Congress to take on Net Neutrality in 2009

The key tradeoff will be how will this law balance “net neutrality” with “quality of service”. Right now isp’s can throttle other bits to make sure your digital phone calls get through (like to 911 or your mom or whoever), but with this? They can slow other traffic to make sure you don’t miss a minute of My Name Is Earl or Fringe, but with this?

I think this proposal needs a heavy dose of “be careful what you ask for”.

It should also make lame usage caps illegal. Comcast now caps your internet at 250GB/month which limits the free usage of internet based movie, music & VoIP services forcing to customers to use Comcast’s overpriced and inferior quality services.

I think this is ok as long as it doesn’t hinder QoS, and if caps don’t hurt that it should be included with this bill

You already proved what side you are on with this post Kelly and I agree with you. If they’re going to be double charging for one service then they shouldn’t bother putting caps on anything and rather invest some of that money into making speed and quality of service better.

@likeabite
I do support net neutrality. I don’t think the ISPs should be allowed to double dip and create a fast pipe for websites that pay extra to have their content delivered faster while slowing down everyone else’s website. All content should be delivered equally without discrimination.

What I am unsure about is whether we need net neutrality legislation right now. I appreciate both sides of that argument and am not sure which one I fall on right now.

We are already facing a crisis. The internet was based on the concept of freely exchanged information. Aside from the fact that it should be as cheap as possible, isp’s should either offer packages based on usage (I.e. unlimted for the young kids for a set price and 50 gb at a cheaper price for the person who is a below average user) or shut up enterly. It’s not like comcast customers can ask for their money back if they don’t use the 250gb alotment.

Lastly, they are supposed to be providers. As it is right now, they act as if the have the right to dictate what and how much content we view. That is big brothers job.

I don’t think the big issue is what sites will get delivered quicker but the torrents… I’m sure you can find the stats on what the torrents really cost and how much they suck up bandwidth. Net Neutrality is fine, but the business aspect of it needs to be protected or it will end up being another crash course like sub prime loans and the (union sucking) auto industry. I do support the right of the isp bottle necking exuberent usage. And I don’t even work for comcast.

VOIP, services are protected by the QoS standard. So long as ISPs abide by the QoS standard properly, those services will not be impacted. Let’s hope the bill has some technical provisions for such though.

I’m (thus far) behind the legislation from what i understand, but a great marker for it will be the Telecom industry group’s reaction.

If they’re furious and start cyring “Gov’t intervention” and try ti fire up the lobby machine, that will all point to legislation I’m a fan of. I manage servers from hackers & spam bots and know the value of ISP’s being able to interfere in their customer’s usage in the case of public good & protection of legit private resources but this “double dipping” crap has to stop. Burn the data caps if you can but I’d estiamte that one is unlikely…

ISP’s are so lame. They should be offering more services like IMAP and space to back up your home PC. That’s really the point where your fundamental internet services, like a private web site to be able to access and backup your personal address book should be. Backup your photos for hotlinking if you want. It should just be on your one ISP bill and not have to send all your data all over the entire internet to various cloud services.

But, instead of adding value to customers, they’re more interesting in fighting Congress over this net neutrality thing because they could make big money easy if they have their way with the public.

They could make money providing more services to customers too. But, the competition to force them to do so isn’t there because of their quasi-monopoly statuses. And, it would be more difficult than throttling bandwidth for web sites who pay for it.

The decision in one way or another will determine how the various networks choose to compete with each other.

Legislated net neutrality means that competition, for the most part, will be determined by availability, connection speed, and delivery method (as it has been for the past decade).

Without legislated net neutrality, we face the addition of allowed content types to this equation. This will segregate devices that can be used with network systems, and likely require individual subscriptions to multiple deliver systems rather than merely one or two (wired and mobile). Doing so would reverse us back to the days of old (ie. Telnet, AOL, Compuserve, Earthlink, etc.).

The latter is obviously where the network providers want us to go, because it means more money for them. I for one, as a consumer, am more for the prior – an open network where content is determined by the provider and receiver; not the middleman.

I think we need to pick our battles…and honestly, this one doesn’t seem worth it yet…let it ride.

End the low end GB caps and end the “Turbo” editions for the ISP’s.I have yet to see a reason to upgrade to an already slow connection that’s ripping a whole in my wallet.