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FTC: "Net neutrality is no big deal"
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 29th June 2007
"Pay to play? That's fine!" - Internet providers and big companies got their biggest support yet today.
If the tubes are clogged, you should just pay more and they will make everyone else's tubes more clogged to give you bigger ones. At least, that's the FTC's take on it all. According to the statement released by the Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, congress should "proceed with caution" in regard to net neutrality, stating that she feels internet providers charging too much for bandwidth is an unlikely concern.
Though she did not go so far as to say that providers won't do such a thing, Majoras stated that if these problems did arise then they would be better handled under the (very slow-moving) anti-trust laws. Until such time as service providers begin to illustrate “market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”"
Such statements are a huge victory for service providers like AT&T and Comcast Cable in the US, which want to charge more money to stream higher-bandwidth content like videos. This price would be levied on the host's end, not on the consumer - which would cause a split between the "haves" and "have nots" of site content. Currently, hosting is done simply on the amount of data exchanged, and no speed preference is given for one type of content or another.
Do you have a thought on the issue of net neutrality? Are you one who believes higher bandwidth sites should pay more? Join the community discussion here.
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Comments (24)
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Buwahahaha xD - Ok, give this lady a prize. She gets the "most halucinagens taken in a single hour running up to a press release" award. Every ISP on the planet is already overcharging for bandwidth that they refuse to give you if you actually try and make use of their "unlimted" services. What complete an utter idiocy. This makes me feel so much better about the incompetancy levels of British telecomms.
It eludes me quite why this should not be paid for by the people who use it most.
Phil
No-one says that shouldn't be the case, it's just us net-neutrality proponents don't think that anyone should have to pay twice just to ensure their quality of service isn't retarded.
We already pay a stupid amount for reasonable internet, I mean, the infrastructure is already in place, it follows the same lines as those that have been in place since the 70's (well cable at least) so I don't understand why I have to pay the same price again for TV and Internet, and whoever thinks the telco's won't gouge the consumer to an inch of their life if net neutrality goes the way of the dodo is on crack.
Problem is, if ALL companies do it, then what are you going to do? Boycott the internet? :p
however, your Internet connection seems very overpriced, hell i think i pay more for the Internet then i do for electricity
though i have to wonder if throttling certain things (for example P2P) when the connection is contended, to allow important (things that cant wait) things to go through (like games, or voip) then that's OK
its better then the current situation where a number of providers just throttle your whole connection at peak times to make sure they don't get contended
of course, the best solution would just be to have an infrastructure that supports the speeds people want when there is high demand
You don't see the national grid supplying you with less power at peak times because it cant handle the load
You're wrong. Net neutrality protects against extortion. Extortion is illegal even in lazzaiz-faire capitalism. Most people won't drop services, they will simply shop where is fast. It ammounts to nothing more than suited gangsters destroying businesses that will not pay the bribe, and it is a concern.
If the internet is allowed to be price fixed then it could very well destroy the economy. This is because, one businesses would lose money and raise their prices, two companies will cut jobs to save money, three people will be spending more in internet b/c in todays world you half to have it(just like oil) and people will have less money to spend. With less spending the econ will go deeper into defect and the system repeats it's self, prices go up and spending goes down until a total failure occurs.
The problem is that congress is not smart enough to realize how important the internet now is to the survival of our nation. How can a nation remain completive in the future if it allows the technology that that future is based on to be killed.
money makes the world go round.
Why dont we just have a system like S. Korea where the government subsidizes all the internet so everyone has a good tooobe to connect on?
Because that'd be an evil commie thing to do and you live in a country that seems to pride itself on not being socialist :p
'tis a good system if the government aren't incompetant - which is why I wouldn't want it in the UK.
That post makes no sense to me.
Im already paying more for Virgin 20mbit download and the f**ker doesn't even work!
Virgin Status recording: "Those who have been upgraded to the 20meg XL package should note that they will be experiencing very slow download speeds at present...."
...sigh....