Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP Network Neutrality

Matt Palmer mpalmer at hezmatt.org
Thu May 15 20:18:52 UTC 2014


On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 07:29:06AM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
> The result of deregulating the current environment would only be more pain
> and cost to the consumer than we currently have with no improvement in
> speeds or capabilities and no additional innovation.

Indeed.  While I certainly understand (and sympathise with) the sentiments
of those who say, "we don't want the government regulating the Internet!",
unfortunately in *this* particular battle I can't see a way out of the
morass without a certain amount of government intervention.  Of course, it
would greatly help the situation if the idiotic restrictions imposed by many
states making it illegal to setup muni fibre and wifi (at the behest of the
monopoly carriers, of course) were repealed (or overridden), and holding
companies like Verizon to account for breaking their promises to build out
fibre plant, but I think the situation is *such* a mess that removing all the
barriers and hoping that things naturally take care of themselves is, well,
optimistic at best.

- Matt

-- 
You have a 16-bit quantity, but 5 bits of it are here and 2 bits of it are
there... and 2 bits of it are back here and 3 bits of it are up there.  The
C code to extract useful data had so many >> and << operators in it that it
looked like the C++ version of "hello world".	-- Matt Roberds, ASR




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