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The pro-net-neutrality coalition of companies formally adds a few new members with the letter, including Twitter and Facebook, which haven’t heavily engaged in policy debates before.The letter is signed by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Evan Williams, Digg founder Kevin Rose and a few CEOs who are veterans of the Net-Neutrality Wars: Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Genachowski’s former boss, Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp.
Notably, a few non-Internet companies also signed the letter, including Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, and Charlie Ergen of satellite-TV provider EchoStar. Ergin isn’t an obvious signatory on such a letter until you consider EchoStar owns Sling Media, the TV-on-the-Internet service which has had a few problems with its iPhone App being blocked from using AT&T’s 3G network. That sort of blocking wouldn’t likely be allowed under the FCC’s net-neutrality proposal.
great going guys now i get a flash back to AOL per-min charges.
All these internet stars are getting into waters they know nothing about.
and now they start to impose data caps.
I can't believe people are actually supporting the telco giants in this regard.
If they can't offer what they sell, then we should be rather upset billions of taxpayer dollars went into infrastructure that the telcos lied about and profited on and knew couldn't support the services they sold.
Otherwise they need to stick to providing the broadband service as it is, a pure connection where the customers can implement QoS services to better manage the incoming/outgoing traffic according to their standard/average utilization & bandwidth limits.
I can't believe people are actually supporting the telco giants in this regard.
- consumers vs. their ISP: is ruled by contracts
- content providers like Google (the biggest of them all), and their ISPs: ruled by contracts.
- ISPs among themselves: ruled by agreements, and at the core it used to be a gentleman's club: the transit free providers. "Transit free" means that they do not pay any other ISP to exchange their traffic. This is based on a balance.
What I'm afraid is happening are multiple things:
There are major shifts in this area in the last years: more and more traffic is coming from less and less sources.
The possibility of charging the content providers exists only because there are a few really large ones that make up the vast majority of content. It's like your cable operator not asking you to pay a fee, but also asking the TV network a fee for hooking you up.
The "consumer rights" aspect is the sugarcoated candy for the spectators in order not to let them learn and become smart.
I was just asking questions. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter.
Honestly it didn't seem that way, seemed like you were being sarcastic against the entire notion of net netruality.
There is absolutely no reason your "provider" should be shapping traffic other than using standard routing protocols which do the fastest routing and provide the lowest latency service they can. That *IS* their job.
That *IS* their job.
(you'd actually just cut off the P2P 100% but just an example)
ok so if they arn't allowed to do this now they will just just put a traffic cap on your connection and make you pay for anything over that.
all the big names just want everyone to be able to run at 100% top speed all the time but you can't do that you'll just get congestion and slow traffic and a few bandwidth hogs will bring it down for everyone else.
at any rate i am 100% NOT FOR any goverment regulation in this area! nothing good will come from it.
Okay, but do we need a law to enforce good service?
Its not a law to force good service, its a law to keep the internet open. If providers start filtering/shaping traffic based upon how THEY see fit, consumers lose. Whats there to debate?
If I offer "unlimited refills" on cola at a restaurant I run (analogous to unlimited usage), but have a policy that people who are on their first or second refill get priority over people who have already had several, am I violating some kind of "refill neutrality"? Should I just treat all refill requests as the same? And why would the government (or anyone else) care?
Bad analogy. Bandwidth is bandwidth, its not a quota. I don't BUY a quota, i'm buying a bitrate that i get. I'm not buying 100k, voip, 400k p2p, 1.5mb zune, 1.5mb xboxlive. I'm buying 8mbit bandwidth and if i need to manage that bandwidth i enable QoS on my network.
A better analogy would be to let AT&T run our interstate highways and have them say the left lane is for sports cars, middle lane is for trucks and right lane is for everyone else and it costs 59.00 a month to pile in the rigth lane, 119.00 to drive a truck and 259.00 to ride in the sports car lane just because you have the money to do it,just because you have a truck you should pay more and just because your a lowly ol' consumer we just back in you in with the rest and if you really want to enjoy the internet be ready to fork out outrageous amounts because we artificially manage the traffic for you.
I'm not being sarcastic - just looking for the compelling reasons why the government needs to step in and start regulating.
Obviously i can't answer that question for you since you're fundamentally against regulation regardless of the issues at hand.
all the big names just want everyone to be able to run at 100% top speed all the time but you can't do that you'll just get congestion and slow traffic and a few bandwidth hogs will bring it down for everyone else.
That is totally not true and if it is, its a failure of their infrastructure and not a policy of filtering/shaping traffic. If they can spend the money on implementing billing, shapping and quotas then they could buy a few more mbit of bandwidth and be done with it. Bulk bandwidth *IS* cheap. The artifically segmenting out of networks to scale for billable rates/quotas and service levels is completely the wrong way to make money and an expensive and backwards way to solve problems.
at any rate i am 100% NOT FOR any goverment regulation in this area! nothing good will come from it.
I beg to differ. I hate private toll roads and i'd hate the concept of toll-roading the internet just as much.l
If providers start filtering/shaping traffic based upon how THEY see fit, consumers lose.
How do they lose?
I suppose this is the core thing that I don't get. What exactly is the problem that net neutrality fixes? I mean, the "real life" problem in terms of impact on consumers, rather than technical issues of packets and shaping and so on.
The basic principal of net neutrality:
"A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams"
Why would you NOT want that? You want carriers to start restricting us to hardware? paying for kb/mb transfered? you want our broadband to turn into the crap heap that is our cell phone networks? Should we all have to buy contracts to get our service and use only approved hardware & software? should i have to pay to create a new protocol because AT&T decideds to filter it?
how do you feel about data caps?
They're worthless and artificial. Bandiwdth is cheap and getting cheaper.. the most expensive part is last-mile and there is no limit to last mile other than the limits of the Fios/fttp/docsis/dsl/isdn architectecture itself which is capped based upon the technology not the artificial limits of the provider.
You want carriers to start restricting us to hardware?
paying for kb/mb transfered?
you want our broadband to turn into the crap heap that is our cell phone networks?
Why will my broadband turn into a "crap heap"? What's going to happen to it?
Without net neutrality, telcos may slow down data packets for VoIP calls - so that's Skype completely knackered.
Without net neutrality, one media company that owns fibre could slow down data packets on video streamed by another media company - does that sound like a good idea?
Suppose Amazon were to buy fibre and slow down data packets to and from EBay - does that sound like a good idea?
From Joe Public's perpective, net neutrality is an absolute no-brainer. For big businesses, in the long term it is also a no-brainer, but unfortunately, some in big business don't actually have brains and others that do have half a brain are often incapable of thinking more than a couple of years ahead.
However, the issue of rationing by ISPs is another matter altogether. In order to maintain the best possible service for the majority, it is reasonable to throttle modems (or take equivalent actions) however, a minimum speed should be guaranteed and this should be clearly explained in their terms of service and be subject to auditing by an independent authority.
Kaled.
i said data cap not bandwidth cap.
There is no difference.. Data cap ruins the concept of broadband.
I don't have cable tv. I watch tv exclusively through Netflix On demand, Zune and Xbox live marketplace as well as what i PVR from OTA HD - amongs Hulu and other sites as well. I also work from home 100% of the time and do some fairly large transfers a couple times a month during patch windows
I'll switch to a different carrier, unless it's a phone company restricting me to hand-held devices; or a games company restricting me to their games console.
The problem is that once carriers lock you in to specific hardware they lock you into contracts. Its the "cell phone" mantra.. which sucks.. Game consoles have nothing to do with this.. some people have a wii, xbox, ps3 or pc and you play whatever games are on that platform.
I don't understand why this needs to be made illegal.
It isn't being made illegal. Its just saying you can't make me pay per protocol or packet or specific features for "unthrottled" or "un filtered" access. Its either the internet or it isn't. However per kb/mb is a terrible concept.
My phone network is pretty good by the way.
But still, that possibility does concern me. Why will my broadband turn into a "crap heap"? What's going to happen to it?
SO you like being contracted for 2 years into a service that often drops calls, charges insane amounts for text messages, continually reducues services and increases costs and gets more expensive year after year? You like being sold 3g only to find out it doesn't support tethering and if you want to download anything over 10mb they often throw warnings all over your phone to go wifi? cell network in the US of A is a joke.
I don't understand why this needs to be made illegal.
Unlike some folks here, I would not mind paying for internet access by the Gigabyte... IF the price were reasonable, say not more than double what my ISP pays for it. The metered rates that have been floated recently have been exorbitant, which raises the suspicion of ulterior motives, such as squelching competition from internet-based content providers such as Netflix, YouTube, etc.
