[opendtv] Re: Court Tosses FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Rules

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 23:15:30 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> The question is not whether these investments will be made, but
> rather, can advantaged businesses or others with deep pockets
> use these investments to maintain or gain control of yet another
> critical oligopoly service.

It was always true that those with deep pockets can distribute more and better, 
over the Internet, Craig.

A neutral Internet is a great innovation, for consumers. In the old days, the 
only way to get a lot of bandwidth to individual homes was to build a 
proprietary walled garden. And the infrastructure had to be set up for 
one-way-only broadcast. This put the infrastructure owner in complete control 
of content selection, pricing, and so on.

The Internet is a bit like the old two-way telephone network on steroids. The 
infrastructure owner is no longer in control of the content being carried. So 
okay, that alone is a huge improvement. And the speed now possible, with this 
new two-way infrastructure, makes content delivery that was previously only 
feasible over the one-way walled garden, also feasible over this two-way 
unwalled medium.

So, what you called "cannibalizing the MVPD business model" is very much like 
the airline industry "cannibalizing" the stagecoach and railroad business 
models. Stuff happens.

Of course, those with deep pockets will be better able to deploy content on the 
Internet (see also the IETF draft document I sent). Everything costs money. The 
huge difference is, there can be any number of such deep pockets, sharing the 
same Internet, as long as the Internet remains neutral.

Bert

 
 
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