Nickname: mrinternet

Review: The most important element of Internet pricing is completely ignored in your/"the discussion" regarding Internet neutrality: bandwidth! Everyone is charged for what they use on the Internet and it is already directly related to speed, period. As a former admin for an ISP, I know this discussion about Internet costs intimately and the two-tier argument is completely off track, because it ignores the existing bandwidth sliding scale as an irelevant or ignored point. To make the issue of bandwidth easier to understand there is a term in the ISP community "data pipe," which basically refers to bandwidth. The more bandwidth, the bigger the pipe. And what this means to this whole two-tier pricing which makes it mute, the more bandwidth (bigger pipe) the faster through-put or speed. So to get faster speed you get bigger pipes or (more bandwidth), which you already pay for on a sliding scale. So the basic premise that the big telecoms ploy to control the Internet is valid!

Date reviewed: May 30, 2006 11:07 PM

Nickname: encinitasike

Review: This has little to do with just Internet vs. telco and everything to do with Reps vs Dems. Big Corporate America is in charge here as they have been since '00, rather than the people or their elected representatives.

Date reviewed: May 12, 2006 9:56 PM

Nickname: Mike

Review: Let's consider Ed's access network the equivalent of local roads. If you want to use Ed's local roads you must pay him. That sounds OK. Even fair. But wait, Ed has decided that he can make more money if he owns businesses on his local roads and excludes competitors. For businesses he doesn't want to be in he can sell exclusivity. Why not sell Safeway and Blockbuster an exclusive right to locate stores on his local roads? What about schools, hospitals, and other businesses in the community? Will they be allowed to use the local roads? At what price? Ed gets to decide arbitrarily. Ah you say, you can always leave Ed's local roads and go to the Internet where there is competition. But when you try to leave Ed's local roads you find that Ed has installed a toll booth at the entrance to the Internet. The price to leave his roads is exorbitant and the speed at which you can pass through the toll booth is limited to a top speed of 5 mph.

Date reviewed: May 12, 2006 5:33 PM

Nickname: Muse

Review: What a nasty hit below the belt! Is the US the most demecratic county in the world? Google, Yahoo! etc should leverage the power of Internet to get more support. For example, online voting. Use their advertising wisdom wisely.

Date reviewed: May 9, 2006 3:22 PM

Nickname: barleycorn

Review: While I have little sympathy for the effect of non neutrality for advertisers who help to clog the Web with "Push" data, I feel that the rejection of Net neutrality legislation will lead to the increase in prices for new technologies. VoIP, for example, is typically more expensive when purchaced through cable companies. Letting the cable companies drive out competition by increasing the rates charged to non Internet infastructure companies will certainly require those providers to pass the cost on to the consumer. This gives infrastructure companies 2 drinks from the glass as the consumer will have to pay both for the use of their own limited bandwidth as well as the bandwith of the provider providing the requested service.

Date reviewed: May 3, 2006 10:26 PM

Nickname: Laura

Review: I can't believe it passed in the House. Big Business must have its grubby hands in a lot of government pockets. It's sickening. Here's hoping the Senate has the decency to shut this one down.

Date reviewed: May 1, 2006 1:50 AM

Nickname: payingCustomer

Review: Here's the gist of it: Everybody is already paying a premium for fast Internet access. Companies with content that they want to put online already have to pay a premium for fast- access/high bandwidth, and people who want to view the content already have to pay a premium for fast access. I'm paying twice as much for the same amount of bandwidth for my Web site as I was a couple of years ago, and I'm paying twice as much for the same Internet connection at home as I was a couple of years ago. This bill simply isn't justifiable, and its success depends on our representatives' lack of knowledge of the issues at hand. If Microsoft and Intel are complaining about unfair business practices, you can take it on good account that something's amiss.

Date reviewed: Apr 28, 2006 8:47 PM

Nickname: EECDML

Review: It would cause a network bottleneck between the USA fiber network, and the rest of the world. AT&T is not smart enough to know this. It is called network-bandwidth monopolization, and any telecommunications company taking up such a practice should be fined heavily; $100 million for each day that they are favoring the routing of traffic to a particular company.

Date reviewed: Apr 28, 2006 8:23 PM

Nickname: I want hbo in norway

Review: What they want is to make Internet connection like cable TV. When you've chosen ISP, you've more or less chosen who will provide you with high bandwidth content as well. This limits competition, and of course increases their profits. They want to bundle stuff, so you get less choice. We'll end up like satellite TV in Scandinavia. There are only two main providers and you can't pick and choose the good channels and pay for those. You even have to get the correct sat tuner for the provider you choose. And then pay for a lot of crap you don't want just to get what you do want. So far nobody has stepped up and offered an open alternative. Why? Because all the players in the market make more money this way. It's like a silent cartel.

Date reviewed: Apr 28, 2006 6:04 PM

Nickname: jkintree

Review: This sounds like a good reason to build citywide wireless networks as a way to bypass the incombent telephone and cable TV networks.

Date reviewed: Apr 28, 2006 2:42 PM