How a US Senator thinks the Internet works

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: July 3, 2006 5:35:11 PM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, David Farber  
<dave () farber net>
Subject: How a US Senator thinks the Internet works

Can't we impeach Senators for complete imbecility? And this guy was  
on the committee determining telecom reform - Rob

Your Own Personal Internet
by Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen Wired Blog 27B Stroke 6
Thursday, 29 June 2006
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

The Senate Commerce Committee deadlocked 11 to 11 on an amendment
inserting some very basic net neutrality provisions into a moving
telecommunications bill. The provisions didn't prohibit an ISP from
handling VOIP faster than emails, but would have made it illegal to
handle its own VOIP packets faster than a competitor's.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the
amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works:


"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie
delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently
it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home
and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you
do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie
and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the
delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your
own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10
o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet
commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and
me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for
commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not
saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people

[...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the
sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading
this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to
understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the
internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump
something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are
filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to
be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of
material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you
know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't
afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to
dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should
develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what
consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small
businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone
shows that there is something that has been done that really is a
viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me."

The full audio can be found here. http://media.publicknowledge.org/ 
stevens-on-nn.mp3

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com




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