• aaytch on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  I love it when people make comparisons to historical events such as "20 years from now the Internet will suffer the same fate as Network television". Unfortunately if your conclusion is that television now looks like an overpriced inefficient monopoly, you aren't observing the real world. So-called "network" television has been superceded by cable television. I now have literally hundreds of channels I can watch while the "networks" have not expanded and are still offering essentially the same few tired programs as 20 years ago. Already, cable tv is coming under tremendous pressure from IP based technologies (aka the Internet). Surely you have observed the growth of bloggers, iTunes, and now YouTube. It's only the beginning.

  NONE of this profusion of choice has come about from regulation. It has ALL come because of the elimination of regulation. Regulation will reduce our choice. Nothing in history teaches a different lesson.

• nick on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  Lets face it net neutrality is going bye bye. 20 years from now the Internet will suffer the same fate as Network television. Full ownership of all websites by only a few interests - extreme price barrier to broadcast, PG-13 cencorship... You dont' think Ed Whitacre quietly handed all those phone records over to Homeland Security without being sure he would get something in return?!?! Him buying back AT&T + Bell South is just the beginning. It's like a competition with people like him to see who can sodomize the citizenry and national resources the most profanely.

• Strike-2 on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  aaytch,

  The US market is nowhere near as open as it could or even should be.
  The problem lies in the fact, that a lot of people are spread out over large portions of land, which makes for a lot of 'last miles' per district.
  The only way to make money off setting up all those 'termination points' is if you're the only company in the village and you -and you alone- can set the price.
  It has worked that way in the US for a long time and is only slowly starting to change.

  If you've ever visited the 'south end' of the US, you'd be amazed at how much you have to choose from:
  A: ADSL from BellSouth (where available)
  B: Cable from Mediacom (where available)
  C: Dial-up (usually available, but dependant on phone line quality).

  For ADSL to work, you need a phone line so clean, that your modem connects at 56K each time without fail.
  A lot of cities and villages in the US don't share that privilege.

  As the price of copper keep rising and hardware becomes ever cheaper, comanies are starting to realize, that it's actually cheaper -in the long run- to lay down fiber.
  Especially out to places where you'll need to reach a lot of 'last miles'.

  
  In the Netherlands, a aDSL revolution has come to another solution:
  The phone lines can be 'bought' from the national phone system for $10 a month.
  A new ISP can then route that phone line to its own equipment and provide you with Internet Access at a fair price.

  These days, we don't even need to have a phone subscription anymore.

  Sweden has gone the Fiber way and it seems to work rather well for them.
  Amsterdam puts a fiber connection in all new homes by default.
  (brand-new 'small' fiber rigs are easy to set up and maintain)

  This may sound advanced, but Europe is still quite a few years behind on Japan, where the modern world's innovators live.
  (They just released UDHTV, 4x the resolution of 'regular' HDTV (HDTV is actually 40 years old)) )

• tropicaljantie | jan geirnaert on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  Have the Racketeering and Patenting lawsuits against Skype been settled ? It would be interesting to know what is the status of this.

• aaytch on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  As to your statement that "Everyone said cable companies would knock down the phone companies"....

  Let's firstly stipulate that phone companies were monopolistic precisely because they were in fact regulated as "phone utilities". Let's secondly stipulate that the monopoly ended because of competition and not because of some benevolent regulator. Let's thirdly stipulate that the phone company (AT&T) was knocked down long before the cable companies came along and that they lost the battle because they were overcharging monopolistically for long-distance.... not "the last mile".

  Again, pricing and levels of service were fully regulated, which is precisely why we never saw any innovation in the telephone business until deregulation started to take hold. It's just amazing to me how short everyone's memory is.

• aaytch on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  I'm always amused when you folks say rhetorically "Will you accept filtered access the next time your ISP offers you an upgrade? " I have to ask: where's the historical evidence for this? It seems to me just hypothetical fear-mongering. And when you talk about monopolies and duopolies in "the last mile", I can't help wondering why you're missing all the other pipes. The hardwires now coming into my home include a cable company, a phone company, and an electric company (whose pipe could in theory carry data). In addition, I could subscribe to satellite services. In the near future I expect to have access to multiple cellular data services. To that we'll add, next year probably, a regional WIFI network, and the year after that a WIMAX network (or maybe several competing WIMAX networks), and that doesn't count certain alternative wireless schemes in unregulated spectrum such as XG Technology that may or may not achieve commercial success . Meanwhile, all the competitors continue to improve their services. With almost every passing day, they offer more bandwidth, accessibility, and reliability. Never once have they offered an "upgrade" where a particular kind of data packet would be stopped or slowed down. So I ask you, what's the point of regulation? Can any politician keep up with this march of technology, or they capable of "serving the public" only as effectively as their ridiculous efforts to deregulate the phone companies... of which you seem so proud.

• julian.bond on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  Everyone tells me this is impossible in the USA. But here goes again, anyway.

  First ask yourself the question. How will the *next* last mile inrastructure get built? In the last 150 years we've rolled out electricity, water, sewage, telephones, cable. So how do we get Fibre, wireless, internet over power lines, rolled out?

  Second, ask yourself what should be done about regulating the natural monopoly of infrastructure providers? It's not a free market and can't be because there are a limited number of pipes laid to each home. So it has to be regulated. Which means what we have now with the Telcos/Cablecos is a government mandated and controlled duopoly. We can leave this in place and control what they do, which is the net neutrality approach. Or we can force them to open up and sell wholesale bandwidth and access to switching rooms (Local Loop Unbundling: LLU). This creates a free market layer on top of the basic service duopoly. It creates a free market of 3rd party ISPs that compete with each other to provide the best internet access at the best price. Which then completely removes the Net Neutrality debate because abuse of Net Neutrality could not survive.

  My American friends tell me that a) it's socialist and b) It couldn't happen because the Duopoly has too much power and is too good at lobbying. How ironic that layering a free market on top of a government mandated duopoly is seen as against the American way!

  This approach is working in other western markets; notably the UK. It would do well for the Net Neutrality debaters to at least investigate how the rest of the world copes with the same basic problem.

• Phil Wolff on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  Aaytch, I may hang out in Berkeley and go to meetings with Trotsky on the wall, but those folks think I'm a Republican conservate. I really like you, Aaytch, so it's harsh knowing you're just a reactionary puppet of the corporate vested interests, and have so little faith in the power of democratic governments, of, by and for their people, to do good in the world.

  As for your perception that the incumbents will inevitably be toppled, that's blind and unwarranted faith on your part. Everyone said cable companies would knock down the phone companies, or that lots of local competitors would enter the market to drive rates down, or that everyone would switch to mobiles, and that the vonages kick ass. Well, the phone companies are lining up to distribute video, they are buying mobile carriers and setting up mvnos, they are partnering with internet companies like yahoo and setting up their own voip services. so the big telcos have proven resistant to nearly every attempt to dethrone, and nearly every attempt to curb their power.

  So, yeah, the trends are continuing unabated, including those where power keeps consolidating. And I ask again, if not for regulatory power and authority, what will you do right now to defend the Internet from these predators? Will you accept filtered access the next time your ISP offers you an upgrade? Or do you have such an abundance of alternatives at work and home that you are already free of AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and their cousins?

• aaytch on Organized Crime vs. Net Neutrality

  Let's face it, Phil..... you're a socialist. By the time you figure out how to regulate the feared "concentrated powers", they will have been overturned by any one of a dozen new technologies and a hundred real and potential implementers..... Oh, and while you and your politicians who presume to serve my interests are figuring it all out, the trends already in place will continue unabated.... lower cost, higher speed, and extension into every nook and cranny of our lives.

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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