Re: "Entry level pricing" as social policy v2

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2-39 () bobf frankston com>
Date: October 2, 2009 10:51:37 AM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "Lauren Weinstein" <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: RE: [IP] "Entry level pricing" as social policy v2

Resending – had to drop a pointer as NNSquad seems to have gotten  
renumbered.

The market will likely do more than neutrality legislation to force  
the carriers’ hand.

If you want to reduce your costs by 50% simply share the connection  
with your neighbor using 802.11. If you want to reduce it further then  
share with everyone in your apartment building. Whether or not we get  
neutrality legislation this kind of aggregation and homogenization of  
bits is beyond the carriers’ control. The attempts to ban webcams and  
block ports are examples of failed attempts to prevent the inevitable.  
I notice my port 80 is no longer blocked.

Sure the consumer ToS might say you can’t share it among – among whom?  
How do they define the boundaries other than by intrusive social  
policy? Ultimately they can’t enforce these policies. The only thing  
slowing this casual aggregation is a lack of understanding and self- 
imposed limitations. If a lack of knowledge is the carriers’ only  
protection then the trend should accelerate.

In the loft example the building owners act as aggregators who then  
share the capacity. When will it become the norm for MDUs (apartment  
houses) to provide connectivity the same way the lofts do, and then  
housing projects and communities and then …

The end game is what I’m now calling Ambient Connectivity.

As to “subsidizing running fiber to…” well that’s an unnecessarily  
mean-spirited argument and self-defeating. We already have a principle  
of inclusion with postal delivery and roads  -- running a shared fiber  
is far less expensive than other infrastructures so why work to deny  
people the right to be included in society? They already have phone  
service – how much more does it cost to light it up as DSL with  
repeaters along the way? If they have fiber links as part of it then  
all-the-better. If they have party lines then fine – it’s a network  
now with separate VoIP paths. And fill in gaps with radios. Certainly  
tractors need to be online.

So can we stop pretending that it’s 1900 when we’d run a separate wire  
miles and miles and miles to each subscriber. We’re simply talking  
about communicating among ourselves using bits.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 09:45
To: ip
Subject: [IP] "Entry level pricing"



Begin forwarded message:

From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: October 1, 2009 10:29:40 PM EDT
To: shannonm () gmail com
Cc: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] "Entry level pricing"

Shannon McElyea <shannonm () gmail com> wrote:
> I have hughesnet -- the only carrier to serve where I live. It's
> expensive horrible and a threshold of 300 mb per day and if you go
> over it throttles to almost nothing for 48 hours!! Try getting any
> work done with that.

My wife works in Mountain View and takes highway 101 to work -- the
only highway to serve where we live. The gas prices are expensive; the
commute is horrible and the traffic throttles to almost nothing for 48
minutes!! Try getting any work done with that.

Nevertheless, we still live in a non-rural part of the SF bay area
because the benefits outweigh the costs. It's true that we have much
faster Internet connections than you do, but I suspect that you have
cleaner air and cheaper acreage.

If all you care about is speedy Internet access, there are plenty of
new lofts in San Francisco that will be happy to give you 100 MB/sec+
rates with no caps for a dollar a day.

I know I'm being a little cute, but there are some important issues
here: If you live in a low-population-density rural area where your
only choice is HughesNet satellite service, should IPers living in
high-density Manhattan condos be taxed to subsidize running fiber to
the hinterboonies? And maintaining it after storm damage? If it's not
economically feasible to wire your house at a profit, who will (or
should) subsidize faster service for you? I know you didn't call for
such measures, but other IPers have.

BTW, it looks like you might be able to upgrade from the "Pro" to the
"Elite" plan and boost your cap from 300 MB to 500 MB:
http://consumer.hughesnet.com/faq/fair-access-policy.cfm

-Declan





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