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Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-02-14 00:15
My core problems with Professor Tim Wu's white paper for the FTC on wireless net neutrality are with his disguised core assumptions.
First, it is clear from Mr. Wu's top two recommendations that Mr. Wu rejects U.S. competition policy and wireless competition policy as abject failures.
Mr. Wu should come clean and just say in a straightforward language what his White Paper strongly implies.
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Its obvious that Mr. Wu does not think that competition works in communications or in wireless.
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He does not think competition best serves consumers, and has the datatopian view that "benevolent all knowing" regulators need to decide what technologies should succeed, who can innovate and who can't, who can make money and who can't.
Second, Professor Wu analysis suffers from what I call the "perfection fallacy."
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-02-09 18:50
Just got back from New York where Dan Brenner of NCTA and I faced off against NN proponents Professor Susan Crawford and Skype's Chris Libertelli.
It was a different format less washington-ish and more finance-ish given the audience and Eli Noam's deft moderating hand.
The quip of the day goes to my colleague Dan Brenner who summed up the net neutrality proponents views as "love the carriage, hate the carrier."
I framed my views in an MBA context, explaining what was really going on competitively and commercially in the NN debate.
- I explained that the dominant dynamic in the sector was the collision of the converging tech and com sectors; (My techcom thesis.) and that net neutrality was simply the politics of that violent collision..
- I also framed it as a huge clash between the very different business models of the software industry that wants bandwidth to be abundant and free, and the hardware/network sector that have to invest, build and make the Internet work and that have to keep up with the exploding demand of bringing video to the net.
- I reminded them of the exaflood point that a 30 minute sitcom consumes 7,000 times more bandwidth than visiting a website,
- You can't wave a magic wand and have the Internet handle video without lots more investment in capacity -- that someone has to pay for -- and why should it just be the consumer that has to pay that bill.
The best question was how could one bridge the gulf between the polarized sides.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-02-09 18:01
I was delighted to see Mark Goldberg's post alerting us in America that the Canadian Government is opposed to embracing net neutrality regulation as well.
I love Mark's no apologies free market stance. He knows the Internet's growth, vitality, and diversity has come from free citizens, freely interacting and cooperating, free of government intervention. As he said, let freedom reign!
This is more evidence that the rest of the world is not pro-net neutrality despite the balderdash NN proponents toss around.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-02-08 15:58
What do the following three stories of the last few days have in common?
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Yesterday, Reuters quoted Google's head of TV Technology, Vincent Dureau, saying: "the Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infastructure) doesn't scale. Its not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect." in an article that highlighted new Internet TV services of Joost and YouTube.
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Tuesday, USA Today had a front page story that WalMart was launching a service in conjuction with major studios to allow downloading of movies the same day as DVDs are released and the next day for TV shows through WalMart.com.
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USA Today also reported Tuedsay that TiVo and Amazon were launching a new service for letting online users download movies to their DVRs and then watch them on their TVs rather than their computers.
What's the common thread? Its obvious that the capacity of the Internet will have to increase exponentially and rapidly to handle the coming exponential increase in traffic generated by Internet video.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-02-06 11:38
I have attached the link to Esther Dyson's important interview on net neutrality.
- Her real life experience and leadership in dealing with ICANN and government regulators is worth paying attention to.
- Esther is very widely respected in the Internet community and always thoughtful in her approach to problems.
- She has even been dubbed the "Internet High Priestess".
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-02-06 11:30
Wired has an interesting article on how Microsoft's new Vista operating system has had to make some tough and restrictive design calls that some could misread as "discriminatory".
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The Wired article by Michael Calore, explains how Microsoft restricts or "cripples" users ability to use virtualization technologies to get certain content and how Microsoft's Defender will search for spyware and in some cases automatically delete applications.
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it looks as if Microsoft has legitimate business reasons for this blocking, degrading and impairing of certain content and applications.
Why this is relevant to net neutrality and Microsoft is that:
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Microsoft has 90% share of the Internet browser market which is a potential Internet access technology bottleneck and gatekeeper that net neutrality proponents conceptually fear;
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Microsoft as explained in this Wired article is clearly exercising its freedom to:
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Microsoft clearly wants to preserve its right to differentiate and to control its product/service, something we at NetCompetition understand and support.
Why this is relevant to Microsoft's departure from ItsOurNet is that Microsoft evidently understands that regulation can be "unreasonable" and "unjust" as I explained in a previous post.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-02-05 19:32
The evidence continues to pile up that Google is well on its way to achieving a 50% share of the search market, a significant antitrust threshold where a company is considered "dominant" and subject to "stricter scrutiny" for potential anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft's recent earnings call showed how badly Microsoft is doing in search.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-02-05 10:46
I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased that FCC Chairman Martin proactively released a proposed order that would reclassify wireless broadband as a Title I information service, as reported in today's Comm Daily. This order, which looks to have the support of the Republican majority, would continue to harmonize the regulatory treatment of all the major modes of broadband.
- The FCC has already classified cable modems, DSL and BPL as unregulated info services.
- Given the robustness of wireless competition in the U.S., reclassifying wireless broadband as an info service should be a no-brainer.
- The FCC should also do another order to classify satellite broadband as an info service as well.
Why this is relevant to NN is that the expert agency overseeing competition in this market segment is concluding that there is sufficient competition to not require common carrier-like regulation.
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The U. S. has three times more WiFi hotspots than any other country and more facilities-based wireless broadband investment and deployment than any other nation in the world through Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Moreover, Sprint and Clearwire are also beginning to build national WiMax networks.
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Wireless competition is robust, clearly warranting an info services classification.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-02-02 11:24
As expected proponents of net neutrality ignore facts that don't push their anti-business, big government point of view. When the FCC broadband report is replete with powerful evidence that broadband competition and penetration are increasing impressively, NN proponents don't like the message so they shoot the messenger.
Comm Daily today quoted a Public Knowledge spokesperson who said: the FCC numbers were "invalid" and that he wouldn't even "go there" what trends or developments the group sees in the report because it is "measuring a world that does not comport with reality."
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-02-01 17:52
Evidence continues to mount that the broadband sector is increasingly competitive and that it is not the permanent cable/DSL "duopoly" that net neutrality supporters claim. The FCC just released its biannual report on high speed of broadband adoption and the new evidence showing more competition is powerful.
The most important takeaway from the FCC's report is that 58% or 7.9m of the 11.0m total broadband adds over the first six months of 2006 were wireless broadband -- NOT DSL or cable modem. That's not how a "permanent DSL/Cable duopoly" behaves -- is it?
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