Whither net neutrality?

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:38:23 +0100

Jon Husband writes links to a piece about the FTC declaring a "free for all" and what consequences there might be when telcos can openly prioritize traffic they charge more for. A couple of things occurred to me:

This is in the US, I'm in the UK. Do we have any kind of "net neutrality" here? If not, what impact has that had on our internet?
If regulation (government interference) is bad, why is net neutrality regulation good?

Okay maybe most people don't start from an assumption that regulation is a bad thing. But, to my naive perspective, regulation seems to imply monopoly at work. I haven't thought it through too carefully but I am bound to think that attacking the circumstances that permit monopoly power is a better solution than trying to keep them at bay.

We have regulation in the telco market and yet Telco's are some of the worst companies you can imagine:. ponderous, abusive, famously contemptuous of customers. Regulating these beasts seems a bit like offering aspirin to a man bleeding to death.

Take broadband. My own situation is that I get 1mbps ADSL provisioned by BT with Nildram as my ISP. I can pick any ISP I like, more or less, but BT is my provider whichever one I pick. A little under two years ago I had 8mbps cable from Telewest. You can imagine how thrilled I am with ADSL but I have no other reasonable choices. And I live less than 30 miles from the biggest city in Europe in an area steeped in high tech & IT.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on net-neutrality

Whither net neutrality?