The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

Thu Apr 24 21:57:49 UTC 2014

My take here is that I'd rather the FCC just leave it alone and see if
the market doesn't work it out in some reasonable way. That is, to not
even address it in rules, whether accept or prohibit. Just step back
and make sure that all you see is dust rising and not smoke. These
things take a while to resolve. This issue has been building for a
while but hasn't really reached its pinnacle yet so who is to say what
things will look like in five years from a business standpoint? To
codify something pretty well means you want it to look a particular
way or you are accepting a way of being that may or may not be in the
interests of those concerned and pretty well ending discussion,
negotiation, and experimentation regarding that point.

The problem is that all the RBOCs/ILECs/Cable groups seem to be headed
in the same direction (and most of them are trying to run their own
CDN and force their customers to use it instead of a third party--and
running them badly to boot. Sound familiar?) If that were not the
case, such a scheme would not be viable since there would always be
someone undermining it. (Like OPEC... The price they want is never
what they get because some country or another is always selling more
than they say they're going to because they want more money, meaning
supply is greater than it should be and prices adjust accordingly.) It
only takes one or two holdouts to upset the plans of all the rest.

*shrug*

I'll have to see how these changes are implemented and how things
are interpreted before we know what this is going to do to
competitveness.

-Wayne

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 04:42:42PM -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
> On 4/24/2014 9:59 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> >I think you and I disagree on the definition of "anti-competitive".
> >
> >But that's fine. There is more than one problem to solve. I just figured 
> >the FCC thing was timely and operational.
> >
> I agree with you, Patrick. Double digit/meg pricing needs to die.
> 
> I'm not sure that the change really alters backbone policy, but it would 
> definitely open the doors for bad things in the access networks. That 
> being said, only the largest networks could put enough pressure to 
> benefit from it, and some do that currently. I also don't see this as 
> any different than the business model some streaming sites enforce where 
> the ISP must pay for stream access based on their subscribers instead of 
> interested subscribers just paying for an individual account. Fair is 
> fair, and some of the streamers have been hitting ISPs longer. Once 
> again, only the largest streamers can hope to get away with it, and only 
> the largest ISPs can get the low priced deals. In both cases, it's the 
> small ISPs and small content providers that suffer.
> 
> I don't see the FCC stopping megacorp bullying anytime in the near future.
> 
> Jack

---
Wayne Bouchard
web at typo.org
Network Dude
http://www.typo.org/~web/