Re: U.S. Finance Sector Weighs In on Net Neutrality

[Greg Poirier <grep () reflexsecurity com>]

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 14:32 +0100, Drsolly wrote:
> So, if you take Sourceforge, for example. If ATT (or whoever sells them
> packets) decide to bump up their hosting cost substantially, they'll look
> around for a competing provider, and they'll find one, even if they have
> to relocate. And on the internet, relocating isn't difficult.

I think I've been thinking of this the wrong way.  It isn't about
increasing the cost of bandwidth, really.

I think what is at stake here are provisions made in Part II of the
Communications Act of 1934 (as ammended by the Telecommunications Act of
1996) that provide for non-discriminatory charging practices by Local
Exchange Carriers and Common Communication Carriers (phone, cable
companies and other bandwidth providers I believe are included in the
definition of these terms).  

> But this is already in place. What I find hard to fathom, is what *change* 
> is proposed.

Currently, I believe communications providers are prohibited from using
equipment or any other means to purposefully slow down access to
competitors.  

Without these provisions, there is nothing stopping Bell South from
disallowing access to Yahoo or Google's portal pages for all of its
customers.  I think Bell South may lose customers if they did something
like that, but right now that's what they can't do and what they'd be
able to do should Net Neutrality(tm) be abandoned.

-- 
Greg Poirier    | Reflex Security, Inc.
Sigma Team      | Network Security.  Simplified.

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