So I have to give kudos to the guy running packetlife.net. Its a great site for networking nerds like me, and he’s got some really awesome cheatsheets available. But he had a post this week that really struck a cord: Why network neutrality is a big deal. I dumped a less-edited version of this into the comments, but I wanted to flesh out the thought and post it here as well.
Internet connectivity isn’t like the highway system. The government doesn’t provide high speed links; private companies and giant corporations do. Ask Verizon how many million they invested in FIOS. It costs money to bury fiber or copper, buy or lease right-of-way, add capacity via routers, switches, DSLAMs, FTTx’s, Optical MUXs, servers etc., and once the line is in your neighborhood or house, the likelihood of a competing service coming in drops to almost zero.
As it stands, public opinion and the fear of government oversight has been the only thing stopping them from completely monopolizing their lines so far. But if they encroach slowly like they have been: capping transfers, “shaping” traffic, etc., ultimately convincing people that its really OK, and there’s nothing wrong with it, we’re screwed. Lets not forget all the lubing of the gears in Congress (telecom lobbying is a rather big business, on either side of this issue).
How about if you live someplace where there isn’t a BigName LEC? What if VZ or AT&T isn’t your ISP? How long before this type of tiered pricing is applied to the Qwests and the Level3 carriers? You get a discount or a kickback for every 10000 subscribers you have on a limited plan?
The biggest problem is much of our copper infrastructure is reaching its limits. Providers don’t want to bury new cable. They don’t want to install new DSLAMs, or cable nodes, etc. They want to keep riding the money train, soaking people for more money, for the same or less service. And they can, they own the line all the way to your house, and they no doubt own or lease the right-of-way for that service in your area. With your electric bill and water bill, there are government regulations and restrictions in place on those service provisions; there won’t be more than one electric service provider in your area, nor will there be multiple water providers, its just not feasible and makes no sense. Telecomm and data providers (ISPs) are in that same category, but are much more loosely controlled.
That’s not stopping the demand though. The Netflix On Demand, YouTube, Hulu, etc. In 5 years the amount of content distributed online will make today’s current usage look miniscule (just like the usage of 5 years ago looks so tiny compared to today’s). That’s banking on the hope that the entire system doesn’t collapse on itself in another year or two. The providers could have been spending some of those profits over the last 20 years to keep things up to date and rocking, and we could have a policy like Finland, where every citizen is guaranteed 1Mbps broadband.