NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Entry level pricing -- and sources of artificial scarcity
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Connectivity is a necessity – if you can’t
communicate you can’t do anything. That’s like saying education is
a luxury and you shouldn’t pay for schools if you don’t have kids
of a certain age. As I’ve said, this kind of attitude is not just wrong
but self-defeating since it forces us to pay high prices to privateers rather
than getting the benefits of what is essentially zero
marginal cost for communicating. C’mon – Government bad, business good? That’s
just a meaningless mantra. The important point is that once you’re just carrying
bits and not selling services there is no place to hide – you have much more
transparency than you do now. More important you have a chance to save gobs of
money by sharing a common infrastructure. Government simply don’t have the option of raising taxes
and there is no option for usage or subscription fees so they will forced to be
efficient. And they will certainly not build triple redundant broadbands [sic] when
we use 1% of one of them. In fact they wouldn’t build anything if they
can be off-the-shelf gear to make existing copper run at 100Mbps. Later when
the value is evident they can add more capacity or we can. The government isn’t Washington. It’s you and
your neighbors acting together. Enough of these conspiracy theories. If there is a conspiracy it’s telecom (and the FCC) that
manages to take our abundant capacity and use the powers of the state (OK,
Washington) to sell off our ability to communicate and charter companies to
dole out “spectrum”
at a high price and squat between you and your neighbor and demand some money
merely so you can talk across the fence. What could be more outrageous than charging us a monthly fee
to use copper that they paid for decades ago and used to lease at a high price
of a $1/month and have now jacked it up. Well, I guess creating spectrum
allocation and a police state to enforce it is worse. So, please none of this sloganeering. Think about the facts
of the situation. Government and business are mechanisms not good vs. evil. -----Original Message----- The only problem with this idea, (and I personally like
the concept) is tax-and-spend munis will use this to fill their coffers,
even more voraciously than the mob cable and telco outfits. You think taxes and surcharges are high now, wait till
they get in this business, the arrangement looks like a cash cow for them,
as Internet is NOT a necessity like water or sewer, thus they'll tax the
crap out of it. In reality the only way to promote better service and
lower prices is competition, and cable, telco and wireless should be
included in the mix. Robert J Berger wrote: > That was one of the most bogus and nonsensical
responses I've seen in > a long time. > > That's like saying, those who live in rural areas
should not be > concerned that they don't have electricity. > > And Shannon is not talking about being 100's of
miles from some metro > area. She's somewhere in the realm of 15 - 20 miles
from the heart of > Silicon Valley and just off a major road. I'm less
than 10 miles from > the heart of Silicon Valley and only 3 miles from
the heart of > Saratoga CA and less than 2 miles to an AT&T
U-Verse VRAD or the > Comcast cable plant and have no choice of any high
speed Internet. > > My company is literally in the heart of Silicon
Valley (Mt. View, near > the corner of El Camino Real and San Antonio Rd in
the same complex > where Interop had their original offices) and the
best Internet > connection we can get is 3Mbps down and 500kbps up
DSL. We can't even > use that to do remote work on our computers at work
and the overall > thruput is severely limited by the ridiculously low
upstream bandwidth. > > When I talk to Comcast to see if we could get their
service they won't > consider bringing service in for less than $10,000. > > If its this bad in Silicon Valley, what is it like
20 miles out of > most third tier cities in the US? > > We make sure that there are roads, water and
electricity to most > people in the US. High Speed Internet is now a
critical element to > economic viability and growth. Why is it considered
ok not to have > world class connectivity to most people in the US? > > China hasn't stopped building out hight speed
internet to their lesser > cities. The US is now behind Lithuania in broadband
deployment. > > Its because we allowed the CableTelcos to
re-monopolize the > fundamentals of electronic communication and to have
completely > captured their regulators. Its time for proper
divestiture. AT&T aka > SBC, the company that accumulated the capital to buy
the other Bells > by not building infrastructure and Comcast who is
more interested in > extending their content control by buying NBC than
building > infrastructure are obviously not going to fix that. > > And we the taxpayers and ratepayers should not be
giving these > oligopolies government money based on promises by
the oligopolists to > build more networks. That has not worked for all the
other billions of > dollars given directly or thru rate changes to the
Telcos for similar > promises. > > Its time to structurally separate content from
transport. Transport, > particularly "First/Last mile" needs to be
treated as a "common good" > like roads, sewers and water. Built and operated by
municipalities > and/or regulated monopolies. Note this would be just
the physical > plant, not the Internet service. Just the rights of
way, conduit, > utility poles and dark fiber. It would be the
substrate for a vibrant > marketplace of services on top of the physical plant
that would be > leased at prices based on 20 - 50 year amortizations
in open access. > > This is where government bailout money should be
going (along with > renewable energy infrastructure, but that's another
story). We need to > be building the infrastructure for our future. Not
stuffing the > wallets of cronies and corporate campaign
contributors. > > __________________ > Robert J Berger > http://blog.ibd.com > > On Oct 2, 2009, at 7:27 PM,
nnsquad-request@nnsquad.org wrote: > >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: Declan McCullagh
<declan@well.com> >>> Date: October 1, 2009 10:29:40 PM EDT >>> To: shannonm@gmail.com >>> Cc: dave@farber.net >>> Subject: Re: [IP] "Entry level
pricing" >>> >>> Shannon McElyea <shannonm@gmail.com>
wrote: >>>> I have hughesnet -- the only carrier to
serve where I live. It's >>>> expensive horrible and a threshold of
300 mb per day and if you go >>>> over it throttles to almost nothing for
48 hours!! Try getting any >>>> work done with that. >>> >>> My wife works in Mountain View and takes
highway 101 to work -- the >>> only highway to serve where we live. The gas
prices are expensive; the >>> commute is horrible and the traffic
throttles to almost nothing for 48 >>> minutes!! Try getting any work done with
that. >>> >>> Nevertheless, we still live in a non-rural
part of the SF bay area >>> because the benefits outweigh the costs.
It's true that we have much >>> faster Internet connections than you do, but
I suspect that you have >>> cleaner air and cheaper acreage. >>> >>> If all you care about is speedy Internet
access, there are plenty of >>> new lofts in San Francisco that will be
happy to give you 100 MB/sec+ >>> rates with no caps for a dollar a day. >>> >>> I know I'm being a little cute, but there
are some important issues >>> here: If you live in a
low-population-density rural area where your >>> only choice is HughesNet satellite service,
should IPers living in >>> high-density Manhattan condos be taxed to
subsidize running fiber to >>> the hinterboonies? And maintaining it after
storm damage? If it's not >>> economically feasible to wire your house at
a profit, who will (or >>> should) subsidize faster service for you? I
know you didn't call for >>> such measures, but other IPers have. >>> >>> BTW, it looks like you might be able to
upgrade from the "Pro" to the >>> "Elite" plan and boost your cap
from 300 MB to 500 MB: >>>
http://consumer.hughesnet.com/faq/fair-access-policy.cfm >>> >>> -Declan >>> >> > > |