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| Saturday, July 15, 2006 |
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Who do you trust to make the Net happen? 
| | ...they keep getting it wrong. They continue their sit-in with the far-left activist group MoveOn in support of the Clinton-Markey effort to dramatically expand federal control over the Internet. |
| | Assuming that free speech is in fact what they are interested in, they should oppose Net neutrality. Secure private-property rights and consumer choice will guarantee continued free speech on the Internet, not increasing the power of federal regulators and Washington lobbyists, as Net neutrality regulations would. |
| | Net neutrality mandates threaten the very diversity of Internet options and the innovation Christian Coalition members rely upon. |
| | In the end, I do not want to make too much of the Christian Coalition's support for Net neutrality because it does not really matter outside of the liberal blogosphere. |
| | Neutrality is a red herring, whether you're for or against it in the current political fight. The far greater danger is the carriers lobbying and litigating to death both backbone carriers and local competitors. The former are businesses that merely transport bits (the ultimate commodity business, and by far the most "neutral" out there) The latter include local and regional wifi and fiber deployment efforts. Some are initiated by local governments. Some are not. All are citizen workarounds of unhelpful cable and telco duopolies. The carriers literally want these eforts to be made illegal. To them only phone and cable companies should be allowed to carry the Net. |
| | Or so it seems to me, after reading up on what's happening behind the scenes, mostly at the state level. It's not pretty. For a peek, check this and other pieces at the Lafayette pro fiber blog. These are not liberal wackos. They're local citizens fighting to get what they want, with or without help from the local telco/cableco duopoly. |
| | The carriers, for their part, want to restore Ma Bell. But in a prettier form. |
| | All in the name of "business" and the "free market" defending itself from "government interference". |
| | All by corporate creatures of government-fenced habitats. The regulatory equivalents of zoo animals. |
| | The Net is the ultimate commodity. It's a big zero between anything. The shortest possible zero-cost data path between any two devices in the world. That's because, once the fiber is in, and the capacity is provided, its intrinsic costs round to zero — or close enough. There is no good analogy for it. Roads are about the best, but are finite and need upkeep. Only zero-cost teleportation -- a science fiction -- comes close. |
| | I'd like to ask the libertarians and conservatives among us to put on their free market pro-business hats and ask themselves which they'd rather have: |
| | - All the business made possible because of the Net?
- All the business the carriers and content providers (TV, voice, entertainment, advertising) can make with the Net.
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| | What are the curb weights of because of vs. with? |
| | Yes, there are costs to sink in building out the infrastructure. But after that the costs are extremely low. How do we get there? The answer may be polticized, but not necessarily along right vs. left lines. If you're pro-business and pro-entrepreneur and pro-growth, you want the Net built out to enable all that. If you're pro-Regulatorium (which includes pols of the right and the left), you want to keep the fedrally-controlled duopoly running. |
| | The carriers would have us believe that all the good we get from the Net is because of what they've done for us. Cable delivery. DSL. FiOS. |
| | But if we want to believe that, let's ask ourselves, Would the Net have ever happened if it had been left up to the carriers alone? |
| | An irony here is that the carriers may be in a better position than anybody else to take advantage of the because of effects of a fully commoditized Internet. Not all the advantages of incumbency are coercive. Some are just in being there first, and already having the customers. |
| | Please get this straight. I'm not saying the Internet is, or should be, free of costs to mark up and pass along. As Don Marti says, "Information wants to be $6.95". I am saying that, left up to the carriers alone (and they do want to be alone), the Internet will be rigged to their monopoly advantage. |
| | One challenge is to keep the market open. I believe this is what Dick Armey wants. But that's not what he's really fighting for, whether he knows it or not. |
| | Another challenge is to imagine enough because of effects to justify investment in infrastructure with few if any intrinsic billable qualities beyond what you get for hooking it up and keeping it up. |
| | That's the challenge that citizens, and a few entrepreneurs, are trying to figure out, mostly at the state and local levels. We should support them. |
Pouting routers
| | I'm at my sister's place for a little while before we head down to The Beach. |
| | Meanwhile, I'm getting on the Net nicely and trying not to get sucked into it. |
| | Anyway, when I got here she noted that the speed of the Net had slowed considerably recently. I tested it, and the speed was about 200Kbps down and 300Kbps up. |
| | So I had her unplug the Linksys wireless router, leave it off for a minute and plug it back in. New speed: 4000Kbps down and 350Kbps up. |
| | I have the same problem with a new Netgear at our house in Santa Barbara. Also with most routers I've owned and used over long periods of time. I also have it with cable modems. |
| | Anyway, I thought I'd pass that along, for any of ya'll who notice things slowing down. The problem might be easily fixable. |
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