[opendtv] Re: And now he's confusing kids
- From: "Manfredi (US), Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2018 01:14:50 +0000
John Shutt wrote:
ISDN was always charged by the minute, and the rate varied with
destination.
Jeez, John, this is the most you've ever written! Yes, and telcos also charged
by the minute for regular old analog phone calls, initially. But they finally
had unlimited plans. Long before the Internet. So what? It also makes their own
job easier, when they can simplify their accounting.
And with "net neutrality" we are talking about charging content
providers for the bandwidth they use, or limiting the amount of
bandwidth they have available to them for what they pay.
That has nothing to do with net neutrality, John. The accounting procedures are
a totally different matter. Net neutrality simply means that your local
monopoly (if not absolutely, just about) telecom service cannot get in cahoots
with users of the telecom, to allow or block at will, for whatever reason
strikes their fancy. (As MVPDs have always done.)
When cable TV first arrived in our neighborhood, I asked why the Baltimore
channels weren't available. I could get them all OTA, why not on cable? They
said no, we can't do that. Having been accustomed to totally neutral OTA
spectrum, that turned me off so much that I passed. Then I saw what these guys
did to their monthly fees, in the first year, and that was all it took. Never
had any desire to become suckered into anything like that.
Now, this genius of an FCC Chairman thinks it would be cool for the Internet to
become that way. It's a true travesty.
Without DOCIS, there would never have been ADSL.
I don't think so, but even if true, all it says is that little amount of
competition was enough. But again, nothing to do with net neutrality. What
happened is obvious. The cable companies had bandwidth, the telcos did not, and
the telcos saw that the cable companies were invading their telecom territory.
Why should you expect the telcos to give up?
Notice: they were still mandated neutral, yet they developed ADSL.
And let's look at the history a little closer. No reason to believe that even
without DOCSIS, telcos wouldn't have developed faster telecoms. In the 1980s,
the telcos developed SONET and BISDN/ATM, at about the same time. Why? Because
they knew that faster was necessary. Why didn't BISDN/ATM make it? Simple. IP
was shown to be easier, cheaper. Nothing to do with cable companies. ADSL was
used to carry ATM, but ATM ended up being used in a trivial manner, only to go
from homes to the central office. That's the extent of ATM's use. No global ATM
calling, as BISDN had planned. IP won.
Because of Title II regulations, ISDN was always too expensive for
home use.
BS John. Title II had zero to do with it, as ADSL proved. And besides, as I
said many times, the important thing is the neutrality guarantee. If Title II
is too onerous, then write a different law, that still guarantees the
neutrality of the telecom service.
And let me correct myself, ISDN was 128 Kbps, not 64K.
Basic rate ISDN was 64 * 2 + 16. The two 64 kb/s lines were often merged, but
the intention was to use one for uncompressed voice, and the other for data.
And the 16 kb/s was signaling. The point is, with 56k modems, even 128k was
clearly not forward looking enough, AND THE TELCOS KNEW IT. Title II or no,
they were going to sit still. BISDN was their internal invention, IP was a
competitor, IP won.
Ironically, home modems were capable of up to 64K, but were
artificially throttled to 52K in the US. Why was that?
They weren't deliberately "throttled" at all. The 4 kHz filters along the path
is what caused the throttling. Our modem sometimes had trouble reaching even
52K, as far as we are from the CO. It took a couple of attempts, at times.
Remember paying by the minute for "long distance" phone calls?
Thank you, Title II.
Bull! That's nonsense. Besides which, there was never any application of rate
control from Title II, on Internet service. And as I said, write something
different, that guaratees neutrality, and most people would be fine with that.
Instead, this Chairman thinks that blocking and throttling are fine ideas.
Telcos dragged their heels rolling out ADSL because the massive costs
of cleaning up the exchange to home infrastructure was borne by the
local telco,
Sure, that too. And after all that work, the FCC expected them to hand the
clean line over to an ILEC. Anyway, so what?
Once the government asserts control over one aspect of the internet,
they then have a way to control ALL ASPECTS of the internet.
That's paranoid talk, John. The reality is, once the greedy monopolistic
providers have the power to do so, we have seen the way they operate, real
world. Not some hypothetical paranoid thinking, but actual fact. There is no
universe where allowing telecom providers to filter and block users is a good
thing, John. None.
THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY.
Have congress PASS A LAW granting the FCC the authority to regulate net
neutrality, not an FCC commission deciding arbitrarily that they all of
the sudden have this authority,
You totally missed the point.
First off, the FCC has had the obligation to police the neutrality of the
telecoms ever since 1934, and before that, the ICC had that obligation.
More to the point. The neutrality guarantee is **why** the telcos could not
block spam, even though users were demanding this. So, an exception had to be
made.
CONGRESS PASSED THAT LAW IN 1906, AND AGAIN IN 1910. Telecoms MUST be neutral!
The Internet is a telecom service, John. It's not some baked over frivolous
cable TV service.
Bert
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