Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

Fri Feb 27 19:44:40 UTC 2015

Bill,

In what way is my argument a straw man? I specifically address the assertion you make, that an ISP must deliver X Mbps whenever you demand it, by explaining the real world essential practice of oversubscription.

Let's say you decide to start your own ISP, call it BillsNet. You buy a 1Gbps upstream pipe from Level3 for $6,000/month (a realistic price delivered to your facilities over fiber). You run wireless links to your customers via 100Mbps WiFi and a multi-gigabit redundant WiFi backbone, so that your only last-mile recurring cost is your labor to maintain your WISP network. 

Suppose, generously, that the going rate for 5x50Mbps broadband is $100/mo in your area (it's likely less). Only 20 customers can operate at full speed on this network (20 x 50Mbps = 1,000Mbps), so following your rule, you have to cap your income at $2,000/mo. You're losing $4,000/mo and you haven't yet spent a dime on salaries, hardware, deployment, or maintenance.

I call this the "iron man" argument. ;)

 -mel

On Feb 27, 2015, at 10:54 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us>
 wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 1:34 PM, Mel Beckman <mel at beckman.org> wrote:
>> On Feb 27, 2015, at 9:56 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us>
>> wrote:
>>> Deceit is Bad Behavior. If you sell me an X megabit per second
>>> Internet access service, you should do everything reasonably within
>>> your power to make sure I can access the Internet sites of my choice
>>> at X megabits per second.
> 
>> This is not feasible. ISPs work by oversubscription, so it's never possible
>> for all (or even 10% of all) customers to simultaneously demand their full
>> bandwidth. If ISPs had to reserve the full bandwidth sold to each customer
> 
> Hi Mel,
> 
> Respectfully, that's a straw man argument. You alter the parameters of
> my criticism then proceed to show how the altered argument is
> unreasonable.
> 
> All utilities work by oversubscription: electric, natural gas, water
> and sewer. When the sewer authority fouls up their oversubscription
> model and your pee ends up in my basement, guess who pays for the
> cleanup? They do.
> 
> I have some unfortunate first-hand experience with this.
> 
> 
>> Anyone who doesn't understand [oversubscription]
>> will be unable to engage in reasonable discussion about ISP practices.
> 
> You said it, not me.
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
> Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>