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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: [Latest draft of Internet regulation bill]
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Christopher L. Morrow wrote: > good question, I think all of the examples though have on thing in common: > all the 'discount' is on 'local' traffic (local to the network), the cost > differential is applied to 'non-local' traffic. This sort of goes to my > point that inside a network bits all cost the same, its the external > places that cost more... Do we bring back LATAs? You pay different prices for inter-LATA and intra-LATA network access? Bring Judge Greene back from the grave to supervise the boundaries. At one time, some of the access networks had separate ASNs for each LATA. They probably still have them stashed away in mothballs. How hard would it be to inflate the routing table with more ASNs? Its possible to create all sorts of internal/external or local/non-local boundaries. I think network operators would prefer to define them for technical traffic reasons instead of political/marketing reasons. But if forced, the political/marketing folks would love to design the network. > Are the folks advocating making content providers > pay for 'access' to their customers willing to stand up competing services > locally? (something to keep their customers who lose access to things they > really care about) That's why I have more faith in the market than in regulators when company executives do something incredibly stupid. The unregulated Internet market has done a pretty good job at keeping things relatively simple for consumers, with the occasional messiness that comes with a market such as peering battles. Consumers, and their surrogates the press and blogs, aren't shy about hitting company executives with a clue-by-four. On the other hand, regulated markets seem to get extremely convoluted as various groups lobby to add more "fair" or "special" conditions. Network neutrality, equal access, must carry, etc seem to be more slogans for lobbying efforts to convince regulators to protect various companies own self-interest. Have we replaced General Motors with Google? What's good for Google is good for America? But its really tough to predict what consumers will consider important. Consumers seem to find PCS cell phone quality acceptable for the price they pay, even though it doesn't meet some regulator's quality standards for phone calls. Why do people want to prevent companies from experimenting with different ideas and letting consumers choose what their prefer? Are people on this list so smart they think they should decide what choices people have? > yes, that always works out well :) I suppose it'd guarantee revenue for > 'the evil empire' though :) Yep. The evil empires have a hundred years of experience dealing with regulation. If the regulators define what the Internet is or isn't, instead of the marketplace, I don't know if people would recognize it anymore. Common carriers can have lots of regulations, but most of the regulations just end up shielding the carrier from liability. They can just say the government makes us do it, even though the tariff was written by the company itself, and pass along the extra costs to the consumer. AT&T was very dull, but profitable essentially the entire time it was heavily regulated. What color should Princess telephones be this year? Don't throw me in the briar patch :-) The marketplace is messy. Regulation is seductive because it appears to be cleaner.
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