Comment Re:Network Neutrality != good (Score 5, Informative) 168
Network Neutrality doesn't really mean government regulation at all. It just means that all packets have as much right to the road as any others. If you try to block your competitors packets you get slapped, if you try to use anticompetitive practices you get slapped, if you act in a monopolistic manner you get slapped. However you are free to do whatever else you please beyond that. If you want to charge ridiculous amounts to all of your customers fairly you can, if you want to drop all of your peering agreements feel free, if you don't want to invest in your infrastructure and continue wringing every last dime out of your existing infrastructure go ahead... What we need to be regulated better is public rights of way and who has access to them until wireless is mature enough to handle broadband in large deployments.
How does Google find access to pipes that don't exist? There are basically 3 or 4 major players that everyone relies on and you can't just lay new pipe on rights of way that you don't own. Then there is the matter of incumbent telecoms and cable co's and their regional monopolies. If you want high speed internet you deal with 3 companies, Time Warner, Comcast or AT&T. There is nothing stopping time warner sticking up a roadblock to Google, Yahoo and MSN and say go here instead. In fact they already do that to a degree by taking over your browser settings with their client software. They have a portal that is steadily growing in size and services that is being supported by their near monopolies in what 40% of households in the US? Most of the US population isn't dense enough to attract a lot of competition because of the cost of laying cable. Ironically a lot of that cable laying is subsidized by tax payer money but is granted for sole use to one company. In a couple of years if we don't stand our ground on network neutrality we will have a cell phone esque market place for our internet services where we have to pay 10cents a search and 5 cents a dns lookup and 25cents an email and yadda....
Right now the major players are sitting on their pipes wringing as much money as they can out of them and doing the minimum amount of upgrades necessary to maintain the status quo. That is why the telecom companies are having bandwidth issues. The rest of the world is eventually going to surpass our pipes and offer a ton of dynamic content that we can't access because the infrastructure in the US can't handle it. Just like the cell phone industry is leaps and bounds ahead of the US industry in the rest of the world. Same in the console market and hand helds. I could go on but I digress.
How does Google find access to pipes that don't exist? There are basically 3 or 4 major players that everyone relies on and you can't just lay new pipe on rights of way that you don't own. Then there is the matter of incumbent telecoms and cable co's and their regional monopolies. If you want high speed internet you deal with 3 companies, Time Warner, Comcast or AT&T. There is nothing stopping time warner sticking up a roadblock to Google, Yahoo and MSN and say go here instead. In fact they already do that to a degree by taking over your browser settings with their client software. They have a portal that is steadily growing in size and services that is being supported by their near monopolies in what 40% of households in the US? Most of the US population isn't dense enough to attract a lot of competition because of the cost of laying cable. Ironically a lot of that cable laying is subsidized by tax payer money but is granted for sole use to one company. In a couple of years if we don't stand our ground on network neutrality we will have a cell phone esque market place for our internet services where we have to pay 10cents a search and 5 cents a dns lookup and 25cents an email and yadda....
Right now the major players are sitting on their pipes wringing as much money as they can out of them and doing the minimum amount of upgrades necessary to maintain the status quo. That is why the telecom companies are having bandwidth issues. The rest of the world is eventually going to surpass our pipes and offer a ton of dynamic content that we can't access because the infrastructure in the US can't handle it. Just like the cell phone industry is leaps and bounds ahead of the US industry in the rest of the world. Same in the console market and hand helds. I could go on but I digress.
