NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: FCC Hearing tomorrow (Monday, 25-02-2008)
Brett,
Please help me understand your statement: > I rather doubt that Vuze would be willing to publish my response, because > its entire business plan consists of attempting to take bandwidth from > me and other ISPs, without compensation, rather than paying for it.
Rahul
************************************************************************ Rahul Tongia, Ph.D. Senior Systems Scientist
Program in Computation, Organizations, and Society (COS) School of Computer Science (ISR) / Dept. of Engineering & Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA tel: 412-268-5619 fax: 412-268-2338 email: tongia@cmu.edu http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia
At 10:03 AM 2/25/2008, Robb Topolski wrote:
It is unfortunate that Brett was not added. As a small independent
operator, Brett is neither part of the duopoly,
Indeed. And in the hearing, which is going on now, speaker after speaker is railing against the "duopoly," without realizing or acknowledging that the regulation proposed by Vuze and Free Press would cement the duopoly and hobble or destroy small providers such as mine. If I were to turn off our P2P mitigation right now, our customers would start to complain and to leave immediately.
nor is he a purchaser of "last-mile" service.
Actually, I am -- but as a competitor and for my backbone links.
Fortunately, Richard Bennett is on the agenda, I am familiar with his views, and he has most of Brett's interests well at hand. He's not a perfect proxy, but he is a good one, IMHO.
Richard Bennett is certainly a good person for them to have on the panel.
But he and other advocates of reasonble network management are outnumbered
2 to 1. What's more, I just listened as the representative of Verizon --
perhaps because he'd been told to do so by staff -- spent his entire time talking about cell phone text codes and not broadband. So, in effect,
the presentation is even more slanted against ISPs.
What really startled me is that some of the speakers asserted some completely
insane views. For example, one stated that he believed that there should be no "tiered" services -- in other words, that we shouldn't be able to provide more bandwidth for more money!
(Note: I do not find myself agreeing with either of them very often, but I am inclined to consider what they say and I have learned from both of them.)
Brett has already filed his written response to the FCC. Brett could have appeared in Boston and recorded his response at the hearing site.
It would be rather silly to travel all the way to Boston to record a video for transmission over the Internet, rather than doing it here.
These are also being made part of the record.
He may also upload his response to Vuze (still can, I believe). I am not sure if this final method becomes part of the official record.
I rather doubt that Vuze would be willing to publish my response, because its entire business plan consists of attempting to take bandwidth from me and other ISPs, without compensation, rather than paying for it.
Based on what I'm hearing and reading, the FCC commissioners are going to be especially interested in the views of small, independent operators like Brett.
Then why was there not a single one on any of the panels?
I encourage him to continue to pursue this, but I also warn him that
they've heard and will hear plenty of bluster from the big operators that
serve 97% of broadband providers.
He will be well advised to focus on his unique observations, needs and concerns as a wireless ISP, someone who competes with these big companies without either "open access" or the use of public infrastructure. While he might mention those problems and views that he has in common with those large operators, he should focus his efforts on getting them to understand how they are different.
My filing with the FCC at
http://tinyurl.com/2wf6nd
says a lot of it. But I'm a voice in the wilderness -- literally and
figuratively -- because most of my peers are too busy actually WORKING to get involved in politics. (I'm really too busy to do it as well, but I take the time out of recreation and sleep.) Many of them are "lone wolves"
and are hard to reach. And some may not understand the import of the current proceedings.
--Brett Glass