[ NNSquad ] Re: Bandwidth tiers / caps proposed at Time Warner

[Wes Felter <wesley@felter.org>]

On Jan 16, 2008, at 8:34 PM, Robert Oliver wrote:

> Apparently things move quickly when the FCC investigates a cable  
> company, and Congress investigates the FCC.

There's no evidence that this is a reactive move, so let's not pat  
ourselves on the back just yet. I suspect Time Warner has been  
working on this for quite a while if it's going to be tested in Q1.

Wes Felter - wesley@felter.org - http://felter.org/wesley/

  [ I agree, this sort of project doesn't typically appear in such
    detail with a snap of the fingers.  Frankly, I'd much prefer
    published caps to "secret" caps.  No law forces ISPs to sell or
    promote services as "unlimited" -- and honesty in pricing is
    always a good policy.  Of course there will likely be
    competitive issues to consider so long as any widely available
    competitor continues to promote themselves as "unlimited" --
    but that's what the marketplace is all about.

    One thing we know for sure, users will be requiring ever larger
    amounts of downstream bandwidth -- the various video downloading
    and streaming services guarantee this, and it won't be long before
    users demand "HD Quality" in these as a matter of course.  

    But upstream needs will also be increasing rapidly, and not
    just for P2P.  If ISP topologies and provisioning don't take
    this into account, the current situation will be remembered as
    "the good old days" in fairly short order.  Hopefully ISPs will
    want to keep up.

    What continues to astonish me, however, is the extent to which
    ISPs seem to believe that it is proper to inspect and modify
    point-to-point data streams.  Broadly inspecting subscribers'
    content data to see if it contains "copyrighted" works (as AT&T
    is discussing) seems quite analogous to the phone company
    listening in on everyone's calls to try determine if they're
    discussing something illicit.  With a warrant, selective and
    highly targeted telephone content monitoring is legal, but
    without a warrant (well, at least until the current
    administration it seems) there has been general agreement that
    such broad monitoring would not be permitted.

    Similarly, ISP moves to inject their own messages and presumably
    eventually their own ads into point-to-point data (in the manner
    of the Rogers controversy and http://www.perftech.com ), seem
    beyond the pale.

    All of these sorts of factors and many others play into the 
    network neutrality debate -- their wide range and scope is
    part of what makes these discussions so complicated, and yes, 
    frequently emotional as well -- but potentially very useful.

      -- Lauren Weinstein
         NNSquad Moderator ]