Comment & Debate
“Protect Net neutrality.” St. Petersburg Times Editorial. April 10, 2010: “There should not be fast lanes and slow lanes on the Internet. But that could be the result of a federal appellate court ruling this week that invalidated a Net neutrality order issued by the Federal Communications Commission.”
“Protect neutrality of the Net.” Tampa Bay Times Editorial. June 6, 2006: “Without lawmakers fixing the problem, here is what could happen: The big phone and cable companies could try to make content providers both large and small – from Yahoo and voice-over-Internet phone services to the latest blog – pay more for high-speed access to their services. That would stifle creativity at the very least, and possibly make certain Web sites noncompetitive or unavailable to Internet users.”
“Hey internet entrepreneurs, nuts to you.” The Economist. Apr 6th 2010: “THE writers at this blog don’t really care about today’s appeals court ruling, which concluded that the FCC lacks authority to regulate net neutrality. Why should we? The paper will pay whatever Comcast or any other connectivity provider charges to make sure our bytes get out to the masses at a reasonably high speed. At least, we think it will. Unless the Financial Times or Forbes offers more. Then the magazine will have to ante up, or face discriminatory second-class service. Perhaps Comcast will start demanding “ultra business elite” fares on our packets if we expect them to reach that last mile just as fast as those from the FT. Then, of course, they might offer the FT the Sapphire Express rate on their packets, with an absolute guarantee that packets will arrive faster than the competition.
THE writers at this blog don’t really care about today’s appeals court ruling, which concluded that the FCC lacks authority to regulate net neutrality. Why should we? The paper will pay whatever Comcast or any other connectivity provider charges to make sure our bytes get out to the masses at a reasonably high speed. At least, we think it will. Unless the Financial Times or Forbes offers more. Then the magazine will have to ante up, or face discriminatory second-class service. Perhaps Comcast will start demanding “ultra business elite” fares on our packets if we expect them to reach that last mile just as fast as those from the FT. Then, of course, they might offer the FT the Sapphire Express rate on their packets, with an absolute guarantee that packets will arrive faster than the competition.
As much as such services are worth to us, they’d obviously be worth vastly more to Bloomberg or Dow Jones. A guarantee that time-sensitive financial information will arrive milliseconds ahead of the competition can be worth billions when you’re trying to move markets. How could a last-mile connectivity provider possibly explain to its shareholders a decision not to take advantage of this opportunity, to offer “priority packet service” to time-sensitive information companies and induce them to engage in a bidding war?”