Net neutrality (the thread for everyone! your 2 cents plz!)

So why not help a fellow buzzer out, eh?

My feeling is that net neutrality should be a function of competition. When an ISP manages a network in a ways that degrades your ability to get the content you want, say YouTube, you should be able to switch networks.


That way there isn't undue pressure on a company like Google to give in to paying for prioritized content. The Internet works best when the customers self-regulate.

The problem with this approach is the lack of competition. While most areas have several choices of DSL, most people aren't aware they have those choices. And if you need more speed than DSL provides you're pretty well stuck with one option (cable) unless you live in a Verizon FIOS or ATT U-Verse area.

So instead of regulating net neutrality by law, which I find smakcs of the same forcing of an issue that brought us DRM, I think the emphasis needs to be on fostering competition for Internet access.

The other option is to bring the Internet entirely under government regulation. But having a government-supported olihgopoly whoich dampens competition and yet provides no consumer protection is living int he worst of both worlds.

Is just a concept it does not exist anywhere and nor should it.

The problem is that ISP's and backbone companies don't want to spend the money to provide the capacity that their users need. They'd rather throttle service or use download quotas.
The consequences of this, is that in harms the ability to innovative by discouraging heavy data use. The newest applications of the internet are going to be data heavy. And this is exactly what you expect and want, if internet keeps getting faster, people have to find ways to make use of that performance. Look at what broadband has given us so far, youtube, hulu, google earth... Lack of net neutrality will make it a lot harder to arrive at things like HD streaming.
Some regulation on ISP's, can provide for a much more competitive and innovative market for internet companies. As these ISP's are compelled to slow down the rate of progress to avoid network upgrade costs.
Perhaps the regulation should not be in the form of net neutrality though, but to encourage greater competition in the ISP industry. Tom is probably right that competition could solve it. On the other hand.... competition doesn't necessarily mean that they'll do away with quotas. We have plenty of competition here in Australia, but bandwidth is more expensive due to isolation and small size of the country, so ISP's all turn to quotas.