NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Net Neutrality and Competition
>From TechDirt 2/20/2008: EU Notes That Broadband Competition Means At Least Four Providers (News You Could Do Without) by Michael Masnick from the that-seems-a-bit-more-like-it dept on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 @ 6:56AM As the net neutrality debate is back in the headlines again, it's worth reminding everyone that this wouldn't even be a debate at all if there were real competition in the broadband market. Unfortunately, the FCC has chosen to use bogus numbers to determine if there's broadband competition, which allow them to claim that there's competition even if many people only have access to a single provider. Thankfully, it appears that Europe is going down a different path. It appears that European regulators have decided that it's not a competitive market unless there are at least four providers in the space. With less than that, regulations come into play to require line sharing (something the FCC did away with in the US), creating a more competitive environment. ============================= I am beginning to suspect that this whole analysis is just wrong -- multiple cell service providers have existed for a decade or so now, and those networks are the least neutral of all -- even specifying the hardware one can use. With acknowledgment to Bob Frankston, I think you get neutrality with abundance/slack, and you get non-neutrality with scarcity/tightness, regardless of how many competitors exist. Indeed, if the outcome of competition means that no one competitor has abundance (slack) competition may actually make non-neutrality more likely. Note also that a physically "abundant" network, like one built with optical fiber, can be run as if it were scarce (reserving a huge percentage of the bandwidth for the provider's content, thus making the remainder scarce/tight). But note also as Verizon, for instance, is gaining more experience with its fiber to the home deployments, it is gradually increasing the percentage of the bandwidth open to non-Verizon content in response to market demand (it can charge higher prices than for its own content and has less churn). So maybe, just maybe, this political/social problem could have a technology solution. -- Rollie Cole 5315 Washington Blvd Indianapolis, IN 46220-3062 317-727-8940