TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Why I am Opposed to Net Neutrality

Re: Why I am Opposed to Net Neutrality

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
17 Aug 2006 12:19:18 -0700

John Levine wrote:

> There is a perfectly good definition of net neutrality: everyone who
> gets the same service pays the same price for it. Particularly if one
> of the bodies is a subsidiary of the telco or cableco. A lot of us
> have well-founded concerns that the telcos will make sweetheart deals
> with themselves like they did with DSL, with the wholesale price to
> everyone else somehow being more than the retail price their own
> affiliate charges.

Sorry, but in today's world, that kind of pricing is all part of the
"free market". And a "free market" is what was desired when they took
away regulation. If you don't like these kinds of pricing plans, you
need to go back to a regulated world. You can't have it both ways.

A free market means someone can charge what the market will bear to
maximize his profits.

In other words, if you want some coast-to-coast airline flights to cost
$39, you'll have to accept certain other flights, perhaps even within a
single state, will cost $750.

Elsewhere (in a discussion of Metroliner telephone service), someone
claimed Verizon's stock price has steeply fallen. I presume that's
true, and that is what free markets do. The NYT said recently Verizon
was installing FIOS like crazy to stem a flow of lost customers.

The great and powerful AT&T doesn't even exist anymore except in name.
Free markets at work.

If the telcos price themselves too high, consumers will find
alternatives, either a cheaper vendor or alternative technology.
Perhaps not in the short term, but they will in the long term,
especially with today's technology which is constantly evolving.

Scott Dorsey wrote:

> If you want a largescale nationwide network to handle realtime data
> like VOIP, video traffic, and high resolution X-rays at the same time,
> it ought to be built very differently than the Internet. Because the
> Internet just isn't built for that. Sorry.

All very true.

Sooner or later people must realize the Internet wasn't built for a
lot of things, like security and safety.

Automobiles and highways weren't built for safety. It took 50 years
before they even realized this, and 25 more years to design, build,
and implement various safety features to cut down the carnage.

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