Secondly, I propose that the “excess capacity” that Bryon thinks is the motivation for the telco’s and the cable companies is quite disperate depending on geography. Companies like PacBell probably have very little excess capacity and it also makes one wonder why investment in fiber has rebounded to levels almost as high as the late 1990’s. There are at least 3 Montana based companies that are currently laying fiber in Montana that I know - 2 in Missoula and one in Billings.

But the point that Jeff makes about whether or not Congress is capable of regulating “well” is appropriate I think. And, since we have seen a series of anti-trust and deregualtion actions over the last 30 years I questions Brian’s position that what we would really achieve is the status quo.

If I had my way I’d like to see the ISP’s charge on individual bandwidth usage so I don’t have to subsidize every bandwidth hog who spends their days downloading movies and streaming video. Sayng that, however, I’m simply inclined to see what are the effects of tiered pricing before we hamstring the market. As I have said over the years, if business acts in a manner inconsistant with competition then they deserve all the regualtion that it brings. I just don’t see any crimes yet.

Here’s the deal - there were perfectly adequate regulations in effect until recently when the telcos and cable companies “convinced” the FCC to abandon them. Federal regulation isn’t new, it is the way the system worked for years, and net neutrality is about returning to the old, familiar system of you pay for what you use.

I was under the impression that net neutrality went a little further than the old regulations, but I don’t really know.

As far a “backbone access” goes, you have the local telco for DSL or the local cable company, that’s it. You may have more than those two entities marketing the product, but that’s who owns it. Your only third option is satellite, if you have room for a dish.

That’s what I thought.

The telcos and cable companies are trying to figure out a way to get paid for all of the extra capacity they put in during the dot com boom that is sitting idle. They don’t intend to actually provide anything new, they just want to raise the price by manipulating the market like Enron did.

As far a “backbone access” goes, you have the local telco for DSL or the local cable company, that’s it. You may have more than those two entities marketing the product, but that’s who owns it. Your only third option is satellite, if you have room for a dish.

I go back to the days when the “backbone” was 64K bits and most people were connected on 10 or 30 character per second printing terminals. It only existed between universities. TCP/IP has “scaled” extremely well, and names are a lot easier to remember than numeric IP addresses.