NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] [IP] DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great
----- Forwarded message from "DAVID J. FARBER" <farber@gmail.com> ----- Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:21:17 -0500 From: "DAVID J. FARBER" <farber@gmail.com> Subject: [IP] DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great Date: February 13, 2013 7:56:34 AM EST To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net@warpspeed.com> Reply-To: dewayne-net@warpspeed.com DC think tank tells Americans that their broadband is really great Critics fire back: "But this isn't summer camp. This is our digital future." By Cyrus Farivar Feb 13 2013 <http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/dc-think-tank-says-state-of-us-broadband-is-good-and-getting-better/> Despite the fact that Americans are paying more per megabit than their counterparts in many European and Asian cities—a new report published by a Washington DC-based think tank says that broadband policy in America is totally acceptable. The 76-page report (PDF) released Tuesday says that anyone who disagrees with these findings “are holders of a particular ideology or economic doctrine, which is Neo-Keynesian, populist economic thinking in this instance.” Sure, the authors of this report—researchers at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)—say that there’s “room for improvement in selected areas,” but affirm that the “state of American broadband is good and getting better.” Why, pray tell, would they come to that conclusion? After all, the ITIF’s conclusions are in contrast to previous findings published not just on Ars, but other tech policy luminaries including, as the ITIF's report admits, “Susan Crawford, David Cay Johnston, Nicholas Economides, and Tim Wu and by think tanks and advocacy groups such as Free Press, the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation, Harvard’s Berkman Center, and Public Knowledge.” Those individuals and groups definitely have something to say in response. “The ITIF report turns our national broadband policy into a self-esteem exercise, on par with one of those contests where everyone wins an award,” Harold Feld, of Public Knowledge, in an e-mail to Ars. “'Hooray! We tried real hard and we're not so bad after all.' But this isn't summer camp. This is our digital future. If we want a world-class broadband infrastructure, we need to stop coming up with explanations for why things aren't really so bad after all and start dealing with the real problems right in front of our eyes.” Intermodal, not just for transporation anymore In its report, the ITIF outlines 10 major points as to why US broadband is awesome. We’ll take a few minutes to assess each point. 1. America enjoys robust intermodal competition between cable and DSL fiber-based facilities, with the third highest rate of wired intermodal competition in the OECD (behind Belgium and Netherlands). First, “intermodal competition” is just a fancy way of saying that Americans have the option of buying Internet from their cable company or a traditional telco providing DSL service. Of course other countries don’t have intermodal competition—generally, European telcos came into being as incumbent monopolies were required to sell off their service at a given wholesale price. “[As a result, European ISPs] could compete on price, but this competition was limited by the rate the phone company charged them for access,” Daniel Lyons, a professor at Boston College, told Ars. “And they could compete on customer service, billing, and other back-office processes, but these forms of competition don’t improve broadband performance and speeds.” The US has a high level of intermodal competition, ok—but other parts of the world have high intramodal competition. In practice, that means many Americans living in urban areas typically have a choice between Big Company A and Big Company B. We have a name for such a system: duopoly. Case in point: I live in Oakland, California. I have a choice between AT&T’s U-Verse or Comcast’s Xfinity. Right now, I’m in the middle of Comcast’s “promo price” of $45 per month for 12 Mbps of service, although my real-world speed tests often show twice that level. Comcast’s DOCSIS 3 service is mostly always going to be faster—so in reality, it’s not much of a choice. Sure, I could get satellite connection with data caps, for anywhere from $40 to $100 a month. If I lived in a different part of Oakland, I could even use the much-beloved indie ISP, Sonic.net. But the cold, hard truth is that in a major metropolitan area, I have exactly two choices between corporate giants. At the end of the day, neither I, nor most Americans care whether we have a cable or a DSL provider. We just want good speed at a reasonable price, and want a human being to actually pick up the phone when we call for technical support. Being intermodal is pretty immaterial. Of course, not all telecom analysts agree here. “Before concluding that a two-player market is competitive, we’d want to find some evidence of competition,” Lyons added. “Here, Comcast just finished an expensive rollout of DOCSIS 3.0 that gives its network a performance advantage over DSL. Presumably, if Comcast and AT&T were cooperating rather than competing, Comcast wouldn’t have paid for that upgrade. In response, AT&T announced a $23 billion push to deploy more fiber in its network—again, to improve its product and attract more customers. And the churn rates show that customers do in fact switch back and forth looking for the better deal—and no-contract plans make it easier for them to do so.” [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress> ------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message ----- --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
_______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad