Let’s Dissect The Cable Industry’s Latest B.S. Argument Against Net Neutrality
Excerpt:
Collecting Tolls For Roads You Didn’t Build
While the Verizons and Comcasts of the world like to pretend that they do all of the heavy lifting in bringing data to your home, the truth is often very different. In most cases, an ISP is only responsible for carrying data the “last mile” to the end-user. There are numerous bandwidth providers who do much of the long-distance hauling of data.
Much of the innovation and investment that the NCTA claims will be harmed by reclassification has actually been done by companies much further up the stream than your ISP. Verizon is not responsible for figuring out to compress and stream HD Netflix videos to millions of customers at once. AT&T did not create the smartphones or tablets its subscribers use. Comcast is not running multiplayer video game servers that allow players from around the world to square off in real time. ISPs are passive (and increasingly passive-aggressive) conduits through which this data is supposed to travel as efficiently as possible and with no regard for its source.
Interestingly enough, the companies that are responsible for many of the biggest and most innovative developments in online technology have written the FCC asking the commission to rethink Wheeler’s proposal.
And speaking of investment, a large number of venture capitalists — the very people who put their money on the line for these new services and technologies — have also come out against the draft.
Allowing ISPs to decide which content gets to users the fastest — and making this decision based not on the most efficient way to deliver data, but solely on who pays the most — is like handing over highway exit ramps to a private toll-taking company and telling it to charge whatever it wants to drivers looking to get on or off the Interstate.
Recognizing The Reality Of Broadband
There was a time, not very long ago, that Internet access was viewed as a luxury. The same was once true for running water, sewage, heat, electricity, and telephone landline service. But as use of each of these services evolved into essential utilities, regulators recognized that standards were needed to try to ensure equitable and safe access.
Reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service isn’t simply about working out a way to create net neutrality rules that stick; it’s about recognizing the reality that broadband is an integral and essential utility relied upon by both individual citizens and the companies they patronize and for whom they work.
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