The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet
We pay about $50 a month for generally high quality, generally stable broadband Internet. It hardly matters, because I have little choice: cable, DSL, or fiber. I don’t really want to need the 2-5Mbps Comcast offers and I’d be eager to trade some of it for a better upstream connection, but that’s not an option–the limited competition between technologies in my neighborhood seems to have sparked a bandwidth war and if I don’t like the outcome I’m SOL.
But now that consumers are starting to take advantage of those big fat (and heavily advertised) pipes
some within the Telco are complaining. Some providers, including SBC/AT&T and Verizon, are challenging the idea of network neutrality. In a competitive world, these ideas would fail as consumers switched providers. In the real world, in the absence of real competition, and real regulation, these natural monopolies risk ruining the Internet.
(via TPM)
For a full backgrounder on the net neutrality issue check out the camapign I just posted at http://www.freepress.net/deadend.
The threat to the freedoms of the Internet, as we have come to know them, is real. Our best defense is a public pressure campaign against Congress, the FCC and the predatory ISPs.
By: Timothy Karr on January 24, 2006
at 6:29 am