Millions if not billions have been spent arguing about net neutrality and censorship of data via its type and volume.
Party A pays for certain bandwidth at one end of a communications link, and Party B pays for certain bandwidth at the other end. Each party has the right to expect that they can use their bandwidth in any manner they so choose, to view movies, to hear music, to download/upload documents, inter alia.
ISPs argue that they should have the right to censor/filter/tariff/discriminate data based on their corporate policies. They do not have the right, and have never had that right. First their was the telegraph, then telephone, then the internet. Telephone gives us the best example, but what I am about to say was also possible on telegraph. Anyone could use their phone line to speak to another party (voice data), send/receive a fax, or connect to an information service to do research, upload/download documents, images, or audio. Then came the internet, just a different technology, the next step in communications, preceded by telegraph, telelphone, and wireless communications. The ISP argues that the internet is different and they have the right to discriminate based on data, they do not. Regardless of the data being sent, voice, documents, movies, inter alia, all data is distilled to electrical/light/radio signals representing binary ones and zeros. In essence, ISP are nothing more than transporters of digital ones and zeros. What those ones and zeros represented at the sender's end of the communication, or at the receiver's end of the communication is of zero concern to the ISP. They should not be toll collectors, deciding that the higher percentage of digital ones and zeros are related to say streaming video, and as a result add a tariff or delay to that traffic. They are already getting paid by the sender and receiver for certain bandwidth. If they want to raise the rates in general at each end, they are free to do so, but not with the condition of type of traffic. Again, all data regardless of content, or method sent, must first be distilled down to binary ones and zeros. ISP are bit conveyors, nothing more, and no court system in the world, should give them any increased stature. If the ISP feels that it is unprofitable to convey certain streaming media, or commercial data for a given purveyor of goods, then they should simply go into another business, and leave the movement of binary ones and zeros to those who understand the mission and related costs.
I am tired of hearing that companies need the taxpayer to subsidize them so they can make infrastructure improvements, when they decided to give huge dividends to their shareholders rather than making the infrastructure improvements using the corporation's funds.
Lastly, in terms of infrastructure costs. Computer technologies and data communication technologies are the one area where things are pretty much always cheaper in the future. When I was involved with a fiber project decades ago, we double, tripled, sometimes quadrupled the number of fibers in a cable to ensure we could handle the increase bandwidth of the future. What we didn't know at the time, was that future technologies would find ways to send more and more data on the same fiber pair. Blowing away the data communication limits we knew at the time of installation. A simple one, that everyone can understand is simply breaking down white light into the colors of lets the rainbow. Now each color can carry the same amount of data as the original fiber pair. So think of the overall increase in bandwidth possible should involved parties decide to use their dark fiber (fiber that has not been used to this point, because existing fiber has been able to communicate more and more data).
So the cost to transmit and data as actually gotten cheaper by the bit. I have no idea if anyone has done a study, but my best guess would be that sending data is now 10 thousand times cheaper than it was in the late 90s. So what exactly is the poor me argument from the major ISPs? As they charge people 4 times what we paid 10 years ago for data? Yes it is faster, but the cost to send a binary 1 or 0 has become far cheaper, than the speed to send a binary 1 or 0 over the internet has become faster for the average home user.
Bottom line, ISP vendors should be held to the original spirit and law of the telecommunications act, they are simply conveyors of signal, and should not be allowed to discriminate in anyway based on the form or content of that communication once reconstructed at the receiving end.
Verizon and the other big carriers who are already too big and too profitable (has you looked at your cell and land line bills lately). I mean one mass production rolls out and fiber and wireless towers are up and operating the real cost of running the networks pales incomparison to the revenue they are bringing in. I don't my profit margins, I mean it is the American way, but so is anti-trust, and free airwaves (or at least they used to be free).
People should just boycott or reduce services with Verizon, while letting them know that it is because of their unAmerican activities that those services are being reduced or boycotted.
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Conveyors of binary ones and zeros, should not tariff/censor content
Millions if not billions have been spent arguing about net neutrality and censorship of data via its type and volume.
Party A pays for certain bandwidth at one end of a communications link, and Party B pays for certain bandwidth at the other end. Each party has the right to expect that they can use their bandwidth in any manner they so choose, to view movies, to hear music, to download/upload documents, inter alia.
ISPs argue that they should have the right to censor/filter/tariff/discriminate data based on their corporate policies. They do not have the right, and have never had that right. First their was the telegraph, then telephone, then the internet. Telephone gives us the best example, but what I am about to say was also possible on telegraph. Anyone could use their phone line to speak to another party (voice data), send/receive a fax, or connect to an information service to do research, upload/download documents, images, or audio. Then came the internet, just a different technology, the next step in communications, preceded by telegraph, telelphone, and wireless communications. The ISP argues that the internet is different and they have the right to discriminate based on data, they do not. Regardless of the data being sent, voice, documents, movies, inter alia, all data is distilled to electrical/light/radio signals representing binary ones and zeros. In essence, ISP are nothing more than transporters of digital ones and zeros. What those ones and zeros represented at the sender's end of the communication, or at the receiver's end of the communication is of zero concern to the ISP. They should not be toll collectors, deciding that the higher percentage of digital ones and zeros are related to say streaming video, and as a result add a tariff or delay to that traffic. They are already getting paid by the sender and receiver for certain bandwidth. If they want to raise the rates in general at each end, they are free to do so, but not with the condition of type of traffic. Again, all data regardless of content, or method sent, must first be distilled down to binary ones and zeros. ISP are bit conveyors, nothing more, and no court system in the world, should give them any increased stature. If the ISP feels that it is unprofitable to convey certain streaming media, or commercial data for a given purveyor of goods, then they should simply go into another business, and leave the movement of binary ones and zeros to those who understand the mission and related costs.
I am tired of hearing that companies need the taxpayer to subsidize them so they can make infrastructure improvements, when they decided to give huge dividends to their shareholders rather than making the infrastructure improvements using the corporation's funds.
Lastly, in terms of infrastructure costs. Computer technologies and data communication technologies are the one area where things are pretty much always cheaper in the future. When I was involved with a fiber project decades ago, we double, tripled, sometimes quadrupled the number of fibers in a cable to ensure we could handle the increase bandwidth of the future. What we didn't know at the time, was that future technologies would find ways to send more and more data on the same fiber pair. Blowing away the data communication limits we knew at the time of installation. A simple one, that everyone can understand is simply breaking down white light into the colors of lets the rainbow. Now each color can carry the same amount of data as the original fiber pair. So think of the overall increase in bandwidth possible should involved parties decide to use their dark fiber (fiber that has not been used to this point, because existing fiber has been able to communicate more and more data).
So the cost to transmit and data as actually gotten cheaper by the bit. I have no idea if anyone has done a study, but my best guess would be that sending data is now 10 thousand times cheaper than it was in the late 90s. So what exactly is the poor me argument from the major ISPs? As they charge people 4 times what we paid 10 years ago for data? Yes it is faster, but the cost to send a binary 1 or 0 has become far cheaper, than the speed to send a binary 1 or 0 over the internet has become faster for the average home user.
Bottom line, ISP vendors should be held to the original spirit and law of the telecommunications act, they are simply conveyors of signal, and should not be allowed to discriminate in anyway based on the form or content of that communication once reconstructed at the receiving end.
This is why net netrality is so important
Verizon and the other big carriers who are already too big and too profitable (has you looked at your cell and land line bills lately). I mean one mass production rolls out and fiber and wireless towers are up and operating the real cost of running the networks pales incomparison to the revenue they are bringing in. I don't my profit margins, I mean it is the American way, but so is anti-trust, and free airwaves (or at least they used to be free).
People should just boycott or reduce services with Verizon, while letting them know that it is because of their unAmerican activities that those services are being reduced or boycotted.