(Good stuff. - promoted by phillip anderson)
The debate over the Internet, who controls the pipes that create it and how they're allowed to charge for the use of said pipes, goes by different names depending on which side of the issue you're on. For those dedicated to the formal establishment of the Internet as a neutral, even playing field for democratic discourse, the name is Net Neutrality; for those dedicated to an Internet free of political constraints and pressures, the name is Hands Off the Internet. Both sides of the issue bring with them legions of loyal activists and concerned citizens with the best of intentions.
But in debating this issue, we should not lose sight of where it began: with corporations. On both sides of the issue, there are huge multi-national technology companies pouring enormous revenue into winning this fight. They do not do this for ideological, let alone altruistic, reasons. As important as it is to understand the idealistic poles of this argument - as important as it is to be sure you're arguing for something you can believe in - it is equally important to understand the motivations of the companies fueling the debate. Otherwise, some activists may be surprised and dismayed to discover that they've ushered in a new era of profit making for one of two large camps of corporations. |
| Twenty years ago, cable and phone companies coexisted blissfully together, each providing completely different services to customers. Cell phones barely existed; wireless traffic was minimal and confined to the conversations of a few wealthy citizens. Most people watched network news as their primary news source and all the kids watched MTV to see the latest from their favourite bands.
But now, big telecom companies are in a fight to the death over every last customer, each having developed their own way to deliver the exact same services to the exact same customers. From your phone company, you might get DSL Internet, satellite TV and phone service; from your cable company, you get television, Internet and phone all through the cable wire. They spend millions in advertising each year, constantly offer package deals to try to undercut their competitors and constantly decry their competitor’s services as out-of-date. And this is only two companies, phone and cable, per city! Meanwhile, they both hope that the Wireless Internet won’t catch on, even as it already has. Now, a third party has entered the fray.
And why is it so vital to have the most complete digital access plan in the city? Because people want to watch television on YouTube.com and skip the commercials, or even because they want to watch commercials on YouTube.com; because people want to get their news and opinion from DrudgeReport.com, TalkingPointsMemo.com or DragonFlyEye.Net; because people want to use Skype phone service for free; because they want to listen to music in stereo quality for free. Most of the reasons to have either cable or phone service in your house can now be found on the Internet.
So, while the telecom companies beat each other over the head and undercut each other’s prices, they do so not in spite of -, not in ignorance of -, but for the sole purpose of providing their customers with more affordable options than the services that they used to reap billions for. The people who own those online services reap the billions lost by the Telcos. Every little bit of the profit-making that happens on the Internet happens over the very same pipes built and maintained by the Grand Old Telcos for all those years. And they want it back.
The plan among the Telcos is to create a two-tiered system on the Internet, wherein conventional web pages use a throttled bandwidth. This means that they each operate with a slightly slower connection that is adequate for transporting text and pictures, but not really up to the task of transporting larger files like video and audio. For those who provide online services that require the transport of large files over the Internet, a second tier is provided which costs extra money. This is of course to recoup the losses that Big Telco has lost due to the technology shifts of the last few decades.
And it is precisely those new web-based service providers – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Amazon, primarily – that are so vocal in defense of the “Net Neutrality” legislation that they seek. For them, a significant portion of the revenue they’ve been making up till now would be eliminated with the new “tax” imposed by the Telecommunications industry.
So really, you have your choice between Big Telco getting billions in extra revenue or Internet Giants continuing to reap the benefits of the new digital world. But that's not the only choice.
Remember that the Big Telco company you're using for your Internet service is indeed continuing to get paid for their services. As I've noted on my own blog, that pay may not necessarily be commensurate to your quality of service at all:
» Wire New York: The Truth About Broadband » The DragonFlyEye.Net Blog
Our Internet connection speeds do not come close to matching those of other nations, and our cost does not compare to the value at all. Just contrasting South Korea, France, Japan, Sweden and Canada, some of the top-ranking nations by price and by bandwidth, we find that South Koreans are charged approximately $0.68 per megabit per second as compared to our own charge of - get this - $18.95 per megabit per second.
Even ignoring the current lack of service, they are getting paid for your connection, and you're paying it. Why should they be allowed to double-dip into the till and get paid extra by the websites you want to reach? If by doing so they eliminate choices you might have previously had, does that not mean they're offering you less for the same pay?
That the Big Telco companies are losing money is a shame for them. However, in this changing world, we all need to reassess our priorities and make changes. A company that fails to do that would hardly seem worthy of our consideration, nor would it long survive in that free-market economy we keep hearing about. |
