Chaos Magnet

Net Neutrality: It's not just a good idea, it's essential

AT&T was broken up for good reason. Now, with the pending merger with Bellsouth, they're just about back where they were, with one big difference. Now we have the internet. Good, right? Wrong. AT&T is one of the largest supporters of the end of "net neutrality", which means that all data traffic is treated equally. If these opponents have their way, they will be able to blackmail content providers into paying an extra fee so they don't get degraded service. In other words, if Yahoo! pays a fee to Verizon, and Verizon is your ISP, you may see perfectly good speed out of Yahoo!, but, say, slow response from Google. Or worse, no response at all. Don't Be Neutral on Net Neutrality explains this a bit better, and includes this quote:

"AT&T CEO and chairman Ed Whitacre told 'Business Week,' 'Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!'"

Excuse me, but if it weren't for Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or any of the other content and service providers, why would you have those pipes in the first place? You DO get paid for those pipes. Your CUSTOMERS pay for those pipes every month.

ARG.

[Additional note: Without net neutrality, it would be easy for a conservative ISP to block postings like this one, if they don't like it. China has (no joke) 30,000 "cyber-cops" that block access to sites with information the government doesn't like. Right now that can't happen here. The death of net neutrality would be a first step in that direction.]

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