Thursday, July 17, 2014

My Network Neutrality Comment

I have been a telecommunications engineer for the past 20 years, building equipment for data, cable and wireless networks.

Network Neutrality is an absolutely critical component of the modern internet and the great innovation that we have seen in the last 20 years is due entirely to the ability of start-up companies to offer interesting services with no ability for carriers to throttle block or in any way discourage/encourage one service over another. 

Carriers themselves have benefited dramatically from Network Neutrality.  I have personal experience in how long it takes to deploy the simplest services into these networks, and it is literally years.  The existence of a fast/slow lane will rapidly cause the slow lane to degrade to the point where every usable service must go across the fast lane, with the permission of the carriers.  As soon as a carrier authorizes content into the fast lane, some question of legal responsibility over that content will soon follow, squelching innovation and teaching carriers about the law of unintended consequences.

In today's and tomorrow's broadband and fiber-to-the-home world, arguments about prioritization of real time traffic (like movies or audio) are specious.  There is plenty of bandwidth.

Please save the carriers from themselves and the public from a monopoly-driven "cablized" internet by declaring that Carriers cannot discriminate in ANY WAY in regards to traffic flowing over their network!


And finally, I PAID for 10mb/s.  It is not right for my ISP to only give me 5mb/s because netflix or amazon didn't bribe them enough.

  1. Should there be an outright ban on fast lanes? YES
  2. Should broadband access be classified as a Title II common carrier? YES
  3. Should the new Open Internet provisions also cover wireless (mobile) broadband? YES