NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: [IP] Does AA VoIP usage violate the "federal Internet policy"
At 02:10 PM 9/16/2008, Lauren Weinstein wrote: >I have not yet taken a "formal" public position on the issue of phone >calls from planes. This seems to be an issue that has only come to >a head with the threat of largescale phone usage -- it did not seem >to be a big controversy when restricted to (expensive and limited) >use of Airfone services. > >However, blocking of protocols is going to open up the same can of >worms we're dealing with now in the ground-based Internet. Will >people try to do high-traffic P2P from the air? You bet. In fact, they may not be able to help it. P2P apps (the authors know they're stealing anyway, so why should they give a fig about the user's wishes?) often start up in the background every time the computer boots, without notifying the user that they will be eating his or her bandwidth. In any event, this situation reflects the vagueness of the FCC's recent ruling against Comcast. What is permitted? What is not? Under what conditions? The FCC, ignoring the Constitutional prohibition of vague laws, doesn't say. In fact, no one knows, at this point, whether ANY network management practice might rile the FCC, and small broadband providers such as myself are worried that we might be next to be pilloried, without warning, as was Comcast. See my filing at http://tinyurl.com/5gfn6p for 20 more situations in which no one knows how the FCC would rule. --Brett Glass