“ISPs have defended their right to operate a two-speed internet, at a key debate into the future of the web,” Jane Wakefield reports for BBC News.
“Net neutrality – the principle that all net traffic should be treated equally – has been challenged in recent years as ISPs look to make a return on their increasingly expensive networks,” The Beeb reports. “They argue that if content providers want to pay to get their traffic prioritised on the network, then they should be allowed to do so. But some content owners and digital activists such as Open Rights Group argue that such a policy would do long-term damage to the internet, which was always conceived as a platform for everyone – not just those with deep pockets.”
“A spokesman for ISPA, the body that represents UK internet service providers told the BBC that ISPs ‘should be free to manage their networks as they see fit,'” The Beeb reports. “He added that it would make no sense to throttle popular services such as the iPlayer. ‘That is just going to annoy your customers and they will leave,’ he said. The code of practice drawn up by the BSG this week is aimed at making it easier for consumers to see how traffic is managed on different networks.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As always, we back net neutrality; it’s the various “Net Neutrality” proposals (and their unintended/paid for/intended effects) that worry us.
If people spent half as much time fixing things that need to be fixed as they do fixing what isn’t broken, we’d live in Utopia.
All this discussion of US telecoms policy is entertaining, but irrelevant to the original article, which was about the conflict between ISPs and content providers in the UK.
However, it seems to me, as a conservative Republican from a conservative state, that free markets can only be an efficient mechanism when the market is actually free–that is, where willing sellers and willing buyers with comparable bargaining power can negotiate a mutually beneficial deal.
We do not have that in telecommunications because many consumers do not have any realistic power to choose a competing provider. If the monopoly that provides local telephone service chooses (for technical or economic reasons) not to provide DSL to a given location, the consumer has no alternative source for that service. If the monopoly that provides local cable television does not provide broadband, there is no alternative for that in most places. Wireless networks are rarely an economical solution for a household or business with a heavy data appetite. Even if someone wanted to switch services, many consumers are tied into long-term contracts with heavy penalty clauses. So, since there is no genuinely free market in broadband, it is foolish to expect the market to control abuses. Yes, there are risks in governmental intervention, but I think we should have learned that the only thing worse than a regulated monopoly is an unregulated monopoly.
As for those on here who suggest that it is morally OK to (1) induce a willing party to enter into a contract for providing his services for an agreed rate of compensation (some of it to be paid monthly and some of it deferred until retirement), and then (2) renege on the deal after the person has provided the agreed services in good faith… well, that isn’t conservatism. It is simply robbery. If the government can take someone’s labor without paying the agreed price for it, what is to keep it from expropriating any other form of private property?