Personally I think there's plenty of competition to choose between if you're a startup and can put your servers in any data center around the country, but there's a big lack of competition at the “last mile” level in many homes. So I'm fine with usage based pricing for data centers (which there already is), but I think we need legislation to prevent my only home ISP options from controlling what (legal) content I'm able to access on the Internet.

Yes. It's probably a great read if you take a series of tubes view of things. Also, the prior art of the WSJ walled garden, and the taste it leaves in tech world mouths, does not engender avid commenting. You can probably double your money on a bet that the lack of numerous comments actually supports some relic in a corner office that scoffed at the idea and concept of /comments/ in the first place.

As you can probably tell, I'm looking for a way to fulfill the interests of both the ISPs and the next gen of internet entrepreneurs.

It's difficult, though, to see a future where ISP's aren't utilities. Or worse, utilities facing stiff competition.

Thanks for helping me think through my stupid question.

And if I can't earn a profit on my current operations, why would I invest a dime to expand operations? If I'm an ISP, what's in it for me if I run a T3 pipe into Chris Dixon's office and I can't put his feet to the fire if he maxes out that bandwidth?

I highly favor allowing open, equal access. I'm just trying to reconcile this objective with ISP profitability, without which I don't see how we can ever get you a T3 line, let alone get broadband competition into Vermont, Kentucky, etc.

This isn't about capacity balancing. What the ISPs (in theory) want is to “do-commodotize” themselves by charging based on activity, the way mobile providers charge different rates for SMS, web browsing etc. So for example they could look at who is profitable (e.g. Google) and charge Google more for that activity.

Stupid question. Do we agree that serving bandwidth hogs and bandwidth mice equally may erode Comcast/TWC/VZ/ATT profitability at the margins? Won't this undermine incentives to build new pipes to your office (let alone upgrading existing pipes)?

This is the *only* issue I can see with net neutrality – honestly, I thought this would be points a, b, and c for Jenkins. But he didn't touch it. Am I missing something?

thank you,

Luis

I can't even read the wsj op-ed.

Iif the broadband/cable provider industry really wants to preserve the right to block, ration, govern and monitor internet activity on an a la carte basis, by all means, don’t be hypocrites and extend that privilege to everyone across all your services: Give your customers the choice of cable on an a la carte basis, such that I pay for only that which I use.

Open up the choice wide and let the free market decide.

* If customers are going to pay for all-you-can-eat cable or broadband, it should include full On-Demand access to every channel, DVR’d remotely and cached for say 60 days – if I want to watch 20 shows all broadcast at the same time in succession, give me the right to time-shift to my heart’s content.
* Rationed broadband access, benefiting the provider in terms of traffic optimization, would be less expensive than a net neutral provider
* A la carte cable would reflect people’s desire to pay for quality (demand represented by actual usage) vs. quantity (providers’ supply of 1000+ channels)
* Increased competition among providers based upon quality, not quantity, results in product differentiation and pricing segmentation that has been largely lost since the days when small ISPs competed with the big boys

It’s time to bust up the regulated monopolies and duopolies in the local broadband and cable access industry, discourage homogenized bundling, embrace choice and encourage competition.