Exhibit A: This video of some people that really should not be wearing skin-tight clothing, singing about some kind of granola crunching nirvana that has never existed.
Look, “the Internet” is just a gigantic collection of independently run networks. Some are privately owned, some are owned by NGO’s and others are financed via taxes.
There are over 150,000 routers that relay packets back and forth, many of these are owned by large companies.
Some of these companies want to charge variable rates — and already are charging variable rates. It is a concept that is neither new, nor foreign to the service world. For instance:
- Broadband rates versus dial-up, OMG! Can you believe there you are charged based upon how much you use? Different tiers even?
- Yield management takes place in the aviation industry (e.g. first class, business)
- Postage is a variable rate (e.g. while parcels may take the same “routes” they are charged based upon their size, destination and a host of other factors)
- Cellular packages (e.g. family plans, whenever/where ever minutes, roaming)
- Seating at entertainment venues (e.g. front row, floorside, benchside, 50-yard line, nose-bleed)
- Lines at an amusement park (e.g. general admission, Flash Pass)
- Insurance premiums (calculating your health, life, and car insurance all involves numerous continuously-changing variables which helps makes spreading risk an efficient enterprise)
The problem with the telecom industry however is that it is a highly regulated industry. It is not the product of a free-market distribution of resources. And none of the “net neutrality” legislation will fix it.
Rather than deregulate the industry, “net neutrality” will only add more costly and inefficient layers of regulation and oversight to it. After all, oversight and execution of the policies have to be financed somehow, guess who gets to pay for that?
What costs money? You see, in order to make sure every packet is living in some kind of Egalitarian-world, equipment will need to be installed to monitor and analyze the packets. And don’t forget the new civil servant positions that must be erected to analyze the data reports. Guess who finances that now? And so on.
Having a hard-on for Google and other web services is not going to nullify the laws of economics, namely scarcity. And any kind of nationalization of the network will result in a terribly ineffective method at distributing scarce resources.
If you are frustrated with dropped or static-filled calls today, imagine having a dropped call in the future because network operators can no longer discriminate (oooo, an evil word!!!) and reallocate bandwidth based upon peak usage.
Chuck Norris really should round-house kick this fallacious argument into the recycle bin. Bring back the freedom of contract.
The internet became what it is right now THANKS TO net neutrality. Do you think I would have read your article if I had to pay $0.01 for each article I read online?
I would ignore you, that’s for sure..
Comment by Tinus — August 3, 2006 @ 8:17 am
Nope, “net neutrality” has never existed. ISPs have always discriminated (in a good way) what kind of TCP/IP traffic is flowing through their pipes (ever read a ToS stating that they will not allow you to run an IRC or dedicated game server?)
And you already pay to access my site, it’s through your own bandwidth provider that you pay. It just so happens that since my site consumes relatively little bandwidth, it doesn’t cause you to go above your allotted monthly bandwidth.
See also Peering Agreement.
Comment by Tim — August 3, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
[...] More on why net neutrality (a nebulous, ill-defined policy) is a really dumb idea: 1 2 3 « If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail [...]
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