Thank goodness. This post is from PC World and confirms to me that
customers can make a difference.
Why Metered Broadband Wouldn't Work
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Maybe nobody else is sad that Time Warner Cable has (for now) abandoned
its
foray into consumption-based Internet service pricing, but I am. I was all
set for the company to become the poster child net neutrality--a topic
that
is hard for many people to understand--and why it really matters.
The idea behind net neutrality is that the owner of the plumbing should
not
care what the plumbing is used for or who uses it. This means that just
because you are the local cable company, you cannot discriminate in how
your
Internet service is priced to benefit your other businesses. This is
exactly
what it looked like Time Warner was planning to do.
I strongly believe that Internet companies should provide either access or
content, but not both. AT&T should not discriminate against Google because
it has a deal with Yahoo. The Internet carrier should handle traffic for
both companies equally.
Cable TV Protectionism
Downloading a 4GB movie should not, for example, be more expensive than
downloading the same amount of business files, just because the Internet
provider would prefer that you watch cable TV system instead.
In proposing what looked like Internet pricing intended to ward off
competition to its cable TV business, Time Warner set off the sort of
firestorm we have previously come to associate only with Facebook.
This time, however, congress was starting to get involved, and where
congress goes the FCC soon follows. A Democrat-controlled FCC will
probably
not roll over for cable companies quite as easily as the Bush
Administration's FCC used to.
Seeing the forces lining up against it, Time Warner bailed on the new
pricing, at least for now. I expect it to show up again in somewhat
different form sometime in the next few months.
There simply was no reasonable justification for the per-gigabyte pricing
that Time Warning Cable was proposing. I cannot imagine a situation in
which
a gigabyte of Internet data should cost $1 from the cable company, yet
that
is what Time Warner was planning to charge. Unlimited use for $150-a-month
would have been an outrage.
Consumers have won the first round of this battle, but Time Warner is
crafty. Heck, the whole cable TV industry seems to have no shame
whatsoever
when it comes to raising prices.
Carriers: No Stipulations, Please
The carriers very much want the FCC to stay as far away as possible from
the
network neutrality debate. They especially do not want the $7.2 billion in
stimulus money earmarked for broadband expansion to come with stipulations
attached.
That is reason enough for me to make sure our money is properly looked
after. Uncle Sam will be an investor in our broadband build-out and he is
a
socially conscious investor, too. If we are spending public money to
improve
Internet access, that money needs to have conditions attached. And these
conditions need to insure net neutrality.
Additionally, Internet providers should be required to separate their
content business from their carrier business. There should be a Chinese
wall
between the two, assuring that the content business pays the same about to
have its data carried on the company's Internet as any other user.
Anything that hinders Internet neutrality hinders the development of new
technologies and new business models. In a major recession, that is the
last
thing we need.
David Coursey tweets as dcoursey and can be reached using the contact form
found at www.coursey.com/contact.
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