Let users define "good Internet access" - they pay for it...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: David P. Reed [dpreed () reed com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:01 AM
To: Patrick W. Gilmore
Cc: David Farber; ip
Subject: Let users define "good Internet access" - they pay for it...

Patrick - a few further thoughts...
> From: Patrick W. Gilmore [patrick () ianai net]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 1:01 AM
>
> _EVERY_ network provider who sells you "TCP/IP based Internet
> connectivity" is overselling their capacity.
I absolutely agree that it is the nature of the Internet to require
overcommitting somewhere in the network.  If not in the edge access
network, then in the upstream gateways.

There is a corollary: there are always bottlenecks in the Internet.
Someone who purchases "Internet access" may buy a particular line-speed
*access line*.  But that doesn't mean that they can get that speed for
all services - because the "access ISP" would be a lunatic to guarantee
the performance of the Internet as a whole in terms of "rates".

But here is the deeper point about the debate about "speed" from ISPs:
in a competitive economic market, we don't need contractually definable
measures.  I have three access providers who are competing for my
business at home (Verizon FiOS, RCN, and Comcast).  Verizon is currently
sending door-to-door salesmen around to convert customers from its
competitors!  When did that last happen for most people?   I can switch
and come back anytime.  So the measure of what "high speed Internet" is
need not be any more complicated than: what David needs to feel he's
getting his money's worth.

It's only when we think (as many seem to!) that communications MUST be a
monopoly (either by "natural monopoly" logic or by regulatory "desire to
control kiddie porn, speech, and political elections") that the question
of "what is the precise definition of the indefinable" comes up.

It's sad, but in a time when the bottleneck is not in the fiber or
fiber/coax to the home, but in the level of interconnect that is
purchased by the access ISP, we create strange logics that say we must
*subsidize* fiber deployment and *grant incentives* by eliminating
competition.   I can afford myself to own a fiber to a head end, for far
less than the cost of an automobile or a kitchen renovation.  If I own
that, there would be LOTS of competition for my interconnect business,
and if we collectively bought a good high-speed switch fabric in that
local head-end, me and many others in my town could use P2P to optimize
the hell out of content distribution - downloading one copy of popular
streams like IP-based TV.  And until I get a few GB/sec going at home, I
wouldn't have to worry about much.

The whole game is, more than you would think, about preserving scarcity
and the privileges to charge rents as long as possible.  It's a game of
politics, not economics.  And the access ISPs are damn good, except when
they get 3 competing, as they have in Newton and Needham MA.   I suspect
in our neighborhoods, the competitors would be thrilled if they could
get a local utility district to build out the fiber and own it.

What we want is competition to provide user-defijned GREAT Internet
access.  Not hitting a number that is meaningless.



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