{"id":41799,"date":"2014-05-03T14:42:03","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T13:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=41799"},"modified":"2014-05-03T15:11:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T14:11:07","slug":"net-neutrality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/net-neutrality\/","title":{"rendered":"Net Neutrality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Net Neutrality \u2026 A New Way to Hold Ideas, Innovation Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Untitled-1\"<\/a>\u201cThink about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of \u2018em are stupider than that.\u201d \u2013 <\/em>George Carlin<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love the power of words.<\/p>\n

They shape, reshape your view, ideas of what\u2019s real\/unreal, true\/false, bad\/good.<\/p>\n

Remember Digital Rights Management?<\/p>\n

What a wholesome way to ensure you owned the video content you purchased on those old-fashioned DVDs.<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n

Only a real stupid person could be against anything as wholesome as Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n

Thank gawd it caught the attention of governments.<\/p>\n

Every government around the globe is working hard to keep something that was born free of politics \u2026 free of politics.<\/p>\n

What can go wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the U.S., the past head of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) got a cushy job heading up the mobile phone folks (CTIA). The new head of the FCC comes from the cable and telco industries.<\/p>\n

What could be better?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Real experts reshaping the Internet that started out as an open-to-the-world science project then grew up to be a multi, multi billion dollar communications\/entertainment\/advertising industry.<\/p>\n

Vint Cerf and the folks I worked with for 10 years at CERFnet (California Education Research Foundation) had no freakin\u2019 idea how awesome the Internet would be back in the late \u201860s.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-2\"<\/a>Modest Beginning<\/strong> \u2013 The Internet we enjoy today had a modest beginning \u2013 connect the U.S.\u2019s supercomputer centers to speed the exchange of scientific, research and engineering information. Over time, it went from a government funded operation to one that carried commercial traffic and it wasn\u2019t long before real money could be made.<\/em><\/p>\n

Push Mohta and Manny Robles were just driving between California super computer centers in their beat-up VW hooking scientists, engineers and others up.<\/p>\n

Want them to handle your system work and storage?<\/p>\n

They\u2019d locate servers and storage in their hardened facilities and charge you for it (no sexy name like Cloud).<\/p>\n

Then, the damn thing caught on and everyone wanted in on the action.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-3\"<\/a>Subscriber Services<\/strong> \u2013 As the Internet and Web grew globally complex, CompuServe number\/letter addresses were replaced with easy-to-remember (and steal) user names and passwords providers discovered new applications and opportunities that have become indispensable for users, data miners and advertisers.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fantastic collaborative scientific\/engineering tool gave way to business applications which turned kids on to making it even more useful.<\/p>\n

You know:<\/p>\n

– Game consoles
\n– Internet to PC
\n– Feature to smartphones to tablets
\n– STBs, DVRs, DMAs, timeshifting TV
\n– Analog to digital TV \u2013 30, 100, VOD, multi-screen, 1000s of channels, video providers
\n– Online selling, buying, sharing, trading<\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a fertile field that folks (young and old) are spending 12+ hours a day with their electronic media.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-4\"Content Flowin<\/strong>g\u2013 The use of the Internet has continued to grow \u2013 rapidly \u2013 becoming an indispensible part of almost everyone\u2019s life. People have come to rely on the Internet, social media sites, websites and outlets as vital places to get\/exchange data, news, photos, videos, entertainment and business information. The volume of content that crosses the global network every second is staggering.<\/em><\/p>\n

Everyone wants, needs, expects instant access to anything\/everything all the time. As a result, the pipes are overloaded and stuff is backing up.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Internet (wired and wireless) is broken \u2013 has been for a few years now \u2013 but then, no one ever envisioned people would be so creative or that a person could do so much with the spectrum \u2026 including stealing from anyone\/anywhere, snooping on folks, carrying on private\/public wars.<\/p>\n

Since squeezing more frequency from the spectrum is impossible, governments (everywhere) are developing Net Neutrality guidelines so folks who \u201cbought\u201d portions of the spectrum and ISPs (internet service providers) won\u2019t discriminate (give priority) with the packets flowing across their networks.<\/p>\n

There is light in the tunnel when it comes to wired Internet performance as Akamai (one of the industry\u2019s largest CDN \u2013 Content Delivery Network \u2013 providers reported recently.<\/p>\n

The U.S. saw the overall connection speed finally increase to 10Mbps (your speed may vary).<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t come close to the top 10 countries\/regions\u2019 average connection speed (South Korea holds that honor with speeds averaging 21.9Mbps), but it is moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good news for businesses, telecommuters and important stuff like heart monitors.
\nBut the truth is that speed isn\u2019t \u201cvital\u201d to 90 percent of the stuff my kids (and most people) do with their devices.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-5\"<\/a>Device Access<\/strong> \u2013 Today, people around the globe keep adding devices \u2013 mobile and fixed \u2013 to the point that some people experience real anxiety when their devices aren\u2019t close at hand and aren\u2019t connected.<\/em>
\n Watching 500 cat videos on YouTube, checking out your selfies from last night\u2019s party where you were awesome is less important than well \u2026 darn near anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

The challenge is getting the speed, performance, quality you pay for.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I dream of 1Gbps fiber to my house whether it\u2019s from Google, my present provider AT&T or some awesome cable provider.<\/p>\n

While delivering a 1 Gbps fiber-based connection is certainly the end game, in Austin AT&T is only delivering a 300 Mbps service today with plans to roll out 1 Gbps later this year.<\/p>\n

However, according to a GigaOM report, one customer that signed up for its GigaPower revealed they are only getting a 70\/50 Mbps connection–far less than 300 Mbps.<\/p>\n

Outside of the Austin market, the majority of AT&T users will continue to be served by its lower-speed DSL services.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-6\"<\/a>Your Speed<\/strong> \u2013 Increasingly, people who test their up and down stream performance are finding that their speeds fall \u201ca little short\u201d of what they were promised and are paying for. There are a lot of reasons \u2013 some even valid \u2013 as the online population continues to grow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorta\u2019 shakes my confidence \u2026 just a little.<\/p>\n

If you believe the ex-telco\/cable folks at the FCC, net neutrality is really all about not letting ISPs discriminate regarding the stuff flowing over their networks and that the ISPs have to be as open about their dealings as the government is.<\/p>\n

First of all, service providers would have to give all of us a \u201cbaseline level of service.\u201d Then they could do separate deals with content providers for FasTrak service.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like special treatment for certain folks with good connections in the government \u2013 and elsewhere \u2013 it\u2019s a new idea!<\/p>\n

So Netflix\u2019s Hastings could pay for better service and his customers could foot the better-quality entertainment.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s a bad thing (paying for entertainment delivery); but the founding of the Internet was that ISPs couldn\u2019t offer special treatment for a few dollars more.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-7\"<\/a>Guaranteed Performance<\/strong> \u2013 To ensure people get the content they expect without slowdowns or interruptions, some organizations have begun discussing two levels of service for users \u2013 FasTrak smooth flawless performance (most noticeable from movie rental sites) and regular Internet speeds for the rest. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like the idea of two, three, four levels of service.<\/em><\/p>\n

Free-speechers like to say that the Internet should be an unrestricted platform for all speech and fast\/slow lanes throttle that freedom.<\/p>\n

But state and national governments have historically blocked some services and there isn\u2019t a helluva\u2019 lot ISPs can do about it.<\/p>\n

Frankly, some of the stuff should probably take hours, days, months (bullying, discrimination and whatever your sore point is), and if some server gets tired of shuffling it around and drops it \u2026 ooppss.
\nSince the service providers know change is in the wind and net neutrality and \u201ccommercial reasonableness\u201d will come, they\u2019re busy studying how the other heavily regulated industry \u2013 the airline industry \u2013 has coped.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-8\"<\/a>Lesson Learned<\/strong> \u2013 The Airline industry taught the pipe providers a lot in the past two years \u2026 keep your base charge \u201creasonable\u201d and then charge for the extras.<\/em><\/p>\n

Want a ticket? Check
\nWant a seating priority? Check
\nWant a bag or two? Check, Check
\nWant connectivity? Check
\nWant a seat? Check
\nWant a better seat? Check
\nWant a seatbelt? Check
\nWant something to eat? Check
\nWant the restroom? Check<\/p>\n

Commercial reasonableness can be a pretty low bar.<\/p>\n

All the ISPs (wired, wireless) have to do is be transparent about what they\u2019re doing, what they\u2019re offering, what they\u2019re charging for and how much they\u2019re charging.<\/p>\n

Most folks don\u2019t really care about what governments, lobbyists, PACs (Political Action Committees) do.
\nThey just want to go online with the device they have at hand and find, get, enjoy the stuff they want \u2026 now!<\/p>\n

Net neutrality and open Internet are more than just power words.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re a vision that Vint, Push, Manny and all of the others set out to build.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-9\"<\/a>If all of the governments, ISPs (wired\/wireless) change the rules, you can be sure of the outcome for you!<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Net Neutrality \u2026 A New Way to Hold Ideas, Innovation Ransom \u201cThink about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of \u2018em are stupider than that.\u201d \u2013 George Carlin I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2055,"featured_media":41815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2533,7],"tags":[5716,4415],"class_list":["post-41799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abt-news","category-technology","tag-fcc","tag-net-neutrality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}