the strange laws they have governing the internet in Japan already.

The big difference between this plan and South Korea is that the government would not be doing any routing, so they would not have the power to censor connections.

If you want to skate, you'll have to use their pipes.

Which is why under my plan the government wouldn't handle any traffic.

Then you should stop calling your plan net neutrality. It is ACMEnet.

ISP's won't be going away...

Right and again; there's no guarantee of lower costs to the end user and no guarantee of net neutrality.

The government would be laying fiber, whose maximum speed is the speed of light.

You keep saying this as though there is no inline equipment involved here. You make it sound like there's a gigantic clump of glass made from magic pixie dust connecting you to the cloud. Please answer where the government's network infrastructure ends. Give me a point to point breakdown of "your" plan. I'm not seeing any official plan that gives ample information on this. So far I'm seeing; "it's a quagmire!!!" with no examples of why, no examples of how this plan solves anything, and no specific cost-benefit analysis at all. Your plan doesn't look like any plan I've seen. You gotta sell this gomac.

The ISP's would run the actual switching gear.

Right which is why "neutrality" is a red herring. A word used to mobilize the naive.

It addresses waste in the ISPs.

Whatever "waste" exists in the business model of the ISP will manifest in their returns. Whatever "waste" exists in government will manifest directly from your wallet. Besson helped you by bringing up some good examples such as the state of our educational system ranked lower than our internet experience yet spending exponentially more. Now that's a real problem, not this red herring I'm reading about in this thread.

I thought Republicans were all about reducing wasteful spending and saving consumers money. I guess not...

I don't care about the wasteful spending of a private industry. If I did, I'd recommend you lock up anyone involved in Air America. That's their own business. As a Republican, I stand behind this principle. Saving consumers money and protecting their online experience most definitely means keeping the government out of the infrastructure. They'll cost more. They'll respond less. They'll ensure your experience on the internet is just fodder for the next election debate between two do-nothings. Once you go this route, there is no going back. Period. You'd better make sure this a big enough problem and the solution has a fighting chance of working. I see neither here.

[Big Mac]

ebuddy for president.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

TSome traffic is more obligatory. Traffic that requires jitter-free, low latency performance. i.e. gaming, VOIP, surfing, etc... Other traffic is considered lower priority.

Wait, so GAMING is the usage that's being equated with emergency vehicles on the road?

Am I reading this right?

That's great except for the fact that this is a non-issue. The number of ISPs are growing, not waning. There are over 6,600 ISPs and they continue to grow their business. One example is a guy who started his from a farm for $60,000.00.
small ISPs continue to thrive

Yeah, if you want to use dial-up - these small ISPs can't offer broadband.

I imagine that using dial-up must be really fun in this day and age where web sites contain tons of graphics, video, Flash, etc. because the designers now assume that hardly anyone is using dial-up anymore.

More ISPs does not guarantee lower rates.

Experience seems to indicate that it might - in the dial-up era, where there were a large number of ISPs because they just used the pre-existing phone system and consequently didn't have to build their own infrastructure to get the signal to your house, Internet access usually cost $20 per month. Now it's $40 or more.

More ISPs does not guarantee neutrality.

It doesn't guarantee anything, but it increases the likelihood that you'll be able to find a service that you like over that of a monopoly.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

The credit card example was a poor one. http(s) is indeed intra. Sorry. Traffic shaping can be done using a bunch of tools. The whole reason the word "neutrality" is being used in this issue.

Some traffic is more obligatory. Traffic that requires jitter-free, low latency performance. i.e. gaming, VOIP, surfing, etc... Other traffic is considered lower priority. Crudely, traffic is compartmentalized by ports. Which ports carry which traffic is contingent upon the tags on the data itself. Spam can be filtered server-side. There are a wealth of technologies that can trace, tag, contain, and remove spam. It is not always perfect, but it exists and is being used with increasing regularity.

Great. Under the plan, you'd be free to chose an ISP that prioritizes traffic, or one that doesn't.

Next!

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

This is the kind of thing that makes me believe we're talking less and less about net neutrality and more and more about gomac's net neutrality. How do you know the end-user is only going to incur a "one-time fee"? I've not seen this anywhere.

There is no one net neutrality plan. Fiber to the home run by the government has been proposed and is what other governments do. It's a pretty easy google.

The end user only has to pay once to have the fiber run because it's a one time cost.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Answers like this remind me of earlier questions left unanswered. At what point does the government-owned infrastructure end? The tap? The power supply? The EQ? The node? The Hub? For you to say the cost to maintain this is negligible is... well, negligent. The costs to maintain an HFC plant (not accounting for fiber-to-the-home) are immense.

The government would own the wire. The switch and the power would all be owned by the ISP.

The gigapops are the only thing left that's undetermined. I'd assume the governments would leave those under the stewardship of the companies that currently manage those. Aside from that, if it's not a wire, it's not owned by the government.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

That's great except for the fact that this is a non-issue. The number of ISPs are growing, not waning. There are over 6,600 ISPs and they continue to grow their business. One example is a guy who started his from a farm for $60,000.00.
small ISPs continue to thrive

Dude. He started a dial up ISP! As has already been noted in this thread, starting a dial up ISP does not suffer from the same problems as broadband ISPs.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Here again the issue is framed as the "evil providers". You don't suppose there was an issue with the location that they didn't have leverage? If a provider wants to provide, they're going to need a place to do it. If they had the panache to negotiate exclusivity, more power to them. I don't see how this is supposed to instill more faith in the government entity at the table. More ISPs does not guarantee lower rates. More ISPs does not guarantee neutrality. I'll let your cited experts explain the real solutions to you a little later.

So you're saying open markets don't work?

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

At&T sublets fiber from Sprint. There's nothing to suggest similar arrangements cannot be made through providers. This just isn't a big enough problem to warrant handing it over to an unresponsive government. Your internet experience will suck. I'd rather not have to send you a letter via USPS to tell you "I told you so".

No provider is sharing their last mile connections. Find one. You won't be able to.

Well, there is one example. In Chelan County, WA, the last mile of the connections are shared by 15 different providers. I guess it does make a great example of how one private company will share the last mile connection with many other vendors.

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/31900

Oh, wait. It looks like that was government run fiber. Poor Chelan County. They must simply be suffering under their wider array of ISP choices, cheaper prices, and open competition. I sure hope Comcast gets in there and clears the whole problem up.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

This is BS and you know it. If someone wants you to use their service, they'd better be competitively priced. This is like charging someone for the NIU on the back of their home for phone service. Doesn't happen. Like I told you before, I'd much rather pay my ISP $45/month than pay them $15/month, then $30/month to the government the first year, $40/month the second year, $50/month the third year, $60/month the fourth year and so on. You act like we haven't seen this steadily increasing tax anomaly before. Hell, you act like you haven't seen taxes before. You truly honestly believe there's a proposal on the table for a simple one-time fee? Even though I'd be curious to see a link to substantiate this claim, there's nothing to say once they have the infrastructure, your choice of how it is charged to you is over.

Why would you pay anything to the government? They're not supplying you with bandwidth.

Do you worry about hiring electricians too in case they start charging you a monthly rate for power? This entire argument is baseless.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I brought up regulation as a way to argue against your supposition that the cost of a network build was prohibitive to playing the ISP game. Somehow when the government is building it, it is cheap, but when private enterprise wants to build it-they can't. This logic isn't working both ways gomac. There are plenty of ISPs that want to play, they just can't play by the oppressive legislation we have today both local and federal. Again, your proposal is not net neutrality, it's ACMEnet. Just call it what it is. It doesn't guarantee pricing, it doesn't guarantee neutrality.

Let me run the logic by you again.

Four ISP's building four networks = 4x the cost
One government building one network = 1x the cost

Even if you suppose that the government is poor at laying networks, there is not reason they simply couldn't do something like hiring Verizon to lay the networks for them.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Actually, the US was ranked 15th in adoption rate and 12th in overall experience according this OECD summary.

15th is much better than 16th place...

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Considering the fact that adoption is not the whole picture (The total number of overall users in US dwarfs your examples) this isn't that big a sell for your plan to me. In fact, I found it interesting that this is what the OECD summary recommended for our challenges;
• Congress should exempt broadband services from federal, state and local taxation and from requirements to pay into the Universal Service Fund.
• All states should enact video franchise laws.
• Congress should enact tax incentives for the deployment of new high-speed broadband networks.
• The FCC should move to a two-tiered definition of high-speed
Internet by developing a more robust 3 megabit per second (mbps) asymmetrical “broadband” standard. The FCC should collect county-level subscriber data for both speed tiers.
• If Congress fails to mandate changes to FCC local broadband data collection, states should work through non-governmental entities to collect and report local data.
• The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) should help facilitate the development of a bottom-up database of local broadband speeds and prices.

None of these address the extremely high cost of building networks. Giving tax credits doesn't help when very few can afford to build the networks to begin with, and none of these proposals fix the plurality problem of internet networks.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

6 proposals here and ironically none of these experts came up with your plan. They did give some pretty good ideas of how the government could help the situation and how they're hurting the situation.

I guess Chelan county must have made the idea up by themselves then....

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Think again. increasing censorship in Japan This doesn't account for some of the strange laws they have governing the internet in Japan already.

What would stop the same thing from happening in the US under the current system? This doesn't prove anything about government managed fiber, only that Japan is considering enacting laws to censor the internet, which John McCain is also proposing here under the current system.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

If you want to skate, you'll have to use their pipes.

Huh? This is nonsense. Please explain how the government will censor the internet if they don't control the routing. Your statement assumes that the government will control the routing, when it's already been established that they won't.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Then you should stop calling your plan net neutrality. It is ACMEnet.

It's the establishing of a neutral internet. I think it is perfectly reasonable to call it net neutrality.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Right and again; there's no guarantee of lower costs to the end user and no guarantee of net neutrality.

There is implicitly a guarantee of lower costs in the building of a shared network.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You keep saying this as though there is no inline equipment involved here.

Because there isn't.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

You make it sound like there's a gigantic clump of glass made from magic pixie dust connecting you to the cloud.

The would be the gigapops.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Please answer where the government's network infrastructure ends. Give me a point to point breakdown of "your" plan.

Homes->Government owned nodes->Gigapops

The gigapops would be run similar to the way they are today. By private companies under the watch of the government. There would be nothing stopping a new private party from establishing their own gigapops and running them to the government owned nodes, where they could sell their services to the local ISP's.

If you're worried about government control of the gigapops... I hate to break it to you but they're already monitoring them today even though they're under private ownership. Private ownership hasn't done squat to keep the government out of the gigapops. There needs to be public oversight of the government in the gigapops either way.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I'm not seeing any official plan that gives ample information on this. So far I'm seeing; "it's a quagmire!!!" with no examples of why, no examples of how this plan solves anything, and no specific cost-benefit analysis at all. Your plan doesn't look like any plan I've seen. You gotta sell this gomac.

I have cited numerous examples, even in this reply. I'm not breaking them down again.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Right which is why "neutrality" is a red herring. A word used to mobilize the naive.

It's not a red herring. The wiring itself would be neutral, not being owned by any ISP.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Whatever "waste" exists in the business model of the ISP will manifest in their returns. Whatever "waste" exists in government will manifest directly from your wallet.

There is no reason why. The government won't be handling any bandwidth costs. And they can hire private companies to do the wiring. Please cite a specific example of where waste would manifest itself if you are going to continue with this argument.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Besson helped you by bringing up some good examples such as the state of our educational system ranked lower than our internet experience yet spending exponentially more. Now that's a real problem, not this red herring I'm reading about in this thread.

Having worked in education, I agree there are problems with the educational system. But that's off topic for this thread, and lets not have poor vmarks have to spin off another thread.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I don't care about the wasteful spending of a private industry. If I did, I'd recommend you lock up anyone involved in Air America. That's their own business. As a Republican, I stand behind this principle. Saving consumers money and protecting their online experience most definitely means keeping the government out of the infrastructure. They'll cost more.

Cite specific examples of how this could happen with a neutral network.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

They'll respond less.

Not specific enough.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

They'll ensure your experience on the internet is just fodder for the next election debate between two do-nothings.

They won't control the routing, so they won't control the experience.

There seems to be a fundamental disconnect here. You keep talking about the government controlling the bandwidth and the internet experience when they wouldn't.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Once you go this route, there is no going back. Period. You'd better make sure this a big enough problem and the solution has a fighting chance of working. I see neither here.

Other governments and local US governments are already having success with this idea. Canada is already beginning to deploy this sort of set up in cities.

The big problem is consumer waste, and the plurality of internet networks. These problems manifest themselves in your bills, so yes, they do exist.

I find it funny that Republicans are willing to go to bat for wasteful government spending that costs the public unnecessary funds, but when it's the private sector... the consumer footing the bill for multiple networks that do the exact same thing is completely ok.

(Not only that... Ebuddy wants to give tax breaks to companies for building redundant networks, further passing the buck to the consumer. Hilarious!)

[Chongo]

Qwest (and the the other telcos) is required to make their lines available to other DSL providers. Here is the list for the Qwest area alone.
http://www.qwest.com/residential/internet/isp_list.html
There are over 50 just in Arizona

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by goMac 

Great. Under the plan, you'd be free to chose an ISP that prioritizes traffic, or one that doesn't.

Next!

Why next? I can now. The prioritization enhances my online experience. I'm glad they do it. If it's a sucky experience for you because the government simply applies too many restrictive regulations, they need to continue de-regulating, not taking over the network infrastructure. Again, this is an A-bomb for an anthill.

There is no one net neutrality plan.

See, this is part of the problem and why "net neutrality" will never win out. No one can tell you exactly what net neutrality is. The solutions proposed are designed to address problems that simply don't exist, and uses verbiage that is entirely misleading. There is no guarantee of neutrality under any plan I've seen so far. Instead of the 'gomac's ideal net neutrality plan', let's go with the ebuddy net neutrality plan where we eliminate the oppressive regulations keeping other players out of the market, and watch ISPs continue to increase speeds, QoS, and lower rates as they have been for the past decade.

Fiber to the home run by the government has been proposed and is what other governments do. It's a pretty easy google.

Google end-user blogs on their experiences overseas with getting access to and using their ISPs through outages. It sucks.

The end user only has to pay once to have the fiber run because it's a one time cost.

I can't tell now if we're talking about gomac's ideal net neutrality plan or the ones that you claim are really easy to google. The following are a list of countries with higher broadband adoption than those in the US and the rates at which their broadband subscription fees are taxed per OECD Broadband statistics;

- Denmark 25%
- Netherlands 19%
- Iceland 24.5%
- Korea 10%
- Switzerland 7.6%
- Norway 25%
- Finland 22%
- Sweden 25%
- Canada 6-16% depending upon the province
- Belgium 21%
- UK 17.5%
- Luxembourg 15%
- France 19.6%
- Japan 5%

So... it seems your "one time" fee is one time per month at an approximate average of 17.6% in taxes on your subscription fees. This is not included in the excitable numbers espoused by proponents of net neutrality who tout "lower prices".

The government would own the wire. The switch and the power would all be owned by the ISP.

Keep reading...

The gigapops are the only thing left that's undetermined.

A gigapop is essentially a NAP on steroids (much higher data transfer rate). These comprise the core of the switching facilities among other things. You'd better determine this sooner rather than later. After all, these are those little 'inline' devices I asked you about to which you replied there'd be none.

I'd assume the governments would leave those under the stewardship of the companies that currently manage those. Aside from that, if it's not a wire, it's not owned by the government.

That'd sure be nice of 'em. I'm still not clear on how this relationship transpires under your plan and the articles I'm seeing haven't gone into any real technical detail.

Dude. He started a dial up ISP! As has already been noted in this thread, starting a dial up ISP does not suffer from the same problems as broadband ISPs.

Where do you think these others started? DSL has come a long way also and shouldn't "suffer" the same fate. There's also nothing to suggest with further deregulation that a major provider couldn't sublet infrastructure to smaller players.

So you're saying open markets don't work?

No. I'm saying if you want something done most inefficiently, extremely expensively, charge it back to you increasingly over time, and not respond to your demands of QoS you'd advocate your plan.

No provider is sharing their last mile connections. Find one. You won't be able to.

I believe LUS does, but I'm not certain. I'm sure they'd rather go this route than sharing their last mile with...

Well, there is one example. In Chelan County, WA, the last mile of the connections are shared by 15 different providers. I guess it does make a great example of how one private company will share the last mile connection with many other vendors.

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/31900

Oh, wait. It looks like that was government run fiber. Poor Chelan County. They must simply be suffering under their wider array of ISP choices, cheaper prices, and open competition. I sure hope Comcast gets in there and clears the whole problem up.

I'm actually glad this example exists and once they get the whole (measly) 40,000 online, I'd like to see how their experience pans out say... 5 years from now. After all, the build is not even completed yet. I concede however, a moderate degree of curiosity here.

Why would you pay anything to the government? They're not supplying you with bandwidth.

Oh my goodness.

Do you worry about hiring electricians too in case they start charging you a monthly rate for power? This entire argument is baseless.

Even you realize how absurd it is to compare private industry with the government.

Let me run the logic by you again.

Four ISP's building four networks = 4x the cost
One government building one network = 1x the cost

Got it. How 'bout this?
One ISP = one bill. Shop rates.
One ISP + one government = two bills and you can't shop for better taxes.

Even if you suppose that the government is poor at laying networks, there is not reason they simply couldn't do something like hiring Verizon to lay the networks for them.

Seeing as how Verizon already has this would be a great place to start I guess.

15th is much better than 16th place...

Just checking inaccuracies as they pop up.

None of these address the extremely high cost of building networks.

I thought it was cheap. I thought the government could do this no problem and only charge you a one-time fee. Your argument seems to go back and forth. I acknowledge how expensive it is to build and manage a complex network and this is why I don't want this to become political fodder for do-nothings in government. That said, there are a great many who would like to enter the game. They have the capital to fund the venture, but they don't have the support of their government. ISPs don't want your QoS contingent upon someone else's ability to maintain the network.

Giving tax credits doesn't help when very few can afford to build the networks to begin with, and none of these proposals fix the plurality problem of internet networks.

I just pasted what your cited experts claimed gomac. Take it up with them. I'm happy.

I guess Chelan county must have made the idea up by themselves then....

I applaud them. I look forward to seeing how this model works for them, the ISPs, and the people of Chelan county.

What would stop the same thing from happening in the US under the current system? This doesn't prove anything about government managed fiber, only that Japan is considering enacting laws to censor the internet, which John McCain is also proposing here under the current system.

Leverage gomac. I can't possibly make my point any simpler than this. Leverage. If you want to skate, you'll have to use someone's half-pipe. If they have rules against leaving your board, you won't be able to leave your board. We're still in a moonlighting period of sorts with communications today. Let's just say I'm as anxious about government abuse as you are corporate. Fair enough?

Huh? This is nonsense. Please explain how the government will censor the internet if they don't control the routing. Your statement assumes that the government will control the routing, when it's already been established that they won't.

See above. They're doing it in the examples you gave me gomac.

It's the establishing of a neutral internet. I think it is perfectly reasonable to call it net neutrality.

There's nothing neutral about it.

There is implicitly a guarantee of lower costs in the building of a shared network.

In principle and on paper, but not in practice. I know this is hard to accept, but it is so.

Homes->Government owned nodes->Gigapops

The gigapops would be run similar to the way they are today. By private companies under the watch of the government. There would be nothing stopping a new private party from establishing their own gigapops and running them to the government owned nodes, where they could sell their services to the local ISP's.

Okay. Let me know when you've determined the relationship between the two in your plan.

If you're worried about government control of the gigapops... I hate to break it to you but they're already monitoring them today even though they're under private ownership. Private ownership hasn't done squat to keep the government out of the gigapops. There needs to be public oversight of the government in the gigapops either way.

How much will the oversight committee cost us? Who will oversee them? I can see the news article now; Sen. Richards (brother-in-law of gomac from gomacom) turns cheek on privacy abuse, accepts massive kickback.

There is no reason why. The government won't be handling any bandwidth costs. And they can hire private companies to do the wiring. Please cite a specific example of where waste would manifest itself if you are going to continue with this argument.

I already have. Roads, Education, Social Security, etc... In your example, this could be that oversight committee you're advocating. Is this like the 9-11 commission?

Having worked in education, I agree there are problems with the educational system. But that's off topic for this thread, and lets not have poor vmarks have to spin off another thread.

I'll be happy to explain to vmarks that I was queried for specific examples of government waste.

There seems to be a fundamental disconnect here. You keep talking about the government controlling the bandwidth and the internet experience when they wouldn't.

With all due respect, we seem to be talking past one another. I see the problem as government-induced. I'm not advocating a situation where the government is called on to solve a problem they induced. They don't need to route traffic to censor it. All they have to do is own the field you want to play on. If you want to play on that field, you will play by their rules. There's nothing to route if you can't carry the packets.

I find it funny that Republicans are willing to go to bat for wasteful government spending that costs the public unnecessary funds, but when it's the private sector... the consumer footing the bill for multiple networks that do the exact same thing is completely ok.

This doesn't make sense to me. Furthermore, I've made no such arguments. Have I cited your political affiliation? Are you not able to separate issues from the party line? C'mon. I'm tired of telling people these lines of reasoning are below them. They only prove me wrong.

(Not only that... Ebuddy wants to give tax breaks to companies for building redundant networks, further passing the buck to the consumer. Hilarious!)

You might want to have another read. I'm merely parroting the ideas from the experts you linked to. IMO, that's much more amusing.

[besson3c]

ebuddy: what do you think about regulated monopolies? Should we have three different telephone poles carrying three different telephone wires down the street (for those that have land lines)? If you are okay with regulated monopolies, what differences do you see between regulation out the wazoo/government oversight and the government running the same service?

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Qwest VDSL is FTTN ( a Lucent DSLAM)

Originally Posted by goMac 

Still far slower than either fiber or DOCSIS 3.0. I'd assume it also has serious range limits, unlike the first two technologies.

Plus, it's still bound by exclusivity agreements. Qwest DSL is actually keeping out FIOS in downtown Portland.

20Mb is slow? Cox's max constant speed in my area is 15mb("power boosted" to 20 for a short time", plus I'm not sharing an access node with my neighborhood.

[Snow-i]

the idea of the government charging a one time fee for something is absolutely ridiculous.

I brought this idea up with a family member recently. He reminded me of the last "One time fee" the government decided they would impose on us. It was for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge half a century ago. They assured us "once the bridge is paid for the toll will go away." Well the bridge was paid for and the toll didn't go away. "We have to maintain the bridge." "We need it for other road systems." Sure enough...its a half century later and they still bill us for it every single (work) day

A one time fee is laughable. Once they start billing you for it there is no stopping them. They'll bill you for repair of the line, they'll bill you for maintaining the line...they'll bill you for expanding and upgrading the line. And when the gov't does it, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. At least I can threaten to comcast that verizon has fios in my area...they dropped my bill down to 30 bucks a month for a 6mbit line. As infuriating as comcast and verizon can be....the government would be 1000x more so I assure you. They have no reason to do anything timely, or costly. There's no competition for them. They are the one and only and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. If they laid the line you can bet your entire internet that they'll maintain some sort of control or tax over the line.

[Chongo]

it seems every "temporary" tax becomes permanent.

[besson3c]

Snow: are you okay with the government building roads?

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

ebuddy: what do you think about regulated monopolies? Should we have three different telephone poles carrying three different telephone wires down the street (for those that have land lines)?

They had their time. They've been in constant revision by the government since their inception. Look to telecommunications legislation as exhibit A. They were also in response to some measurable corporate abuse as I understand it. That is nowhere near the case in the net neutrality debate today nor do the proposals appear very consistent among proponents.

Telephone poles are rated for over 5,000 lbs. Multiple carriers follow power to the home off one pole. If you support choice I'd think you'd want it no other way.

If you are okay with regulated monopolies, what differences do you see between regulation out the wazoo/government oversight and the government running the same service?

Unless this is the besson3c net neutrality plan, I'm not aware of the government running the service. You may invoke some em-bolded text and exclamation points from gomac on that one.

To your question; many of the regulations would continue coming out the wazoo, including oversight, and the government would be running the service. Both they and the ISP would be charging you healthily for it.

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Snow: are you okay with the government building roads?

Sure! I'm not okay for them charging tolls AND property AND income AND sales AND 15 other forms of tax for it though. But what am i gonna do? They pretty much have a monopoly on that so I hafta pay whatever they say whenever they say. Its not like i can choose another cheaper route to go....

Now if only there was another company that would build another bridge that would only charge me a dollar to cross.....hmm....They'd still make ass loads of money and i'd be happier. Hell i'd invest in them!

[BreadRecipe]

This thread certainly is pretty heated. I just read it all in one go tonight. (killing time while loading all of my music into iTunes... new iMac) Anyway, I would just like to say that I agree with goMac about having the government build and maintain ONLY the fiber itself. Although, ebuddy's concerns are very valid about how a "one-time cost" could turn into a never-ending tax in addition to the fee. It would, most likely, be a tax for the feds on the ISPs, who would then turn it around onto the consumers. I think it's a great idea, in theory, to have a government built infrastructure with privately owned shared operators. All of the arguments I've heard so far seem to be nitpicking about the details of said theoretical system. As far as the original topic goes, in this system the government couldn't "spy," but they would be able to impose restrictions like what is "decent" or "high priority." Which is what this topic is about. Neutral Net. I feel arguing in circles about whether or not the government will charge for construction and maintenance and how much that would be is leading this thread in circles. Spirited discussion to say the least heh.

And as a curious aside, I'm assuming a telephone pole is, indeed, rated for 5000lbs. (I'm too tired to check, and I believe you anyway) I once hit one and it broke just under where the cables are mounted to the pole, and not where the car hit. It only dented my fender, and the fireman said the pole was clearly defective. Anyway, my insurance covered it and it was $5000 with labor. Perhaps the government isn't so crazy about how they determine costs. They may just pick a nice, round, exorbitant price and stick you with it. Heh.

Happy disputing. I look forward to more borderline hostility!

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by BreadRecipe 

This thread certainly is pretty heated. I just read it all in one go tonight. (killing time while loading all of my music into iTunes... new iMac)

Congratulations on your new iMac and in using it to join MacNN. This place is a wealth of information I've found priceless as a Mac user.

Anyway, I would just like to say that I agree with goMac about having the government build and maintain ONLY the fiber itself. Although, ebuddy's concerns are very valid about how a "one-time cost" could turn into a never-ending tax in addition to the fee. It would, most likely, be a tax for the feds on the ISPs, who would then turn it around onto the consumers. I think it's a great idea, in theory, to have a government built infrastructure with privately owned shared operators. All of the arguments I've heard so far seem to be nitpicking about the details of said theoretical system. As far as the original topic goes, in this system the government couldn't "spy," but they would be able to impose restrictions like what is "decent" or "high priority." Which is what this topic is about. Neutral Net. I feel arguing in circles about whether or not the government will charge for construction and maintenance and how much that would be is leading this thread in circles. Spirited discussion to say the least heh.

It may have appeared to go in circles, but the points raised in this thread are those that are central to the issue. This is one of those topics that doesn't get a lot of attention because the subject matter can be kind of dry and the concept is somewhat murky. Several proponents of net neutrality have expressed a concern with "traffic shaping". That is, prioritizing some types of packets over others as you've read in this thread. There have even been failed attempts by ISPs of filtering the actual content of your internet experience (AOL, shocker I know) which has spawned this concern and this debate. I say "failed attempts" because the ISP was quickly rebuked for the practice, ended said practice and it was a combination of government oversight and market displeasure that ended it. Like I said, I somewhat appreciate the threat of net neutrality legislation existing because I believe it does help keep a rogue ISP in check. I also concede some curiosity on the Chelan county proposal, particularly when the build is complete and we've had a couple of years under our belt to verify the end-user experience. There appears to be a fundamental divide between trust in government and trust in the market place which is what actually birthed this particular conversation on McCain. Some believe there is no marketplace due to lack of competitors. I don't necessarily agree with this as living in a somewhat small city and having multiple choices myself.

Following through with some of the proposals (they vary) is what concerns me.

And as a curious aside, I'm assuming a telephone pole is, indeed, rated for 5000lbs. (I'm too tired to check, and I believe you anyway) I once hit one and it broke just under where the cables are mounted to the pole, and not where the car hit. It only dented my fender, and the fireman said the pole was clearly defective. Anyway, my insurance covered it and it was $5000 with labor. Perhaps the government isn't so crazy about how they determine costs. They may just pick a nice, round, exorbitant price and stick you with it. Heh.

There are many defective poles in my town that have suffered the same fate as well, but then they are maintained by a public utility.

Happy disputing. I look forward to more borderline hostility!

I'm sure we'll be able to keep it civil. gomac is good peepz. I just think he's wrong.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

t may have appeared to go in circles, but the points raised in this thread are those that are central to the issue. This is one of those topics that doesn't get a lot of attention because the subject matter can be kind of dry and the concept is somewhat murky. Several proponents of net neutrality have expressed a concern with "traffic shaping". That is, prioritizing some types of packets over others as you've read in this thread. There have even been failed attempts by ISPs of filtering the actual content of your internet experience (AOL, shocker I know) which has spawned this concern and this debate. I say "failed attempts" because the ISP was quickly rebuked for the practice, ended said practice and it was a combination of government oversight and market displeasure that ended it. Like I said, I somewhat appreciate the threat of net neutrality legislation existing because I believe it does help keep a rogue ISP in check. I also concede some curiosity on the Chelan county proposal, particularly when the build is complete and we've had a couple of years under our belt to verify the end-user experience. There appears to be a fundamental divide between trust in government and trust in the market place which is what actually birthed this particular conversation on McCain. Some believe there is no marketplace due to lack of competitors. I don't necessarily agree with this as living in a somewhat small city and having multiple choices myself.

Comcast, for example, only stopped shaping stuff like BitTorrent, iChat video chats, and other things, when the FCC told them to knock it off. There was plenty of consumer displeasure, and it didn't make a different because Comcast has a monopoly in the local cable internet market, and in a lot of cases where there was no DSL service nearby, the internet market completely.

Comcast didn't have to change based on consumer feedback because there was no other choice for the consumer. The right frequently says that the magical hand of the "free market" would appear to solve this issue, but it did not because the cost of starting up an ISP is simply too high.

If there was government run fiber, a local community could start their own ISP for cheap, and Comcast would have been lost a majority of their customers in short order.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

I'm sure we'll be able to keep it civil. gomac is good peepz. I just think he's wrong.

I am sure you are good peoples too.