Wheeler at FCC announces a do-over on net neutrality rules. One might caution that the devil is in the details, as with most things emanating from our nation’s captitol. The lawyers will be writing and sorting out the fine print, which is where the rubber will meet the road on how this will actually work.
Anecdotally, as I personally contemplate pulling my “triple play” with Comcast, and moving to a more streaming based model…albeit still dependent on Comcast for the internet pipe to my home… I have been noticing what appears to be slowdowns in Netflix streaming as I watch films etc.
Apparently this has been confirmed as something others think is going on across the country: somehow the stream doesn’t quite get all the bandwidth it needs as it goes through all the Comcast server farms, switchers, and nodes. Would FCC be able to track this kind of Anti Net Neutrality down, and enforce rules? Perhaps could ask friends at NSA for some help with checking the internet wiring in the back rooms…
I had some analogous experience back in the 70’s when I was trying to compete with the then monopoly AT&T; it is very, very hard to document and prove intentional harm.
Back in those old days, we were providing private line long distance telephone trunks to major corporations. We could provide a great facility form the customer location in LA to theri location in NY (for instance), but the service had to terminate in a AT&T owned switch at each end. You would not believe the number of times that everything was working perfectly and aloo of a sudden – it sopped because something had changed in the switch. AT&T always first denied anything changed and then it was human error or something else. We had a team of lawyers and big company customers behind us and it never really got “fixed”.
You have the scars from going up against big telecom…badges of honor. And nothing new under the sun… Microsoft got in trouble with antitrust for a number of sketchy practices, including some features that didn’t work depending on the platform, or the browser, or any number of low level mischief very hard to pin down by competitors.
Another side of “net neutrality” that I don’t see much talk about, is in the streaming world of apps and mobile devices, is it “Net Neutrality” if Apple controls platform for ebooks, and apps, and hobbles, limits, and charges extreme tolls to “Play” on their net structure? 30% of app revenue from third parties? And control over content, as well as updating, and on and on.
That’s “access” and it’s NOT Neutral for third party service and app providers such as PSA…