[colug-432] Net Neutrality

[Jeff Frontz]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Rick Troth <rmt at casita.net> wrote:

> 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.
>

I'm not sure how much subdued is different from stifled.  Let's just say
that innovation doesn't thrive in a monopoly situation, no matter whether
it's regulated or not:

If it were up to T, we'd be all still be using ISDN BRI (128kbps -- plus
whatever you can squeeze out of the D channel).  ISDN was an improvement
over POTS, so, yes, innovation wasn't dead; but surely stifled -- and
divestiture opened the field for all sorts of start-ups to push the
envelope; and innovation thrived.

On the other hand, BTL wanted to roll out DTMF for free everywhere (because
it would improve utilization of switching equipment); PUCs across the
nation balked because that was seen as a "premium service" not required for
bare-minimum Universal Service, so the RBOCs were forced to charge for it
(while in Bell Canada territory, it was free).  So in that case, the
regulators stifled innovation.

On one of my last projects at Bell Labs in the late 90s, we were struggling
to get "a certain company" to adopt TCP on their equipment so that they
could transition from MTP for their signaling.  It was like pulling teeth...

Jeff
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