usuage/latency, but do they need to end net neutrality? In any case:
Bill for Net Neutrality Passes House Judiciary Committee, 20-13
by Matt Stoller, Thu May 25, 2006 at 01:37:11 PM EST
Here's the roll call vote for the House Judiciary Committee. This is an amazing turnaround, from a bipartisan stance against net neutrality, to a bipartisan stance for net neutrality. The battle isn't over, but enjoy this victory.
Democrats
Conyers - yes
Berman - yes
Boucher - yes
Nadler - yes
Scott - yes
Watt - not voting
Lofgren - yes
Jackson-Lee - yes
Waters - yes
Meehan - not voting
Delahunt - present
Wexler - yes
Weiner - yes
Schiff - yes
Sanchez, Linda - yes
Van Hollen - yes
Wasserman Schultz - yes
Republicans
Sensenbrenner - yes
Hyde - didn't vote
Coble - no
Smith - no
Gallegly - no
Goodlate - yes
Chabot - no
Lungren - yes
Jenkins - yes
Cannon - yes
Bachus - no
Inglis - yes
Hostetler - no
Green - no
Keller - no
Flake - not voting
Pence - not voting
Forbes - no
King - no
Feeney - no
Frank - no
Gohmert - not voting
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http://weblog.infoworld.com/smbit/archives/2006/05/fcc_can_impose.htmlAccording to a story in Multichannel News by Ted Hearn, FCC commissioner Michael Copps has announced that he feels all this legal wrangling on the Hill is unnecessary. Copps says that the FCC has all the authority it needs under current law to impose a Net Neutrality policy that would ensure that cell carriers and Web broadband providers can't discriminate against Web content providers, Web application hosters and search engine services.
Unfortunately, while Copps is the FCC commissioner, the FCC's chairman, Kevin Martin, doesn't favor a regulatory approach to Net Neutrality. That genius wants to deregulate everything and see what happens even though it's become patently obvious what will happen -- tiered pricing and content restrictions aimed specifically at discriminating at a wide variety of Web businesses and even Web users.
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http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2605(expect)an increase of 20% for 'premium packets' ... adding tens of millions of dollars to their internet connectivity bill (but what offsets wirelesslysharing one landline so as to cut down telco revenue)
.... just like cable, the telcos are going to have to PAY EXTRA to host specialized content. Just like cablecos pay ESPN a few bucks per customer, so will phone companies have to pay for their content ... a mildly interesting 'debate' on the topic online today at the Wall Street Journal, Craig Newmark and Mike McCurry trade jabs ... For its part, Google will keep spending upon the millions it already invests in backbone infrastructure to ensure that its services work well over the regular Internet."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutralityThe arguments against network neutrality as a principle take three forms. The first and most common says that packet-level discrimination is absolutely necessary in order to provide Quality of Service on any packet network, and broadly-written regulations such as the Markey Amendment would ban it.
Another argument says that service bundling is necessary to encourage investment in the networks of the future. If a broadband carrier is, for example, allowed to charge more for a high-priority voice service when competing services such as Skype run at standard priority, the carrier's voice service will sound better, and this will limit Skype's appeal while increasing the carrier's revenue.....(but) there may be less distortionary ways to encourage carriers to build out their network, such as using the tax code, or government funding.
Another argument against network neutrality relies on the economics of congestion. A neutral network is like a public good, leading to collective action or tragedy of the commons-like problems. Hence a provider may need to discriminate as between users or usage to ensure maximum network performance. For example, if some one use up too much bandwidth, this argument suggests, a network operator should be allowed to slow it down. The typical answer to this argument goes as follows. There may be more and less distortionary ways of managing bandwidth -- and blocking or disfavoring certain applications is more distortionary. A more neutral way of managing bandwidth is to manage bandwidth at the consumer side - i.e., to limit the users to, say, x gigabytes per month after which their transfer rate is reduced, instead of banning applications (systems of this type have been employed in other countries, e.g. Australia)....(but service providers do)not want to charge their users for using higher bandwidth ...(proposing instead) to charge content providers to offset the higher bandwidth charges of the end users. This argument omits the fact that content providers already pay a service provider to host data on Internet for end users to consume.
The third argument is deregulatory...(but)Most high speed network providers are cable or telephone companies who are granted local monopolies by the government. Government granted monopolies must be regulated because if the monopolies act improperly market forces don't exist to correct the behavior. The increasing use of Voice over IP, VoIP, and its latency requirements.
Network Neutrality proposals can take many forms. While all share some features, some of the specific proposals are:
Most Favored Nation -- operators must offer to all companies transit on equal terms, and cannot discriminate as between them;
Radical Bit Anti-Discrimination -- operators must pass all packets blindly, and never make any decisions based on information specific to any packet;
Enough and as Good -- if operators prioritize bandwidth, they must leave enough and as good bandwidth to permit non-prioritized services to reach consumers;
Tiering only -- Operators may discriminate as between their customers, but must offer the same services to content, application,and service providers;
Police what you own -- Operators may exercise discrimination with respect to entirely private networks, but not inter-networks
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