The Glade 4.0

Not really. It is expensive though.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Don't be fool.

Everyone in the chain. from the last mile ISP, to the site owners at the other end stand to make money hand-over-fist on this except the consumer. When this happens, google would be able to pay off our national date with one day's revenue. You want the perfect business model example, check your cable bill (or someone elses if you dont' have cable).

Oh, and all of those 'layers' will provide access points for local, state, and national govenernements to introduce taxes and fees (again, see your cable bill for how this already works).

Do you think it's coincidence that almost all cable companies are also last-mile ISP's?

Yeah, I remember when people not standing for it killed the recent move of cell providers back to metered usage instead of flat charges oh wait.

It's good if they make loads of money because then they will put down more fiber. Do you think they'll just stash their profits under a mattress? I do disagree with government taxes being introduced.

To be honest, I'm not really sure where I stand on net neutrality. Generally speaking, I think it's better to just let market forces (supply, demand, consumer wrath...) do their thing and have the government butt out of it. The problem, of course, is that the telecom industry is not free market, and it isn't going to achieve a natural and desirable state of equilibrium by treating it like one when it really isn't. This especially true where landlines are concerned, and these absolutely integral to any discussion of internet routing, regardless of wireless "last mile" consumer ISPs (ex. 3G/4G).

I'd rather the government not dictate anything about how consumers and providers decide to engage one another, even if it's in the name of maintaining neutrality -- the outcome of which I'm personally rooting for. I think the likely outcome of truly free market in this case would either be 1) neutrality or 2) competitively priced content-based routing.

In the context of that environment, I don't think that there's any reason to believe that 2) would be any more expensive to the consumer. All of the other goods and services you buy are subject to the price system, and their prices are particular to the good in question. You don't pay the same price in unit weight for potato chips as you do for, say, milk, and no one considers this to be a problem. Nor does it follow the most popular goods are going to be the most expensive. That kind of thinking considers only demand, but not supply, and is therefore draws invalid conclusions about prices.

But as I said earlier, this context is only achievable if you also address the myriad of other constraints, influences, and distortions of the market which aren't even on the table in these net neutrality discussions. And even if they were, I'm not really sure what the best policy would be with respect to natural monopolies, and that's definitely an issue when it comes to any kind of physical utility that takes up real space. Such monopolies may very well be "unresolvable" in some sense, in which case very basic, low-level net neutrality legislation may simply be the lesser of two unavoidable evils.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I didn't stand for it, and I don't have metered data usage, nor, to my knowledge, a company that's investigating surcharges to lift content-based restrictions.

Also, Stathol, GOOMH.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah neither do I.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It'll happen. And you'll have little to no alternatives.

I can live with no data on my phone.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It won't happen, because people hate plans like those. They'd make less money. Many people would rather have nothing than usage-based plans. People don't *need* Internet on their phone. It's not like oil for their homes or food. My parents quit AOL as soon as they made you pay per minute.

Everything you are so scared of won't happen because it'll piss off customers, which would be a net loss for the ISPs.

Or I'll start up an ISP that won't do it and get all the customers in my area, then start pushing others out of the market.

Invisible hand high five!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

If FarSky and others here were right, then there'd be no such thing as unlimited texting for cell phones.

edit: Can't type

Only it has already happened, in Canada. (For mobile charges. From an internet perspective we're still doing okay.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

And what do you plan to do when the content your customers are seeking would require you to route across the AS of one of those other ISPs who charges you based on the content type (i.e. everyone else, in this scenario)? There are really only three things you can do:

1) Raise your prices to cover your costs, at which point your prices are effectively the same as what you would have to charge them on content-type basis
2) Build out your own separate physical interconnect to every single content provider (good luck with that)
3) Deny service (or never offer it in the first place).

Your plan makes the assumption that you're going to be able to obtain peerless routing end-to-end with everyone. The only ISPs that have that luxury are the very big "Tier 1" networks. Everyone else can go jump in lake because their traffic isn't a big enough chip to negotiate jack squat with.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

With enough investment it can be done, and that depends on how many people want it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

What backbone provider will you connect it to?

Provider? Elmo will have such a large interest and following that he'll have all the money needed to build his own infrastructure.

You really try to pretend you know how this stuff really works, it is kind of cute.

With enough investment, it cannot be done by a single person trying to hump the big boys. Your only hope would be a LARGE venture capital investment. A lot of the data that goes across this country goes across AT&T placed Fiber, because no one else would get in the boat when they offered the investment option. Which means you, at the very least, will be restricted to paying what they want for an interconnection cost.

In other areas, you will need to interface with Time Warner, Level 3 Communications, Centurylink, XO Communications, and several other organizations that will be able to match your investment, regardless of how much you think you can muster. This will also limit what you can offer.

These companies dictate what you can pass on as a service if you are a last mile ISP. Then you need to pay a place such as Switch, Equinix, InterNap, etc. to store your networking gear. And then you are bound by the local laws as to what you can actually pass for traffic (no child porn, etc).

And if you do not comply your **** can and will be confiscated by the government.

This still ignores the minor costs such as buying your bandwidth, registering your IP spaces, paying for your WHOIS listings, actually setting up your LLC, etc. network design, , Staffing a Network Operations Center and Support team, being able to afford people who do network security, etc.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

heh

Beyond that, all the capital in the world won't help with underlying physical constraints that cause imperfect competition. Not everything is for sale.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

The most significant point in all of these conversations is that the federal government has inserted itself into the position of determining how these businesses operate (specific to how Internet Access is controlled).

Because these ISP's and other network operators have huge lobbying groups representing them, they will get what they want. You as an individual consumer have no power and no influence on how this plays itself out.

Again, just look at how cable companies operate now.

Buried in the weeds here... Comcast is trying to acquire a controlling interest in NBC/Universal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2210096420101222

**emphasis mine**


The regulations that the FCC will be implementing are pointless. I mean they aren't exactly scribed on a stone tablet somewhere. They will change. The 'restrictions' put in place for wired providers were simply the FCC bowing to pressure to reign in comcast prior to the NBC deal. I can assure you that the restrictions will change, and they will not change in a way that benefits the consumer. They will change in a way that benefits the large corporations, and the government organizations doing their bidding.

I thought this interview with Tim Wu was interesting.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadgetshow/videos/25/

The main problem with the concept of Network Neutrality is that it is ill defined and mostly just a handy umbrella for someone to use to push an agenda.

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Pretty much. Most of the people involved have absolutely no idea what they're doing or how the internet works, and what remains are foxes guarding the hen house.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Actually DS Comcast owns the HFC backbone across the US and the one across the atlantic. When ATnT took a soaking on fiber years ago, sections of it got snapped up by the various providers to augment their exsisting fiber. In many markets companies hold onto the old fiber as a switching option for physical damage.

In short, everyone pays comcast.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill