Posted on 05/15/2014 6:26:13 AM PDT by dayglored
The Federal Communications Commission thinks the Internet in the United States can be run at two speeds. Backtracking from an earlier proposal, the FCC now believes it will be just fine to let Internet service providers (ISPs) control what you access online, with a few exceptions that the FCC would police.
While this new proposal might not kill the Internet, as it exists now, it would certainly cripple it – at least for American consumers and businesses.
Multiple leaks about FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to the commission, which will be presented on Thursday, indicate that the agency would not allow ISPs to give preferential treatment – faster Internet access – to their own subsidiaries. But it would allow other companies to pay for faster, more reliable access. (No matter that such a similar restriction has already failed in the case of Comcast giving preferential treatment to its own Golf Channel.)
Unfortunately, there is no halfway approach to how data should flow over the Internet. It's a binary proposition: Either access to the Internet is equal, no matter the type or size of the business, or it is not. Letting Amazon have better access because it can pay and because it is not owned by AT&T will not make the situation more equal.
If the Internet does not maintain net neutrality, wherein all digital data is treated the same, countless businesses – tech companies in Silicon Valley, auto companies in Detroit, health care providers in Houston, startups in New York – will suffer. And, of course, you and I will pay for diminishing service and be denied the option of choosing what we want to read, view and listen to at faster speeds.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Well, we'll see how FReepers put up with that kind of delay in page rendering.
My recollection is that whenever FR has experienced more than a second of delay, people start griping, and when it's more than a few seconds, they start posting threads about "Is Everyone Else Getting Slow Response from FreeRepublic?".
I've been on the internet since the late 1980's, when a 2400-baud modem was standard access and email was done with UUCP bang-paths. And today, I'm in a rural area of upstate NY, where the best access I can get is 3Mbps down, 0.3Mbps up, from one provider, take it or leave it. And I'm glad to have that.
I'm not happy about the prospect that I'll be further limited because some liberal media group is going to pay to take even that away from me.
:-)
But I still contend they are unfounded.
The backbone portion of your ISP (Ma Bell in your case) is not where the congestion exists.
It exists in the Tier1 Backbone providers, the peering relationships with each other AND the local loop in some cases.
There is no downside to you local phone company adding additional resources (paid by the content provider) for enhanced services.
And your local loop will be constant...whatever you choose is what will be on it.
As a Marine Airwinger (1988-1994), I second that notion... ;-)
In other words, the consequences of non-neutrality are interesting, to say the least. FR and other sites that are very high value, low bandwidth, shouldn't worry, I think.
Good point... but I don&t think the idiots in admin even understand (or know of) TOR.. I think, last time I checked, 60+% of networking was on TOR (undernet)..
I’m curious why this can’t be addressed by the free market.
ISPs who give equal treatment to all sites can advertise it, and those consumers who want this can switch to them. Customers who don’t care or who like the idea of a fast lane for some sites can use ISPs with those policies.
To make this work, there might need to be a law that ISPs post their policies in this regard.
It’s also interesting that the present system is the result of the government prohibiting content providers and ISPs from contracting freely with each other.
IOW, the proposed change would reduce government interference, not increase it.
Odd that so many conservatives want to continue this government regulation of a very important industry.
Because the ISP market is an oligopoly (and, in many/most areas, a local monopoly), not a free market.
I’m not sure that’s as true as it used to be.
I have at least a dozen options where I am, but that certainly may not be true everywhere.
If the free market could work, possibly those ISPs that accepted payments from content providers for preferential treatment could provide their services at a lower price, relative to ISPs that obtained revenue only from subscribers.
Consumers could decide which model they preferred.
LOL.
I have the choice of:
I would LOVE to have TWO practical options. "A dozen"??? In my dreams.... :)
To some extent the same issue as NFLX who also pay for a lot of bandwidth at their facilities, but ride for free on the wide pipes into peoples homes.
Actually, I have thought about it quite a bit. I'm a professional nerd. The internet is the primary way I get to work these days. I've also worked the telco side of things. The fact is, everyone pays their own freight. I don't magically get a GB/sec worth of bandwidth unless I pay for it, just like google, netflix, and amazon do. No one is forcing these poor ISPs to be in the business of making money off the internet. They just see an opportunity to bill twice for the same traffic, and have managed to convince a lot of people that this is somehow a good idea. I don't buy it. They are trying to get themselves in the position where telco's were when cellular was first taking off. They got to charge for both the caller AND the calle if the the callee was a cell phone.
Search engine for broadband by zip code. I’ve got nine listed.
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/
Doesn’t show Clearwire, which is what I’m presently using. The modem comes with a very effective wifi built in, so it’s kind of a twofer.
YMMV. Obviously.
I thought I read somewhere she was already at Apple.
Lists my local phone company, who I use, and Verizon, who doesn't provide service to my address, despite the fact that I'm on a state highway. *sigh*
Lucky you. :)
If Verizon does come in, they’re very, very fast.
I would like to see a requirement that ISPs post their policies (e.g. on their website) in a form that a normal lay person can read and interpret.
For example, when I first set up DSL here, the offering was "up to 3Mbps" which at the time was substantially slower than the (unavailable here) TW cable I had in my prior residence, but I figured, it's what I can get, so okay... I figured the upload speed was going to be something less, maybe 1Mbps.
After a short while I realized the upload speed was about 90% slower (0.3Mbps, that's 30KB/sec, or for instance, a 10MB email attachment required over 5 minutes to send). Disappointed, but again, it's the best I could get. I live with it.
So a year ago they tell me "You can get a faster connection, higher bandwidth!" (4Mbps/0.5Mbps) if I pay a couple more dollars a month and install a new DSL modem. Great! So I pony up the extra bucks, and install the new modem, and guess what? Same old speeds. After a month of no improvement, I open my browser to the modem control page and call. "What's going on? Same old speed!"
Well guess what? Turns out they don't guarantee that it'll be any faster. They just substituted a modem that can handle the higher speeds "if they are able to get them working on our lines". Well, after a year, no change, same old speed. And in their terms, they don't guarantee a MINIMUM speed -- they describe the MAXIMUM that they cap it at. Geez.
Sure would have been nice if they'd told me they weren't actually rolling out the higher speeds, they just wanted me to be ready for whenever they get around to it. In the meantime, they've got more of my money, and it still takes me 5 minutes to send a damn attachment.
I guess it beats dialup, right?
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