[ NNSquad ] "Wire/Fiber/Radiowave Neutrality

[Rollie Cole <rolliecole@gmail.com>]

Lauren et al.

I hear Lauren "esposing" a view of "neutrality" that applies to the connection between a user's site (home or office) and the provider's collection point. That is, does the provider treat bits from its sources (say TV/Movie producers with whom it has contracts) more favorably than bits from others with whom it does not have contracts.

Verizon FIOS provides an instructive example -- the original rollouts with which I am familiar were capable of 100 Mbps in both directions. Yet Verizon made only 2 to 15 (or so) of the upload capacity available to end-users and only about 5 to 20 (or so) of the download capability available. All the rest was reserved for Verizon's chosen content providers.

If, as appears likely, we are going to have bandwidth caps on the Internet portion, but not on the "provider-supplied" portion, then the situation is still more uneven.

Add in the fact that substantial public good was involved in the rights of way, utility easements, and the like.

But -- and this is my question -- would this be an acceptable price to pay if the resulting "open service" to the end-user, caps and all, provided more to the end-user than an alternative "all-internet" system?

Compare DSL on copper with Verizon FIOS; the DSL is "all Internet" and thus has none of the uneven treatment of "provider supplied" content. Yet the amount of "open Internet" available is far less than the "unevenly treated" open Internet that Verizon provides as part of its FIOS offering.

Cable offers a similar ("faustian"?) bargain -- more "open Internet" for you, but still more favorably treated content from me.

We get "sort of" the same deal with triband radio. One portion (the first-responder portion) gets an entire "band" all to itself, maybe even two bands; the rest of us have to share the third band. But since the costs of one tower/transmitter combo for 3 bands is way less than 3 times the cost for 1 band, those of us treated less favorably get a better deal than full evenness.

John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher, in his THEORY OF JUSTICE, suggests we should tolerate that degree of uneven treatment that makes the least-favored the best treated they can be. This is NOT "trickle-down" but recognizing that some, but not unlimited degree of uneven treatment may make the pie larger, and thus the smallest piece is bigger than it would be if all pieces were equal.  The "devil details" are getting the degree of unevenness correct.

-- 
Rollie Cole
5315 Washington Blvd
Indianapolis, IN 46220-3062
317-727-8940