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Net Neutrality 9-01-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Note To Telcos: Please Get Better Shills

. . . Now, we have Sonia Arrison, who works for a think tank that is funded by telcos. Last month she was claiming that if net neutrality legislation came to be it would be the end of the internet, while then trotting out a freebie about how muni-WiFi would also destroy the internet (ignoring, of course, that almost every muni-WiFi effort nowadays is structured in an almost identical manner to the deals her telco funders got for copper and fiber rights of way — and, in fact, that telcos have now started bidding on muni-WiFi contracts themselves). This time, however, she’s flipped the argument we’ve made here around, saying that dishonesty from the likes of Google proves that net neutrality legislation isn’t needed. There’s just one problem: it’s her side which seems to be acting much more dishonest. She calls it a “scare tactic” by Google to suggest that there would be a two-tiered internet where people might not be able to get to Google. She might want to go talk with the heads of the telcos that fund her think tank, because they’ve all made it clear that they would love to force Google to pay extra to reach their subscribers. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 8-28-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Telcos, Net Neutrality and fair business practices

This morning, I received an email from Verizon, concerning my DSL service.
The email alerted me to the fact that the federal tax known as FUSF (Federal Universal Service Fund) was no longer to be collected. Depending upon your level of service, this was a fee of $1.25 or $2.83 per month. This was part of a decision last year by the FCC to stop regulating DSL, therefore eliminating the need for the FUSF fee to be collected. Based upon this, consumers should have expected to see a modest reduction in their monthly bills, due to the elimination of the FUSF.

However, in reading my Verizon DSL email, it appears that they couldn’t bear to pass that reduction on to their customers. Instead, they indicate that . . . In essence, they’ve taken the amount of the tax (which they had to remit to the government) and shifted it into a new line item as a fee.

If people can’t understand why we need Net Neutrality, this is just another example of how the telcos operate and why we can’t let them change the playing field.

Update: Apparently the FCC is not too thrilled with Verizon and BellSouth efforts to mask price increases as fees. Also see comments from TechDirt on the matter.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-24-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Telco Wars and Net Neutrality

Let me start of by saying reading this post by James Enck may cause your heart to skip a few beats if you work at Level3 or are a customer who relies on them, or has built budgets and pro-formas based on how Level3 charges you.

But it goes much deeper and you MUST read through the various links that other bloggers have gathered to get the whole picture. . . .

The line from Gordon Cook sums up a lot:

Net Neutrality is a skillful diversion to draw our attention there while Qwest, ATT, Verizon and BellSouth still the knife in at the court and PUC level and kill off the remaining services they don’t control.

. . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-26-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

A Simple Net Neutrality Message: It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

I’m very much an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ guy.

The Web ain’t broke, not one bit. In fact, it’s thriving, growing by leaps and bounds, producing more cool innovations in a day than you could try out in a year. And the Net has been neutral since its beginnings. . . .

Are You Among The Seven Million?

“Privacy advocates slammed AT&T on Thursday for declaring that it owned its Internet and video customers’ account information and could hand the data over to law enforcement if needed.”

Owned!!! That’s right – owned!!!

Think about this – read this – see this – hear this – know this;

“In the policy update, which applied to AT&T’s more than 7 million Internet and video customers, the company said it could collect usage information from subscribers, including the Web pages they view, the programs they record, and the games they play.”

After they’ve collected that information, they OWN it! They own your information, about you!

And they do wonderful things with the information they own about you;

They Share It

On Monopoly (and a little bit of net neutrality)

The irony is that the people arguing that, say, the government should breakup monopolies in the name of innovation tend to be plagued by a lack of imagination. They couldn’t imagine that anything beyond the desktop OS would matter in computing. If they had seen a future whereby the web might supersede the desktop, they might not have worried. On a personal note, I wouldn’t argue that I have any foresight whatsoever, but hindsight works just fine. Simply looking at history should be enough to realize that one company can’t dominate and seek rents on a market for too long. Simply the act of exploiting a dominant position prompts more effort and energy in the direction of beating it.

And on that note, let me segue into the current arguments about net neutrality, and why I suspect that legislating the principle would be a bad idea. If the telcos really do try to stifle what happens on the internet, there will be a lot of effort put forth to try and circumvent their grip. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-07-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

A rant on Net neutrality

The key phrase is “a government-managed regulatory habitat”.

Maybe what is needed is more legislation, not less. And not controls over what the Telcos and cable companies do with net neutrality but controls to force them to open up their monopoly to competing 3rd parties. eg

– Force them to sell wholesale bandwidth to 3rd party ISPs – Force them to sell space in their switching centres to 3rd party ISPs to unbundle the local loop.

When direct competitors are selling net neutral broadband, how will the Telcos be able to offer hobbled broadband?

The problem here is a common one to all utilities that have a monopoly hold over a single connection on the last mile.

Dogs, Cats, And Net Neutrality by Jason Lee Miller

Net Neutrality was interesting enough because of the opposing punditries that kissed and made up (for this battle anyway), but the Parents Television Council (PTC) soldiering alongside Democrats? Verizon sponsoring sessions at the Small Business Summit?

Maybe Bill Murray in Ghostbusters was right. The end of the world will have “dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

Net Neutrality: Urban Legend # 5

One of the most useful websites I know of is snopes.com, which provides information and analysis of e-mails circulating on the Internet, from the “Bill Gates is Giving Away Money� hoax to the famous 602B e-mail tax bill. Among other things, Snopes ranks the e-mails based on circulation and other factors. Currently, the number five hottest email — beating out warnings about ether-laced perfume and the dangers of rat urine on soda cans — is a missive in support of net neutrality regulation circulated by Move.on org.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Internet Investing

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All of Your Eggs in the Internet Lobby?

“Right now, I would never invest in a business model that depended on protection from Net neutrality”

— Blair Levin analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

This quote is from the April 27, BusinessWeek online story by Burt Helm, Tech Giants’ Internet Battles. The story discusses how a “host” of tech companies, including Google, Yahoo, and Intel going up against the telcos, AT&T and the cable companies to prevent them from offering favored service to providers of their choosing.

It’s a little scary.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE