Great post, thanks for the clarity :) Here in the UK, we have choice about both the telephone voice provider, and the ISP used for DSL, even though the phone lines, exchanges & other infrastructure was built by British Telecom. They were a state-owned monopoly when they built most of it, who were then privatised. Then their monopoly control was reduced, by forcing them to offer 'local loop unbundling', which meant otehr companies could come into their phone excahnges and take over the wires of customers who wanted to switch. Plus even if people stay with BT for their phone line rental and/or voice calls, they can choose different DSL ISPs to go with. CableTV-based broadband is firmly in control of whoever put the wires in, but as there is pretty much only 1 cable company in the UK now, theres no choice there anyway.
The same applies to Electricity and Gas here too, even though the infrastructure to your house doesnt change, we can choose to be billed by different companies. A side effect of this is an annoying level of door-to-door salesmen trying to get you to switch providers every 5 minutes. All of this choice has brought some advantages to consumers, although much of it could be psychological, at least people do not feel completely powerless if they get bad service or price, they can switch and feel a little better even if the new company screws them eventually as well. If a single monopoly or government entity controlled it all and their was no choice, the overall service & price & efficiency might not be as bad as free marketeers might have you believe, but there would be no pressure valve that allowed peoples frustrations to be eased a little. Maybe the same applies in terms of democracy ;) Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Richard H. Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Pat, > > I believe you're absolutely correct that the networks are going to need to > be "smart" and take into account different data types and route/shape > accordingly for the networks to be efficient. Net neutrality as originally > conceived in the Markey amendment allowed for that. > > Here's the deal/misunderstanding. > > According the the original Markey Bill (it's not clear yet what the new one > specifies) networks CAN discriminate based on data type - so ISPs can > totally manage traffic by taking into account the nature of the data type - > they could NOT discriminate based on data origination (they could not, for > example, give more bandwidth within the network to CBS vs me). > > About network neutrality and competition. First, of course, if everyone has > a fair playing field within the network (like a phone call from me to you, > gets the same priority as a phone call from one AT&T executive to another), > then competition will be increased, sine it allows innovators and start ups > with lots of ideas and little money to compete and, in fact, we've seen this > a lot already afforded by the web. Second, competition was SEVERELY > curtailed when some court somewhere ruled that cable, and then dsl companies > do not have to abide by common carriage laws when it comes to the internet. > So, with phone lines, the companies who built the lines have to share the > lines with other phone companies (they get a lot of tax breaks for building > them and they are the default carrier, so it's still a good deal for them). > Makes sense, of course, since we don't want every phone company building > lines through public right aways and such. However, the internet with cable > and dsl is not treated that way. This is why you only have one choice of ISP > if you use one company's dsl lines, and same with cable. Remember with dial > up when you could use different ISPs? Very very non-competitive, and surely > one reason why there is so little build out of high speed lines in the US > compared to other first-world countries - no motivation to do so, when you > have a service monopoly on the lines already built. > > ... just explaining what may be some misunderstanding about what "network > neutrality" is, and why it came into being ... Richard > > On Feb 13, 2008 11:29 AM, Patrick Delongchamp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > Internet traffic has double in the last two years and bandwidth usage > > has increased by 40% each year. > > > > Why allow companies to charge for usage, manage traffic, and invest in > > new technology when you can kill competition and force the entire > > internet to slow down because of 5% of users? The creator of > > BitTorrent is even opposed to net neutrality. > > > > This article does a good job of highlighting the problems ISPs are > > facing as bandwidth use increases. No one here seems to be able to > > offer a solution to these issues. > > > > > > On Feb 13, 2008 11:49 AM, Tim Street <[EMAIL > > PROTECTED]<tim%40frenchmaidtv.com>> > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Sorry about that. > > > > > > Try this one: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120286741569864053.html > > > > > > > > > Tim Street > > > Creator/Executive Producer > > > French Maid TV > > > Subscribe for FREE @ > > > http://frenchmaidtv.com/itunes > > > MyBlog > > > http://1timstreet.com > > > > > > On Feb 13, 2008, at 8:43 AM, David Meade wrote: > > > > > > > that url doesnt work for me. > > > > > > > > On Feb 13, 2008 11:39 AM, Tim Street <[EMAIL > > > > PROTECTED]<tim%40frenchmaidtv.com>> > > wrote: > > > > > Officials Step Up Net-Neutrality Efforts > > > > > > > > > > Here's an update from the Wall Street Journal > > > > > > > > > > http://tinyurl.com/3dzjbr > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Tim Street > > > > > Creator/Executive Producer > > > > > French Maid TV > > > > > Subscribe for FREE @ > > > > > http://frenchmaidtv.com/itunes > > > > > MyBlog > > > > > http://1timstreet.com > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > http://www.DavidMeade.com > > > > > > > > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > Richard > http://richardhhall.org > Shows > http://richardshow.org > http://inspiredhealing.tv > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
