[colug-432] Net Neutrality

[Rick Troth]

On 02/21/2014 10:32 AM, tom wrote:
> Wonder what the downside of reclassifying broadband as a public utility 
> would be? Unintended consequences?

Amen. Thoughts on FCC intervention near the end of this note.


On 02/21/2014 10:45 AM, Jeff Frontz wrote:
> The only negative I can think of is that the incentive to innovate
> goes away -- you're guaranteed a rate of return regardless of how much
> you push the envelope.

Government as the corporate master ... see experiment with union of
nations from Eastern Europe and parts of Northern Asia for most of the
20th century. Experiment failed. Vestiges remain in the form of
(apparent) organized crime (or just simple corruption), which we enjoy
in our own "experiment" anyway.

> Given our data rates (compared to most third-world nations), I'm not
> too worried about stifling innovation-- it seems to have died a while
> ago.

Amen! But see below for observations about Ma Bell.


On 02/21/2014 10:48 AM, Angelo McComis wrote:
> First thought that comes to mind is governance and regulatory oversight by
> PUCO, (---O at least in Ohio)

PUC (any state) doesn't always "get it". When they do, things work well
(IMLX), certainly somewhere north of misery.

When I lived in Dallas, most telephone exchanges were SWB, but Garland's
were GTE. (As things progressed, GTE got better, but in Garland in the
70s the phone service sucked.) They could at least make calls. My
impression of the suckage was more in terms of customer service. I don't
recall any substantial outages (but then, per IMLX, experience was
limited and I was just coming to consciousness about these things).
Those were the days when it was "illegal" to add another phone ... to
the twisted pair in your own [expletive deleted] residence. (Where was
the PUC on *that* point??)

With respect to electricity (another utility subservient to the dreaded
PUC), there were few-to-no outages other than storm induced (or
unintended excavation, same as for phone service). Rates were tolerable,
seemed in-line with actual costs, and yet the power company(ies) made
great profits.

In both cases, innovation was not stifled. On balance, I can't say it
wasn't "subdued" because I never worked for such companies. But I
witnessed cool/interesting/exciting/profitable developments by those who
did work for them. Ma Bell still managed to do signal processing before
digital methods were available. The Electric Company (sorry, make that
plural, and lose the reference to the PBS television show) through
consortia like EPRI created amazing things like high-current
transistors. (And eventually I learned that stereotypically bland
concepts like three-phase are actually kind of exciting.)

_Does any of this correlate to Comcast, TWC, AT&T, or any other digital
traffic carriers of today?_ (I leave the question open. I don't have an
answer nor much of an opinion, just a fair amount of worry.)

I'm a ham radio operator (for varying values of "operator", since I'm
rarely on the air these days). I'm sensitive to what is allowed and what
is not allowed in RF space. The electro-magnetic ether is like a single
planetary twisted pair anyone can tap into (with substantial signal loss
at the ends, by comparison). Listening is free (and expected, so no
expectation of privacy). What you "post" is regulated (by the FCC and
related international bodies). There's real legitimacy to constraining
transmission, both in terms of content and in terms of power.

In radio, originally anyone could transmit anything at any strength. We
eventually figured out to narrow our bandwidth enough to have channels
of a sort (by bands and frequencies). Then came the FCC and a couple of
world wars, but experiment was allowed and "hams" acquiesced and became
the LUG equivalent of the analog age (hackers ... in the "good kind"
sense of the word).

Some hams recall (through the testimony of hams older than our
grandparents) that the government tasted control of radio (via the FCC),
liked it, and didn't intend to ever give it up.

The FCC has changed, has been infected by the same lobbyist illness the
rest of Washington suffers. Though I believe some commissioners still
care about the best interest (of country, consumer, and the technology).

Not sure how much of this makes sense, but it seems like the net was
more neutral when it was all science and military. [sigh]

-- R; <><



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