Re: The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

[Jack Bates <jbates () paradoxnetworks net>]

On 4/25/2014 8:23 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> gulation to protect its monopoly power.
> I answered in a private message: Microsoft.
>
> Kinda obvious if you think about it for, oh, say, 12 microseconds.
The government actually had to step in to hinder them, as I recall, 
though I believe it was pointless. Relatively speaking, Microsoft had a 
short run monopoly if you want to call it that. They definitely had the 
market share. With the introduction of the smartphone and the tablet, 
people have required more versatile applications which tend to work 
across multiple devices. In this regard, I believe Apple won. Internet 
growth and consumer education have also altered market share. The money 
filtering into open source has fueled a lot of growth in software 
development and allowed a lot more flexibility. The change to OSX and 
x86 on Apple's part along with google and redhat's efforts have altered 
the playing field permanently.

> > Which were "Anyone afraid what will happen when companies which have monopolies can charge content providers or guarantee packet loss?" and 
> > "How is this good for the consumer?" and "How is this good for the market?"
> >
> > My answer was an attempt to say that if you don't have any government entities allowing and protecting (two pretty much interchangeable terms, I 
> > prefer the latter) monopolies the answer to the first question is "Huh?  What?" and to the second and third "Best service for the best 
> > price is pretty good for everybody.  Except the losers that can't rip you off without the FCC protection."
> While it is probably true that the gov't had a hand in the fact I have exactly one BB provider at my home, I am not 
> even closed to convinced that a purely open market would not have resulted in the same problem. But thanx for pointing out 
> an answer I probably missed.
In Oklahoma, I've watched WISPs take money from the various grants for 
under-served areas. They love to move into small cities and those cities 
are happy to have them. Their plan is well thought out. They know 
exactly how fast the telco will move to increase speeds and drop the 
requirement that you must also pay for a phone line (which the telco was 
just using to pull in extra money on the backside until the FCC finally 
changes that funding). The prices suddenly drop in the town. It's not 
the best service for either party, but it is at least more affordable.

The one that pisses me off is when ILECs use grant money strictly to try 
and wipe out their competition. It creates a very bad environment, where 
one company must use grants for the same area as another company just to 
stay competitive. I don't mind all these funds and all, but there needs 
to be much more oversight on how the funding is used. "underserved" is 
too broad, and the grants get used in anti-competitive practices against 
companies that don't pull money from the government. In addition, I too 
often see companies that have used grants not lower their prices, 
provide more jobs, or increase their bandwidth offerings. I hear 
corporate jet fuel is costly, though.

We still have huge areas of land that have little or no affordable 
broadband capability. These are areas that it isn't profitable to buy 
the equipment to serve and where grant money would do the most good to 
allow sustainable growth. What I've been pondering is the creation of 
non-profit ISPs, where the purpose is to actually serve the people who 
won't make you millions at cost.


Jack