Re: out of order More DPI (or what Marketplace? djf)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Dana Spiegel [dana () nycwireless net]
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:53 PM
To: David Farber; brett () lariat net
Cc: ip
Subject: Re: [IP] More DPI (or what Marketplace? djf)

Brett,

Time and time again you trot out your company as a counter example for
what many are highlighting as the terrible telco/cableco monopolies/
duopolies.

You are right, you are a counter example. But not a good one. You are
one of the tiniest minorities in the "marketplace". Your policies
should be applauded, but they represent common policies of only a
handful of DSL/wireless ISPs out there. The vast, vast majority of
ISPs out there (and there are vanishingly few of them that are
"independent") don't share your viewpoint, your policies, or your hope
for the industry.

In New York City, a place where you'd think that there is excellent
choice and coverage, there is not. I can walk downstairs from my
apartment and purchase milk, or a shirt, or any of countless goods
from countless vendors. But I can purchase internet service from only
a couple: Verizon (FiOS), Time Warner Cable (Cable). Possibly, I could
get DSL (If I am lucky enough to live close enough to a CO), but even
then my choices are few: Verizon (again), Earthlink, Speakeasy,
Bway.net, and a couple of others. I may be able to get Verizon DSL,
but not the others, too, since Covad (the only real competitor to
incumbent DSL) may not have presence in my local CO. [1]

I'm not talking about theoretical circumstance. I'm talking about real
lack of availability. There are places in NYC where people cannot get
high-speed internet. And for those people, there's no WISPs (like
Lariat) to provide an alternative. Many others are served by only a
single provider (TWC). And many others, who might also have the choice
of Verizon DSL cannot choose another DSL provider for the reason
stated above.

When trying to install Wi-Fi hotspots, we run into the same issue.
Verizon doesn't know about a building (and thus isn't required by FCC
regulations to run a DSL line like they are with T1s). TWC doesn't
provide service to a building (no regs there either requiring
service). Maybe we can get WiMax from the few commercial providers?
Nope. There's a building in the way.

So I appreciate that you represent an alternative. But until you
provide nationwide service, I'd thank you to please stop claiming
there's an alternative for the 99+% of consumers out there that Lariat
doesn't serve. Free Press, Susan Crawford, and many others may not get
all the details right (and there are an almost infinite number of
details), but they've got the idea right, and they've got the research
to prove that they, not you, are correct in their position for how
things are.

[1] Plenty has been written about how the '96 telco act let a
"million" ISPs bloom (alright, plenty of thousands), and then the
ensuing decade of legal and political maneuvering by the incumbent
telcos has decimated that number down to dozens of barely scraping by
"independent" ISPs.

--
Dana Spiegel
Executive Director
NYCwireless
dana () NYCwireless net
www.NYCwireless.net
+1 917 402 0422

Read the Wireless Community blog: http://www.wirelesscommunity.info

-------------------
NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and
enables the growth of free, public wireless networks
-------------------

On Jul 20, 2008, at 3:51 PM, David Farber wrote:

> ________________________________________
> From: Brett Glass [brett () lariat net]
> Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 2:59 PM
> To: David Farber; ip
> Cc: dan () gillmor com
> Subject: Re: [IP] More DPI (or what Marketplace? djf)
>
> At 05:11 PM 7/19/2008, Dan Gillmor wrote:
>
> > The first two of those offer many different competitors. The last
> > offers, at most, two competitors in the vast majority of places.
>
> Alas, this is a common misconception which has been promulgated by
> many people (e.g. Susan Crawford and the lobbying group Free Press)
> in support of regulation of the Internet.
>
> In fact, there are somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 independent
> ISPs in the United States offering competitive DSL and/or wireless
> broadband service. (This is more than 80, on average, per state --
> and some serve multiple states and/or overlap with multiple
> competitors.) Even in our small city of Laramie, Wyoming -- with a
> population of 28,000 -- our wireless broadband provider now has
> three competitors.
>
> > They come from regulated, monopoly industries where they could not
> > have
> > pulled this kind of crap before; imagine, as someone else has noted,
> > if phone companies declared it their right to listen in on
> > conversations in order to sell products (or anything else).
>
> Our ISP is very protective of users' privacy and only monitors traffic
> for the purposes of maintaining quality of service, detecting abuse,
> detecting and repairing malfunctions, or complying with lawful
> requests
> from courts and government agencies. And we only alter or block
> traffic
> to prevent abuse (e.g. spam), enforce our terms of service, or provide
> Web acceleration (which can be turned off upon request). Should
> someone
> be unhappy with the policies of a cable company or telephone company,
> he or she should consider our services or those of an ISP like us. We
> are nearly ubiquitous.
>
> > This is not a fair game. It's a rigged one, with a "marketplace" that
> > is so uneven in power that the customer is helpless.
>
> While Congress and the FCC have done nearly everything they possibly
> could to prevent companies like ours from remaining as competitors,
> we persevere nonetheless. Alas, ill-considered "blanket" laws or
> regulations prohibiting what we do would not only impact competition
> but perhaps destroy it altogether, leaving a complete cable/telco
> duopoly. Most of the proposed restrictions on "deep packet inspection"
> (a misnomer, because an IP packet is one-dimensional and has no
> "depth" at all) would do exactly this.
>
> --Brett Glass, LARIAT (307)761-2895
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com