The FCC decision comes less than 24 hours after hysterical and confused reports of a Google and Verizon deal on net neutrality began circulating around media outlets and Washington.
What it Means for the Valley and Consumers As Google and Verizon work out their compromise and promote whatever version of network neutrality works for one of the largest telecommunications companies and the largest driver of web traffic, the effect on the startup ecosystem and consumers may take a while to appear. But warning signs are already planted. For example:
AT&T tried to stop YouTube access on its phones.
Germany’s T-Mobile wants to block video content on wireless networks.
Google and Verizon are talking about paid prioritization of Google traffic.
Consider what paid prioritization means for the nascent web television industry, which right now sometimes uses Google’s YouTube as a distribution platform. It’s great that Google may pay for their shows to get prioritization, but what happens if Google doesn’t like a show, or maybe it wants to run ads the creator doesn’t like? The Internet as an equal opportunity distribution platform is subtly changed.
The U.S. broadband network was in sad shape as well, unless one was lucky enough to live in an area with a cable provider that was deploying DOCSIS 3.0 or within range of Verizon’s fiber network. An FCC survey this year discovered that 78 percent of the U.S. has only two broadband providers to choose from, while 13 percent have only one.
The numbers are important, because one of the bulwarks against nefarious activity in terms of discriminating against certain types of content is robust competition. The line of thinking is that if AT&T blocks certain files, the customer can simply find an ISP that doesn’t. In practice, this isn’t a very effective threat because in some areas, the alternatives are crappy DSL lines, satellite broadband or nothing.
The new FCC ,with Genachowski at its head, was going to change all that. He decided to champion network neutrality, not only for wireline, but also for wireless access. He was going to be a thorn in the side of the big incumbents and agitate for innovation, consumer rights and change.
gigaom.com By Stacey Higginbotham
The report's authors, Craig Settles and Adam Elliot, admitted that even they were surprised by the study's principal observation that competition inversely correlates with state wealth.
"We hesitate to draw what could be the obvious conclusion that, if a state's constituents become wealthier, competitiveness in broadband will drop," they conclude. "We take the position that wealth attracted or facilitated (and still does) one or two large providers to come into the area initially and establish market dominance such that their resulting barriers prevented competition from becoming widely established. It very well may be that specifically because less affluent states did not attract one of the largest providers (at least for a while), several smaller regional or local providers were able to establish stronger market positions."
So it may be that policy makers have to come up with a more sophisticated way of thinking about "competitiveness" and its virtues. In poorer, more rural states, having a host of probably cash-poor competitors on the market doesn't necessarily mean better broadband. The Federal Communications Commission's latest report (please read this report TWICE) on Internet competition found that only 72 percent of consumers in "competitive" Arkansas had access to 200Kbps or greater cable modem service in 2008.
arstechnica.com
There is no clear and generally applicable definition of net neutrality. It is a principle that is described differently by different people coming from different regional, social and scientific backgrounds. Technical definition would be that all IP packets should be treated equally on a best-effort basis. But net neutrality is not a technical principle but a social paradigm that strives to preserve the Internet in a perceived state of maximum freedom and equality among its participants. Hence, ultimately, society will have to decide about how much freedom and equality there will be in the Internet of the future. Here we will focus on the more technical aspects of net neutrality.
So.....
Let's reach 2 million for Net Neutrality! Save the Internet?
from savetheinternet.com :
Urge Congress and the FCC to support Net Neutrality.
