Last year, the telecommunications industry did their best to build a tiered Internet that would have privileged the Web sites that paid companies like AT&T and Verizon an additional fee and degraded the speeds of Web sites that did not. But it was the advocates of “net neutrality”—the Internet’s long-standing design principle that prevents service providers from discriminating against any… return to article
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Reader Comments (20)Page 1 of 1 pagesHistorically the Telecomms have made these same arguments over and over and over-- that if government doesn’t do this or that, then the network won’t get built or won’t be expanded. Well, every time that’s happened, they’ve gotten what they wanted and then the network wasn’t built or expanded BECAUSE they got what they wanted and the incentive to do it was then gone. Where’s the broadband to every home we were promised in 1996? Obviously the CWA hasn’t paid attention to historical precedent. The Telecomms scaled back shortly after that legislation was passed, and CWA workers lost jobs.
And now the Telecomms want us to legislate against Net Neutrality, a principle that was IN PLACE when the internet became so successful. The Telecomms would have us believe that if Net Neutrality is mandated they won’t build out the networks. This study, however, done by a couple University of Florida Economists, gives us the reason why exactly the opposite is true:
http://www.hearusnow.org/fileadmin/sitecontent/TheDebateonNetNeutrality.pdfThough I understand that CWA people might need to be careful what they say, they surely can’t buy into the forked tongue statements of the Telecomms when so much historical and empirical evidence puts the lie to Telecomm claims. It will surely cost them more jobs if Net Neutrality isn’t mandated.
Posted by beejay on Mar 26, 2007 at 12:01 PM Beejay, the telecoms of 1996 were different animals. The players are different today, and more importantly, they’re free of the regulation they were still emerging from at the time. The market is more competitive than it was then, so there IS pressure to innovate and compete in a way there just wasn’t at the time.
But about CWA—I happen to work for a group that they’re a member of, Hands Off the Internet. I don’t want to speak for them, but this time around there is re-regulation looming that seems highly likely to scare off potential investors. I am familiar with the UFL study you cite, but are you familiar with its critics? Among them, Richard Bennett, one of the inventors behind ethernet:
http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2007/03/12/net-neutrality-in-broken-e english-and-bad-logic/And that’s one of the other points often lost in the net neutrality debate—there are many more “fathers of the Internet” who oppose far-reaching, prohibitionary net neutrality laws than those who support it. The truth is nobody really knows what will happen with the Internet in 5 or 10 years, and passing laws that try to predict it is foolhardy at best—but maybe worse.
Posted by HOTI Dave on Mar 27, 2007 at 2:37 PM Yes, Richard Bennett is VERY vocal. But for every comment he makes there are just as many tech types who work with the protocols and networks every day in the trenches who don’t agree with him. They just don’t yell as loudly or as much as he does. Do a search on Slashdot if you don’t believe me.
For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, Hands Off The Internet is an astroturf group funded by the Telecomms.
Net Neutrality is the reason the Internet isn’t just another cable TV spinoff. The Telecomms, if they want to survive, need to morph into a more Media type profit base, but unless they control content, the income stream won’t be as fat. They have a VESTED INTEREST in killing the bottom up nature of the internet, and turning it into a top-down scenario, the way cable TV is.
http://danielhaggard.com/?p=4
Daniel said it pretty well, I think.
Posted by beejay on Mar 27, 2007 at 2:52 PM BJ is the usual leftist smear artist, he can’t argue with the message so he tries to discredit the messenger. In his blowjob world no one can have an honest difference of opinion, you are in the pay of the vested interests and he is fighting for the little guy, like Chicago cabbie whose face looks like David Irving’s hemorrhoids on a bad day.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 27, 2007 at 4:55 PM HOTI Dave, I am SO HAPPY that blondemike decided to defend you instead of me. ;-)
Posted by beejay on Mar 27, 2007 at 5:58 PM Beejay, if you call us “astroturf” then the term has no meaning. Look at the front page of our website—AT&T;, Alcatel and the many other groups in our coalition are listed.
What is your standard for astroturf. Is your definition simply “a group I don’t like”? I don’t endorse blondemike’s choice of imagery, but he is correct that you haven’t actually addressed the substance of my comments.
Your conspiracy theory about telecoms wanting to “destroy” the Internet is year-old rhetoric that nobody with a serious interest in the debate brings up anymore. If they did try to do so, antitrust laws would be enforced—which is one big reason why a specific net neutrality law is pointless. The real question is how to pay for building out the last mile. Verizon for one has spent billions to do so in just the past couple years—and yet you disbelief that the telcos will actually build new infrastructure?
Additionally, Slashdot has plenty of people arguing on both sides—but when you get up to the heavyweights, the guys who wrote the network protocols, you’ve got Vint Cerf on your side and then everyone else on the other side. Bennett is far from alone—there’s Robert Khan, Michael Katz, Dave Farber, and longtime observers like Jerry Pournelle and Robert Litan.
Moreover, Vint Cerf works for Google, while the best anyone’s been able to do to compromise the net neutrality skeptics is one or two of them have had academic research funded by telecom firms—not the main source of their livelihood. And to be clear, they are academics.
Posted by HOTI Dave on Mar 28, 2007 at 9:50 AM Good work, Dave. BJ is a goof. Hardcore collectivist.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 28, 2007 at 4:08 PM Here’s a letter that I wrote to Larry Cohen, President of the CWA.
Walter
March 28, 2006
Dear Brother Cohen,
I am a retired San Francisco union janitor. I was a member of SEIU Local 87. I now live in Chico, CA.
I just got through reading an article from In These Times titled “Not Neutrality” by Brian Cook, about the apparent opposition of your union to legislation to keep the Internet neutral. If this is true, I am surprised that your union would be willing to allow for a situation, where the public would only be able to read what the greedy corporations and the Republicans want us to read on the Internet. It is to the benefit of the common good that the CWA support rather than oppose this legislation. If we can only read on the Internet what the corporations and their Republican benefactors want us to read, it could very well benefit those interests. Ultimately, this will make for less rather than more union jobs, and furthermore more outsourcing of our jobs. If the CWA opposes legislation to keep the Internet neutral because of a false belief that more jobs will be created if the telecommunications moguls have their way, I am reminded of how several San Francisco unions back in the 1970’s and early 80’s, that wanted more high-rises to be constructed believing that more union janitors, restaurant, store, and other workers would be hired. It didn’t happen.
Fraternally,
Walter Ballin
Posted by Walter on Mar 28, 2007 at 8:20 PM Back in the day, the old Bell System (with over a million employees) was often called “the largest socialist state west of Eastern Europe.” Therefore, not unlike it’s former Iron Curtain cousins, “party” insiders (like CWA and its leadership) remain desperate to hold on to what they have and long for the good old days without the real inconvenience of free markets realities.
Also similar to Eastern Europe, brilliant insider oligarchs, like SBC’s Ed Whitachre, have become fabulously wealthy “in these times” expanding his de facto monopoly while working a delusion of free market competition largely through buying the necessary government influence (which is readily for sale) and promoting fear by threatening the continued loss of jobs.
Both Republicans, proxies for corporate, and Democrats, proxies for organized labor, are generally paralyzed to taking an honest position on behalf of the long-term interests of the American people. Sadly, many Black legislators in both national and state government, usually some of the most resistant to this kind of obvious corporate sell-out, are unusually willing to take this money, since they can also count on the cover of organized labor (like CWA.) . We really are in a “race to the bottom,” as none other than Ed Whitachre, himself, once said, but the oligarchs get richer and richer, politicians collect, real development of the web is stagnant, stockholders are 40% poorer, and thousands of jobs are still lost.
America has fallen from 17th to 21st in worldwide broadband deployment in just the last couple years. This is a national embarrassment…but as long as the oligarchs can threaten the loss of good jobs and fear of investment, this artificial paranoia will continue to trump everything, including preserving and enhancing a really open web that has facilitated more real wealth creation and done more to advance world-wide democracy than any single human development in the last 100+ years.
egChicago
Posted by egchicago on Mar 29, 2007 at 12:13 AM In response to egChicago, I say that the telecommunications industry and all of our public utilities should be socialized.
Walter
Posted by Walter on Mar 29, 2007 at 12:31 AM You guys are totally braindead. Government ownership and central planning and state socialism have failed in every country at every time it was introduced.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 29, 2007 at 11:09 AM @ Walter
“If this is true, I am surprised that your union would be willing to allow for a situation, where the public would only be able to read what the greedy corporations and the Republicans want us to read on the Internet.”
Luckily, this is not true. Frankly, I’m flummoxed that this notion that cable and telephone companies would want to make their service less useful to customers by blocking them from their favorite websites. Maybe because it helps drum up support among people who can’t follow the technical details? Nobody is going to outright block sites, period. What could happen is companies willing to pay for faster access could be able to. Net neutrality laws would make that service illegal—even though it’s essentially the same thing as Akamai offers to online businesses already.
@ egChicago
I bet we disagree on a lot, but we certainly agree that the US is falling behind and universal broadband is important. So black legislators are opposing the net neutrality bill for the same reason as the CWA: because chances are very good it would scare off the investments that would bring a) better access and b) more jobs by laying new fiber.
Posted by HOTI Dave on Mar 29, 2007 at 12:17 PM @Walter,
I read CWA President Cohen’s reply to your email on your blog and it appears that you are still not convinced that CWA supports an open internet. He clearly states, “the problem with those who tout net neutrality is that they fail to address the US slumping position as now 21st in the world on internet deployment and dropping--our focus is universal, affordable and world class speeds”.
Additional information on their website, www.speedmatters.org also states, “public policies should support growth of good, career jobs as a key to quality service.” What union doesn’t want good jobs for their membership?
Posted by unityworks on Mar 30, 2007 at 10:13 AM “If they did try to do so, antitrust laws would be enforcedwhich is one big reason why a specific net neutrality law is pointless. The real question is how to pay for building out the last mile. Verizon for one has spent billions to do so in just the past couple yearsand yet you disbelief that the telcos will actually build new infrastructure?”
First of all, the telecomms AND cable cos have already discriminated in the matter of VOIP, a competing business interest. And might I mention TELUS blocking the Union’s site during a labor dispute? Laws are one thing, enforcement is another. Also, I do disbelieve that the telcos will actually build the new infrastructure in any meaningful way if they get what they want re net neutrality. The precedent is there for all to see, since we don’t all have broadband access that was promised by the telecomms in 1996 in order to secure billions of dollars in tax incentives to build the network that would give us that access.
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=2 206
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=1 196
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Ask_this.view&askthisid=1 186
I’m also going to bring up another point that I’m sure you telecomm groupies will cry foul over-- Local Loop Unbundling. It’s the regulation that is in place in pretty much all the countries that are beating our butts in meaningful broadband deployment, and in most cases in fiber optic deployment. It also guarantees real competition instead of the quasi competition we seem to have here in the US, with Ed Whitacre who has promised his stockholders that if they build out the network there will be no price slashing in the TV supplier arena.
Just to bring the point home, Vermont seems to be doing very well without any significant mega-telecomm presence. And much of Utah has pretty good broadband infrastructure as well, and they have a community net competing with Qwest.
Posted by beejay on Mar 30, 2007 at 10:41 AM “So black legislators are opposing the net neutrality bill for the same reason as the CWA: because chances are very good it would scare off the investments that would bring a) better access and b) more jobs by laying new fiber.”
No, minority legislators are opposing Net Neutrality because companies like AT&T;and Verizon are hugely major contributors to groups such as League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and The National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL), who are the major sources of the vote for those minority politicians. So even though voting against network neutrality isn’t in their best interest, it’s also not in their best interest to vote for it. Funny what pots of dough can buy these days.
Posted by beejay on Mar 30, 2007 at 11:52 AM Thanks, BlowJob, for that profound insight. Nobody could honestly oppose anything because they are all bought off by special interests. Old degenerate Karl M would be proud of you.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 30, 2007 at 1:07 PM “the telecomms AND cable cos have already discriminated in the matter of VOIP”
They have? Example, please. Last year net neutrality supporters went out of their way to find examples of what they thought were examples of discrimination like this, and none of them held up. I don’t even remember which one you would be referring to. But I do remember when everyone said that Cox was blocking Craigslist and *obviously* that was because of net neutrality… until, of course, it turned out that it was all a software problem on Craigslist’s end—which they fixed and has been working fine ever since.
And TELUS is… how do I put this? Not an American company and not subject to American laws. I’m not familiar with what might have happened there or not, but it doesn’t apply.
Posted by HOTI Dave on Apr 2, 2007 at 10:37 AM So, let me get this straight. You’re saying that the TELUS incident, which had to do with an ISP that blocked the website of the union it was in dispute with, which occurred in a country which did not have Net Neutrality safeguards in place, is not applicable because it happened in CANADA?
I guess we should expect this sort of argument from an employee of the same outfit that hired Mike McCurry, the guy who stated in an editorial in the Baltimore Sun, “The “neutral” proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use, and consumers who may only use their computers to send e-mail and play Solitaire get to foot the bill.” Funny how Mike never did respond to the challenge that he should trade bandwidth bills with Google.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060801/0219252.shtml
Saying that AT&T;would not engage in anticompetitive behavior is specious in light of recent evidence, though the behavior in this instance occurred on their cell network, rather than the landlines.
http://www.dailytech.com/ATT+Sued+For+AntiCompetitive+Call+Blocking/article6715. .htm
Re blocked services, there was Madison River, the most written about case, which actually for once resulted in an FCC fine instead of them looking the other way (probably because MR was small potatoes with few lobbyists and no clout) but there are plenty of others. Saying that a certain company has not blocked just means they haven’t blocked yet.
http://wireless.itworld.com/4274/050325clearwire/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051025/145250.shtml
http://www.voip-sol.com/10-isps-and-countries-known-to-have-blocked-voip/
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1747343,00.html
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-isps-are-revolting-more-isps-blocking-non-n native-voip
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=71020&site=lightreading
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/05/05/blocking-voip/
Posted by beejay on Apr 3, 2007 at 1:58 PM Beejay, that TechDirt quote takes McCurry badly out of context. Where he wrote that Google “never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use” refers to what Google is asking out of the Dorgan-Snowe bill, not what they pay now.
In context, he is absolutely correct: Google, like eBay and Amazon are engaged in rent-seeking: They are asking Congress to make it illegal for ISPs to charge for a service that they want, but don’t want to pay extra for.
The Madison River case is complicated, but it actually undercuts your own point: the FCC looked into it, and it was resolved quickly. Is a sweeping new law necessary? Obviously not. There are laws on the books to deal with any anti-competitive behavior, so why pass restrictive new ones like Dorgan-Snowe?
As for the call blocking, you do realize that those “free” calls are NOT free, right? They’re costing someone, and they’re costing AT&T;millions—a solution is in the works, but there are no free lunches. To call a case of one company free-riding on another “anti-competitive” is pretty disingenous.
Posted by HOTI Dave on Apr 4, 2007 at 8:58 AM “Peter Morici, an economist and a business professor at the University of Maryland, agreed the regulatory environment in the United States needs to be improved. He cited as an example how U.S. communications companies face stifling layers of federal and state regulations. “
“But he also said the network providers need to get the Internet infrastructure to operate faster instead of worrying about protecting their businesses from competitors.”
“We haven’t gone backward, we’re just not moving forward,” said Morici. “We haven’t adequately built out our competitive technologies, and other countries are moving ahead. Unfortunately, it’s in the hands of cable and telecom companies. They’re not always forward-looking companies.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/29/BUG41OTHE71.DTL&a amp;type=tech
Almost every other developed country has a cohesive and comprehensive national strategy to stimulate the deployment of high speed broadband by establishing specific goals and policies. In the U.S. there isn’t a systematic or organized plan. The U.S. should develop a systematic plan, because the current policy vacuum threatens America’s ability to maintain leadership in high technology and applications.
The United States, which topped the World Economic Forum’s “networked readiness index” in 2006, slipped to seventh. The study, out Wednesday, largely blamed increased political and corporate interference in the judicial system.
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8O58PMG0.html
How can the U.S. remain competitive with other economies that have already adopted policies that facilitate job growth, business advancement, and individual achievement through access to information and markets?
For additional information and resources on this go to Speed Matters at www.speedmatters.org.
Posted by unityworks on Apr 13, 2007 at 11:53 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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