Category Archives: Net Neutrality

The Amazon Channel

packages.gif It’s all very well to talk about net neutrality or Internet freedom and how it affects 700Mhz spectrum sales or freedom of the press. But what does all this have to do with the average Internet user?

Suppose the telcos and cablecos get everything they want.

To buy a BBQ grill on eBay, you’ll have to pay for the eBay channel. This is above whatever you pay the seller for the grill or eBay for your membership. You’ll have to pay your local Internet access company just to let you get to eBay to participate in the auction. Oh, maybe you’ll be able to get there anyway, but your access may be so slow that you’ll pay for the eBay channel out of frustration.

If you want to buy a book from Amazon, you’ll have to pay for the Amazon channel. For search you’ll need the Yahoo channel or the ask.com channel or the google channel. Assuming your favorite search engine is even offered as a channel. Many smaller services probably won’t be.

Maybe it won’t be quite this bad. Continue reading →

Broadband Speed by Country

broadbandspeedchart.jpg Letting a picture tell the story of how Japan, Korea, France, Poland, Portugal, and other countries have faster broadband than the U.S., here’s a graphical illustration of average broadband speeds per country. Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland I would expect, since they’ve long been fast. But Poland?

There seem to be two tiers. Japan and Korea are the top tier. Then Finland, Sweden, and France. Then a third tier starting with the Netherlands. The U.S. is either in that third tier or in a fourth tier, depending on how you look at it.

The source report, Assessing Broadband in America: OECD and ITIF Broadband Rankings, By Daniel K. Correa, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, April 2007, also examines broadband uptake, in which the U.S. is also fifteenth in these OECD rankings.

Maybe it’s time for a change. A change in public policy and the addition of competition.

-jsq

Warp Speed From Behind

JBrbop02.jpg As we’ve mentioned before Japan has Internet connections much faster than those in the U.S. This point is getting more mainstream media play:
Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States — and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world’s fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, recent studies show.

Accelerating broadband speed in this country — as well as in South Korea and much of Europe — is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

— Japan’s Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future, By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Foreign Service, Wednesday, August 29, 2007; Page A01

So is it just for video? If so, maybe we’d better let the telcos have their way. Continue reading →

Comcast’s Secret Bandwidth Limits

salmon.jpg Just when you think it’s all telcos doing things dire for Internet freedom:
Comcast has warned broadband Internet customers across the country to curb their downloading or wind up on the curb.

The company has a bandwidth limitation that, if broken, can result in a 12-month suspension of service. The problem, according to customer complaints, is that the telecom giant refuses to reveal how much downloading is too much.

The company, which a few years ago advertised the service as “unlimited” has an “acceptable use policy” which enforces the invisible download limit.

The 23-part policy, states that it is a breach of contract to generate “levels of traffic sufficient to impede others’ ability to send or retrieve information.” But nowhere does it detail what levels of traffic will impede others.

—Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users, Customers complain bandwidth limits are secret, By Joseph S. Enoch ConsumerAffairs.Com, August 24, 2007

And you have to wonder how long that AUP said that while Comcast was advertising “unlimited”.

This part is especially enlightening:

Douglas said the company shuts off people’s Internet if it affects the performance of their neighbors because often many people will share a connection on one data pipe.
So instead of fixing their bad topology, they penalize customers for using it.

Well, it’s a free market, right? Comcast users who don’t like it can switch to, er, if they’re lucky and have any choice at all, probably to whichever of Verizon or AT&T happens to be in their area. There couldn’t be any problems with those providers, could there?

Meanwhile, if you want to follow this Comcast controversy, here’s the Comcast Broadband dispute blog that one of the cast-offs started, presumably using his new DSL connection.It’s kind of like salmon organizing against a dam upstream.

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Freedom to Degrade

closed.png BT made an interesting presentation at an IETF meeting in which it described a spectrum whose endpoints are
  • demand side — freedom to degrade others
  • …
  • supply side — freedom to degrade competitors

— re-ECN architectural intent by Bob Briscoe, UCL, BT, 68th IETF, Unofficial Birds of a Feather (non-BoF), Prague, 21 Mar 2007

My, freedom is so degrading. Continue reading →

Rage Against Distributive and Content Control

51052~Rage-Against-The-Machine-Posters.jpg
And now you do what they told ya,
now you’re under control
The Pearl Jam (and John Butler Trio and Flaming Lips and Rage Against the Machine) AT&T censorship fiasco has reached the attention of an FCC commissioner:
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, fire-breathing advocate of network neutrality regulation and opponent of media consolidation, has taken a stand on AT&T’s now infamous censorship of Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder’s anti-Bush remarks at Lollapalooza. In an interview with OpenLeft.com’s Matt Stoller, Copps supported the idea that there’s a link between AT&T’s deletion of Vedder’s political comments from a webcast of the concert and the network neutrality fight that’s brewing in the halls of Congress.

“Events like this are connected to the larger issue of network neutrality, so it is very very important,” Copps said in response to a question about whether or not AT&T’s censorship of Vedder has any implications for network neutrality. He went on to say, “So when something like the episode occurs with Pearl Jam that you’re referencing that ought to concern all of us… because if you can do it for one group, you can do it to any group and say ‘Well, it’s not intentional,’ and things like that. But nobody should have that power to do that and then be able to exercise distributive control over the distribution and control over the content too.

— FCC Commissioner: Pearl Jam censorship linked to net neutrality fight, By Jon Stokes, ars technica, Published: August 17, 2007 – 01:56PM

And it’s good that Copps sees the connection between this episode and media consolidation. Copps talks a good talk, but will he do more than “grudgingly accept” this sort of thing, like he did the bogus 700Mhz auction rules? Will he vote against, and will he persuade other commissioners to do the same? And can someone persuade Congress to change the FCC’s tune? It’s all very well to rage against the machine, but who’s going to change it?

Or can we get some Internet access competition? Then we could have Internet freedom.

-jsq

AT&T: Net Neutrality Tool?

learnenglish-central-stories-animal-farm-330x220.gif Forbes, normally more of a capitalist tool than a flaming radical rag, keeps covering AT&T’s Pearl Jam fiasco:
AT&T’s “content monitor” hit the mute button during part of Pearl Jam’s “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast sponsored by the telecom, depriving viewers of some anti-George Bush lyrics—and handing live ammunition to “net neutrality” proponents in the form of an almost perfect example of what they predict will happen if a few companies are allowed to control the broadband pipeline.

— AT&T Silences Pearl Jam; Gives ‘Net Neutrality’ Proponents Ammunition, Staci D. Kramer, PaidContent.org, 08.09.07, 7:45 PM ET

Their followup gets even better:
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said that the silencing was a mistake and that the company was working with the vendor that produces the webcasts to avoid future misunderstandings. He said AT&T was working to secure the rights to post the entire song – part of a sing-along with the audience – on the Blue Room site.

— AT&T Errs in Edit of Anti-Bush Lyrics, By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Forbes, 08.10.07, 10:59 AM ET

While the lumbering dinosaur was working on that, Pearl Jam already had the uncensored version on their site.

And it just keeps getting better. Continue reading →

700Mhz: Duopoly As Usual

710_1_1a_CARRIE_ANN_BAADE_The_Devil_is_In_the_Details,10_x_17..jpg Susan Crawford reads the 700Mhz auction rules and confirms the worst:
1. Those Carterfone protections don’t mean too much. The no-locking, no-blocking requirements are hedged in by substantial limitations: the winning licensee will be able to lock and block devices and applications as long as they can show that their actions are related to “reasonable network management and protection,” or “compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.” In other words, as long as the discrimination can be shown to be connected (however indirectly) to some vision of “network management,” it will be permitted. (Discrimination “solely” for discrimination’s sake is prohibited, but that’s not too difficult to avoid.)

— Many, many devils in the details: 700 MHz rules, by Susan, from Susan Crawford blog, 13 Aug 2007

So it’s ILECs vs. CLECs, round two. Guess who’ll win?

And even supposedly Cmr. Copps “grudgingly accepted” these rules. Seems to me we need a whole new FCC, so we can get some real rules of the road.

And what we really need is some real competition.

-jsq

Russian Roulette

michael_copps.jpg FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has a way with words. Last year he said we should be talking about Internet freedom rather than net neutrality. And now he says we’re
playing Russian roulette with broadband and Internet and more traditional media

— FCC Commissioner: US playing “Russian roulette with broadband and Internet” By Nate Anderson, ars technica, August 03, 2007 – 09:20AM CT

And the Russians are winning. Continue reading →

AT&T U-Verse Considered as Cable TV

jbarterton.jpg In case it wasn’t obvious why the telcos want local TV franchise laws repealed:
A federal judge has thrown up a roadblock in front of AT&T as it attempts to roll out its new U-Verse IPTV service in the state of Connecticut. In an opinion issued yesterday, Judge Janet Bond Arterton ruled that AT&T’s U-Verse IPTV service is a cable television service like any other and is therefore subject to local franchising agreements.

— Federal judge: AT&T U-Verse == cable TV, By Eric Bangeman, ars technica, Published: July 27, 2007 – 10:44AM CT

But isn’t it different from cable if it’s carried over IP? Continue reading →