The Reality of Net Neutrality!
Andy Davidson calls it - “I don’t want an internet dominated only by companies with deep pockets.”
I might like to change that personally to “I don’t want an internet dominated only by monopolistic Telcoms.”
Healthy competition Scott - healthy competition. I know the research has been done, I’ve read yours, I don’t have another. I’ll find others but reality is that the “competition” people like Scott Cleland speak of is actually managed and controlled by the larger Telcoms therefore they aren’t true, healthy competition.
More Thoughts;
The Seattle Times - “The arrival of a wonderful communication tool to rural and poor areas of the country [the USA] is vital to the democratic principles of hearing every voice and every opinion. The Times’ editorial on broadband capacity notes the United States can be compared to a Soviet-era grocery store, and Japan’s Internet capacity to a Whole Foods. Countries wired for the future are automatically also wired for democracy, whether their leaders like it or not.”
“You’re not going to make more money if you’re a broadband provider by blocking web sites or impeding disfavored services,” said Mr. Billingsley. “This would quickly send customers packing to another provider. Instead, you’re going to want to offer customers more services, more things to access and therefore, you’re going to want to cut deals that are pro-consumer and offer choices.”
This is simply not true. Since our government is in bed with the major Telcos, there is no competition to truly speak of and we’ll be forced to continue to use what the monopolies have control over. That is why we used to have controls over monopolies!
Then, in an obviously blatant attempt at character assassination of a former FCC chairman, for the purpose of proclaiming their own self-righteousness, listen to this;
“The kinds of restrictions Hundt is seeking in order to benefit a handful of well-connected political players is not only wrong, but will also pose a serious threat to our vibrant and competitive wireless market—a market that consumers have enthusiastically endorsed in the absence of government regulation.”
Which really ought to read “The kinds of access restrictions AT&T is seeking in order to benefit itself and a handful of co-operative and well-paid political players is not only wrong, but will also pose a serious threat to our vibrant and competitive wireless market—a market that the major Telco monopolies are enthusiastically drooling over in the absence of government regulation.”
This entry has become a bit longer than I wanted so I’ll cut it off because there are other topics needing to be addressed. I’ll return to this again and again though… wake up America!!!
Tags: broadband-providers, consumers-choice, ed-whitacre, federal-communications-commission, net-neutrality, wireless-spectrumRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Web Happenings
4 opinions for The Reality of Net Neutrality!
Scott Cleland
Sep 18, 2007 at 7:24 am
With all due respect you are using a straw man argument/fallacy to make your point.
Over a decade ago 95% of Democrats and Republicans voted for the Telecom Act that ended monopoly era and promoted competition as the law of the land. The steady increase in broadband choice from the monopoly dialup era in the US has been remarkable. It is easy to make assertions about how one wishes the world was, but in the real world broadband adoption/competition has happened faster than any other communications service in history. Moreover the US has more facilities based real broadband competition than any nation in the world. Americans have more real choices for broadband, and those choices increase all the time, than any other nation. Is it perfect? Of course not. we don’t live in a perfect world. But are we making historically fast and comparatively better progress than other nations towards boradband competition? YES! This is a dynamic process that is continually getting better. It is uniformed and unfair to say that because broadband is not perfect its bad.
I have blogged over 500 times on these topics in the last year and a half. these posts are filled with the evidence you need to understand these issues better on a factual basis.
Scott Cleland
Chairman of NetCompetition.org
an eforum or broadband companies
http://www.precursorblog.com
mark
Sep 18, 2007 at 8:22 am
Really? Here’s how any simple citizen needs to understand it Scott! I live in Savannah, Georgia, USA and I have two - HEAR THAT??? - Two choices and I’ve lived here for nine years! Don’t give me this crap! If I lose one I really don’t have another reliable broadband connection to resort to - the second choice is reliant on the first. And that is reality throughout our land. The lesser companies are reliant on the bigger outfits. If AT&T wanted to shut down or throttle Little Joe’s cable co. in Smalltown, USA they could - they’d just feed it down the infrastructure connections…
Stop laying this garbage on the citizens of this country… strawman my a**
Oh and BTW - I have more than 2,000 Blog entries on all my Blogs, don’t start spewing about facts to me or this country either. The people have the facts and folks like those you support are preying on their apathy.
What is truly unfair is the level of arrogance the Telcos have exhibited towards the American consumer, people like Ed Whitacre. What is even more unfair is the money those Telcos are throwing around in all the “right” places to get their desired results! Dynamic process getting better? For whom?
Greed, pure and simple, Scott, greed. Monopolistic Greed.
shinobi
Sep 18, 2007 at 8:57 am
You blog like a dry drunk
mark
Sep 18, 2007 at 9:30 am
Yes I do shinobi, yes I do… thank you very much for your judgment.
Did you earn your 25 cents or whatever for that brilliant comment?
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