Please wait in the lobby 

Heard it through the skyvine 

Sorry about Wednesday 

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Maybe what is needed is more legislation, not less. And not controls over what the Telcos and cable companies do with net neutrality but controls to force them to open up their monopoly to competing 3rd parties. eg

- Force them to sell wholesale bandwidth to 3rd party ISPs - Force them to sell space in their switching centres to 3rd party ISPs to unbundle the local loop.

When direct competitors are selling net neutral broadband, how will the Telcos be able to offer hobbled broadband?

The problem here is a common one to all utilities that have a monopoly hold over a single connection on the last mile. Phones, electricity, gas, water, sewage, cable TV, etc. The government has to control this for the common good. But the government can do this by granting a monopoly with controls or by creating an artificial market with competition. If they do the second, then they have to fine tune it to reflect changes in technology and possibilities. If they don't, it just falls back into the first approach. So we have the absurd situation of AT&T being broken up into the Baby Bells only for them to then merge back into a new "AT&T".

Before calling for Net Neutrality legislation take a long hard look at the UK experience and what the UK has done with BT. It's not perfect, but it almost works. BT had a similar government managed monopoly to the US Telcos. They've been forced to sell wholesale broadband and LLU. Now we have a genuinely competitive market that is forcing up broadband functionality and forcing down broadband cost.

And finally, the Cable companies have had it easy for too long. It's now time to treat them the same as Telcos. They got lots of tax credits for laying cable. It's now time to treat that cable as an unfortunate monopoly over a last mile and force them to open it up to 3rd parties.

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This is politically impossible right now in the U.S.

>>And not controls over what the Telcos and cable companies do with net neutrality but controls to force them to open up their monopoly to competing 3rd parties. eg

>>- Force them to sell wholesale bandwidth to 3rd party ISPs - Force them to sell space in their switching centres to 3rd party ISPs to unbundle the local loop.

Also impossible. The telcos, like the copyright giants, have successfully positioned their holdings as "simple property". They built the infrastructure. It's their property. Why shoud government come in and tell them how they can and cannot make money with that property? That's anti-business, anti-market, etc. Won't fly.

>>When direct competitors are selling net neutral broadband, how will the Telcos be able to offer hobbled broadband?

Agreed there.

>>The problem here is a common one to all utilities that have a monopoly hold over a single connection on the last mile. Phones, electricity, gas, water, sewage, cable TV, etc. The government has to control this for the common good.

This is where we are advantaged. Local governments can open the poles and buried conduits to other connections, just as they did with Cable TV thirty years ago.

At least here in the U.S., it's the only way.

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One strategy has been to relabel the Net's core virtue — the one we want to protect from the telcos — as "neutrality", and to fight the carriers in Congress to protect it. We've done this 1) while not clearly defining it, and 2) when in fact we've never had it where it counts most for users: in the last mile.

In both Congress and the media (outside of the blogosphere, where we're not doing so hot either), we're losing. In fact, it seems we may be doing more harm than good. Look up 'net neutrality' on Google and see what you find. Not pretty.

Telling a Republican Congress that it needs to regulate already regulated markets is an exercize in futility best illustrated by Hugh MacLeod.

We need to work around — rather than within— what Bob Frankston calls The Regulatorium. We can do this in the last mile by bringing in more participants, and opening up competition for the ones already there.

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What are the options here? - Wireless - Line of sight optical - Cable - ???

I suggested following the UK model and regulating the Telcos into selling wholesale bandwidth and LLU (Local Loop Unbundling). Is there a free market alternative that does the same thing? What if a major player (like Google[1], or AOL, say) went to the Telcos and asked to rent rackspace and access to the line in the Telco's local loop centres. And then used their backhaul and private network (built from buying dark fibre) to supply the internet bandwidth. Could the Telcos do this and find a cost level that benefited every one?

How about going to the other utilities with a last mile connection (electricity, gas, water) and offering the same thing? Electricity looks most appealing as they already have local transformers that can act as central points for groups of households.

Underlying all this thought is the belief that competition in retail internet provision makes Net Neutrality moot. That is right, isn't it?

[1]Remember those persistent rumours that Google was buying up dark fibre and had built a replicable datacentre in a shipping container?

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# Not the center but the edge of the network,

# Not the provider, the customer[1]

# Not the provider's infrastructure, all the choices available to a customer.

[1]And noting that the customer *is* increasingly the provider.

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This was done in the US and then the telcos simply bought their way out of it by having the law changed. The US incumbent telcos are essentially self-regulated and that's it. The only solution can come from new entrants (e.g. customer-owned FTTH).

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