Sorry to move this again. It seems to have become a debate. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
samclem GQ moderator
No, I get that. And I’ve argued it elsewhere. My point is a theoretical one, based on the nature of packet switched networks and routing algorithms. I find it interesting because I’m a computer scientist (and am kinda geeky that way).
Let’s say net neutrality goes away. Let’s also say that there is an infinite number of nodes over which to route packets, each varying in cost, time, distance, etc. In just the same way that today’s routing algorithms discover the shortest path (according to round trip time (RTT) or the number of hops), cost could be incorporated as a factor, particularly for packets that aren’t time critical (e.g., google, as opposed to telephony).
Of course, practically speaking, both time and resources are limited. Furthermore, I can’t imagine that carriers wouldn’t end up colluding somehow, so long as the cost can be transferred to either Google, the end user, or both.
Certainly, they shouldn’t be forced to do any such thing. Nobody should put a gun to their head and compel them to sign a contract that says “SteveMB pays us $x/month; we serve the bits SteveMB requests”.
However, they already did, and are thus obligated to uphold their end.
On the contrary – Google (which is not in any way “undercutting” an ISP’s revenue stream, and is if anything enhancing it by increasing the value of Net access) is the most commonly cited example when a telecom executive declares “They have money. I like money. Give me some of their money.”
Stuck with it? I don’t think so. Google is ubiquitous enough that if it suddenly became unavailable, people would choose an ISP that did offer it, and at a decent speed. I’m no fan of net non-neutrality, but I think the market will flatten any bumps it causes. If all the big boys (Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, iTunes, etc.) suddenly pulled their content from any ISP that threatened to tack on a surcharge, the telcos would fold like a cheap lawn chair. What are they going to do with all that bandwidth and no content? If anything, the market model for this is premium cable television, where content providers charge carriers for the privilege of transmitting their content. Which would really suck, because then that would be passed on to us.
What if SBC decides to make a message board system and charge for it? Are they all of a sudden justified in charging the SDMB extra because it now undercuts a revenue stream? That would give telcos the right to enter any internet related business and then extort their competitors.
If you claim that long distance is a special case because they’ve been in that business for a long time, others have already addressed why propping up an old model at the expense of newer cheaper ones is a bad idea. If regulations are preventing telcos from offering competing VoIP services instead of their traditional landlines, the solution is to change the regulations, not to let the telcos charge competing services extra and thus remove all incentives to move to a better system.
One thing that seems to have been lost in this discussion is that there is a legitimate need for different quality of service classes. It is a lot more important that interactive voice communication is responsive than, say, web pages or downloaded video. Sure, we’d like to get blazing fast speeds all the time, but most of us would much rather wait an extra few seconds (or minutes for video) than have our phone calls keep timing out. But the quality of service would still have to be based on the type of service and be commonly available, which is obviously not what the telcos have in mind.
I think you drastically overrate the effort that your typical person will put into their internet access and usage. Look at the stink Google and Yahoo put up about the search box in the new IE. (link (registration required)) If people won’t even fiddle around with a few settings to change their search engine, do you think they will go through the hassle of changing ISPs? Of course not. Google, and every other major site realizes how fickle a web user is. They simply can’t risk losing 10% of their users by telling an ISP to piss off.
Don’t get me wrong here. I think at some point it would be good to prioritize data. Things like downloading MP3s, e-mail, etc. could be routed on a lower priority than VOIP, video on demand, etc. The problem is that I see this as simply a blantant money grab by the ISPs, and I don’t support that.
So, why doesn’t AT&T just start their own VoIP, and, since they don’t have to pay themselves to use their own network, charge $.03 a minute?
The most relevant way it would affect you is that some sites would load much faster and some much slower, for reasons that had nothing to do with the servers’ loads.
Another aspect to this that I want to bring up is that without network neutrality I see the internet going the way of American newspapers and radio. A couple of big players will own almost the whole network eventually, and effectively have control over what gets disseminated.
The first amendment guarantees only expression, and not distribution, so it’s sort of a legal way of quashing unfriendly expression. “Protest songs” are dinosaurs because Clear Channel and Infinity won’t let them on. Unless you consider country songs with reactionary politics protest music. Newspapers in many cities are owned by Rupert Murdoch or Gannet. Almost all of what makes it onto radio and into newspapers are ultimately coming through just 4 or 5 different filters.
That’s ultimately what’s at stake here - removing the voice of dissent.
Here in Canada, the rates that telcos are allowed to charge for long distance service aren’t allowed to go below a certain floor. That includes VoIP service. Non-telco VoIP companies don’t have to content with this floor.
This opens a door to net censorship. If you regulate the speed ,you can alter it at will. Financial reasons sure.But,do you think sites critical of AT&t will be allowed access at any price. There is a great danger of changing the internet into something diffferent very quickly. It wont be to the benefit of the average user.
Also when AT&T was asked to help build the internet they refused. Now they see profit ,it becomes theirs.
I’m not too concerned with censorship. What this keeps reminding me of is the energy crisis we had in California a few years back. The bottom line, it seems to me is such-and-such got deregulated and as a result, at one point:
We were paying “$1400 per megawatt, as compared to the average price of $45 per megawatt one year earlier.”
“[it was alleged] that power generators overcharged by $6.2 billion for electricity sold in California during the year 2000”
After investigations and refunds were eventually demanded, “these refunds, if ultimately made, represent a tiny fraction … of the overpayments made in a wildly dysfunctional market.” And,
“The high price of natural gas has contributed to soaring prices for electricity generated by gas-fired plants, and California officials estimate the manipulation has added $3.7 billion to the costs of the energy crisis there. FERC plans to announce its findings on June 30, 2001.”
Now, I don’t think people are going to suffer in quite the same way. Paying ridiculous prices for your internet for awhile before the government steps in and says “knock it off,” isn’t the same thing as having your gas & electricity shut off. But I do see things getting temporarily crazy, some fat-cat executives & CEOs grabbing billions of dollars off consumers and at the end of the day, walking away with much of it.
Then the government steps in and says “gosh, guess we didn’t think this through. Better fix it.”
You would think so, but the reality is that within many large corporations, one unit must pay another to use assets. When I worked for the computer game division of a large motion picture studio, not only did we have to pay the licensing division to make games from the studio’s properties, we had to bid against outside developers for the privilege. Different units within the same corporation have different budgets and must show separate profit and loss figures. If one division gives away an asset it could have sold to another company outside the corporation, it makes their profits look bad.
It doesn’t really matter how many paths and/or nodes are available, as long as there’s one bottleneck (the path between your home and the Internet) which is completely controlled by your ISP. You can only route around that by switching ISP’s. Speaking of which…
You overestimate the savviness of the average Internet user. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the people who use “google” as a verb are actually using whatever other search engine is pre-wired by their ISP or operating system vendor, blissfully unaware that it isn’t Google.
I’ve had to deal with people that thought Windows was their search engine and Netscape was their operating system. A surprising number of Internet users don’t even know who their ISP is, much less realize that they have an option. They signed up with the most convenient ISP, whether it was their phone company, cable TV company, or AOL (thanks to the free CD-ROM in the mail).
Yes, that’s absolutely right. Again, a theoretical point only, as indicated by my saying an “inifinite number of nodes” (although perhaps I should have stipulated a fully-connected graph). I thought that had been addressed by the last sentence of my original post: