Bruce Kushnick continues to do an excellent job on why we should distrust the Bells. AT&T and Verizon have never made a promise that they failed to break.
But the argument of pro-Bell groups like the so-called Progress & Freedom Foundation and sock puppets like Scott Cleland remains, "But they haven’t violated net neutrality yet, why would they?
Well actually, they do. They have. And they make a ton of money out of it.
The dirty secret of modern telecomm is that all the money is in wireless. Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless provider. Verizon advertising claims only "the network" can guarantee good wireless service. (That is a lie.) Verizon claims it offers Internet service off its phones.
Does it? Not on your tintype.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg refers to the Verizon and Cingular networks as "Soviet Ministries." They
decide what online services users will be able to access, and at what
price. They also take money from both sides of every information
transaction.
When challenged about this, they lie. That’s right, they lie.
They claim that if someone was unhappy with a third party they would
complain to Verizon. As though people complain to their ISPs about every bad site visit they have. As though the mobile companies were paragons of
customer service. They are not.
This reminds me. A reader in Pakistan (yes Pakistan) wrote recently to
ask why I haven’t given much coverage lately to the FCC’s spectrum
auctions, where it seems that frequency hoarders like Verizon have
managed to push out the biggest bids.
It’s true. These auctions were sold to us as a way to increase
competition in wireless services, and lower prices. They are doing
neither. Only unlicensed spectrum can do that. Given all the scandals
of our time this one isn’t a headline, but a full Bell break-up will
sooner-or-later have to include spectrum reform, and the rolling-back
of this nonsense.
For now, just remember. Here’s how to tell when a Bell or Bell-affiliated company representative is lying. Their lips move.
A rather cynical view, to be sure. Quite honestly, it is foolish of ISPs to consider blocking websites. Why would they do it? Listening to proponents of turning the internet over to Washington bureaucracy, one would think that suddenly one day every major website not owned by the ISP will be blocked and the internet will be a ghost town.
That’s silly. Blocking websites ticks off customers, and having subscribed to cable and internet service for years, I would say that providers do a good enough job of that without even trying as it is. There’s zero incentive for them to go out of their way to do it more. All it would accomplish is driving consumers to their competitors, and in the process shrinking their bottom line. What company wants to DECREASE revenue?
So Verizon and Cingular don’t allow open access to the internet on people’s cell phone plans. Other companies do. If you want internet service on your cell phone, find one and port your number to it. Not only are you getting what you want, you’re telling Verizon or Cingular that they aren’t providing it.
Handing the internet over to the Washington bureaucrats is a mistake. It is only a matter of time before they decide to muck the internet up just like they do everything else.
A rather cynical view, to be sure. Quite honestly, it is foolish of ISPs to consider blocking websites. Why would they do it? Listening to proponents of turning the internet over to Washington bureaucracy, one would think that suddenly one day every major website not owned by the ISP will be blocked and the internet will be a ghost town.
That’s silly. Blocking websites ticks off customers, and having subscribed to cable and internet service for years, I would say that providers do a good enough job of that without even trying as it is. There’s zero incentive for them to go out of their way to do it more. All it would accomplish is driving consumers to their competitors, and in the process shrinking their bottom line. What company wants to DECREASE revenue?
So Verizon and Cingular don’t allow open access to the internet on people’s cell phone plans. Other companies do. If you want internet service on your cell phone, find one and port your number to it. Not only are you getting what you want, you’re telling Verizon or Cingular that they aren’t providing it.
Handing the internet over to the Washington bureaucrats is a mistake. It is only a matter of time before they decide to muck the internet up just like they do everything else.
The above comment is typlical spin. #1, there are cases outside the US of large ISP blocking sites and services. #2, the issue is not that users will get pissed off that they can’t see YouTube videos, it’s that the next YouTube, Google, Yahoo!, Craigslist, Digg, or whatever will die a slow death because it can’t afford the fees to grow and get the bandwidth it needs.
All these sites started small. I was online when Yahoo! was just a list on the Akebono server at Stanford. I remember when Google was brand new. College students could never afford the bills charged by various ISP for unfettered access.
Also, these spin doctors make you think that everyone is getting a free ride. As a subscriber to an ISP you are paying for a certain level of access. As a business, Web sites are also paying for every bit they send out. Now the ISPs want the sites to double-pay.
How can the start-ups compete with the established big sites and ISPs if they can’t get access to the masses and get the big time growth they need?
Finally, it is misleading to say that net netrality hands anything over to the bureaucrats. It is total spin to state that nobody knows what Net Neutrality means. All it means is that things should remain *as they are* now – no preferential treatment of bits that pass through.
The above comment is typlical spin. #1, there are cases outside the US of large ISP blocking sites and services. #2, the issue is not that users will get pissed off that they can’t see YouTube videos, it’s that the next YouTube, Google, Yahoo!, Craigslist, Digg, or whatever will die a slow death because it can’t afford the fees to grow and get the bandwidth it needs.
All these sites started small. I was online when Yahoo! was just a list on the Akebono server at Stanford. I remember when Google was brand new. College students could never afford the bills charged by various ISP for unfettered access.
Also, these spin doctors make you think that everyone is getting a free ride. As a subscriber to an ISP you are paying for a certain level of access. As a business, Web sites are also paying for every bit they send out. Now the ISPs want the sites to double-pay.
How can the start-ups compete with the established big sites and ISPs if they can’t get access to the masses and get the big time growth they need?
Finally, it is misleading to say that net netrality hands anything over to the bureaucrats. It is total spin to state that nobody knows what Net Neutrality means. All it means is that things should remain *as they are* now – no preferential treatment of bits that pass through.