Re: Network Neutrality and Groundhog Day

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Steven S. Critchfield" <critch () drunkenlogic com>
Date: November 13, 2008 6:01:39 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Network Neutrality and Groundhog Day

I get annoyed on a regular basis by Brett Glass'
characterization of internet competition as being the
same all over as it is for his company.

I do not know how the market is in his locality, and
will refrain from saying he is wrong in his market.

In the market that my money is involved in, the situation
is simple. Right now there are 2 main players, AT&T with
DSL for the moment and soon to have Uverse. Then you have
Comcast. After that you have a few independent DSL
providers who piggy back on AT&T copper to get out to the
premises. There is a wireless ISP, Clearwire available here
as well.

Clearwire is only offering 1.5mb connections and at a cost
of $29.99

Offerings for DSL are limited to 6mb/512k in my area due to
the hardware that AT&T has installed. AT&T offers 1.5mb DSL
for $32.95, but for $5 more, you get 3mb DSL, and another $5
gets you yet another double in speed. So 50% more in cost
and you get 4 times the performance.

Comcast is offering 12mb for $42.95. So top tier DSL price
and double the speed. Or to think about it, 50% more than
the Wireless ISP and yet 8 times the performance.

As far as I can tell, unless one must be mobile while using
the internet, the DSL and cable offerings out perform the
wireless ISP here.

Back to the idea of monopolies that Brett likes to argue
against. There is exactly 1 "cable" operator. It used to be
Viacom, and they sold the franchise to Comcast. There is
exactly 1 "phone" company with wire to the homes. Wireless
is the only option here for competition that isn't dependent
on one of the government anointed monopolies.

The AT&T here is a defacto monopoly because they are the only
phone company that owns any copper to the homes. Comcast is
a monopoly as they only have the ability in our market to
drag coax to the home. Independent ISPs here ride AT&T copper
to the home. They may be able to colo in the switch facility
and get the traffic out there to their own networks, but it
still had to cross AT&T's network.

Further, as to if a ISP wants to know what traffic flows over
the network for more than just management of the network, I
would point you to the phorm trials. If you could install
hardware from a third party that snooped all the traffic and
the third party payed for it, you might take it so you could
get those higher margins that you want.

Comparing google to AT&T or Comcast for being a monopoly is
not really valid. I can choose to use any search service I
want once I am on the network.

In the market for email service, Yahoo, Hotmail, google, and
many others are out there giving away free email accounts.
A consumer is free to choose the account they want. I do not
have those same options for my ISP with any decent speed.

There is probably a lot more I could write here in complaint
to the way these arguments are framed and carried out. I'll
leave it at this for now though.

Critch




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