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[A²]

...you have never set foot outside of your little shack in Alabama, have you?

[Guild]

*Sean cocks his shotgun.

Well since nobody's made a clear-cut case against my stance I guess I'll keep it.

[Royal☭]

Actually it usually goes


<Startup ISP> These guys charge a lot for internet, I'll provide it for cheaper but without as much profit margin!

* Big Name ISPs lower costs enough to undersell Starup ISP just long enough to force Startup ISP out of the market, then raises their prices again, claiming it's for better service and to provide you, the customer, with everything you need to blah blah blah


Great, now our arguments are ridiculously stupid and being presented lamely.  The only reason I'm even bothering is because this is the only thread active and I'm bored.

[Brentai]

Seriously, where's Shinra?

[Detonator]

How long has Cable TV been around?  Yeah, you still can't choose between more than one carrier.

I guess nobody wanted one then.

Nobody wants competition in their cable TV providers?   Nobody wants lower prices and a la carte channel packages so they're not paying for channels they never watch?

Seriously?

(Hint:  I read the business section of the newspaper, and people DO want it)

[Kayin]

Seriously, where's Shinra?

He's still reeling from the Gratuity thread.

[Thad]

So wouldn't it follow that:

<Big Business> "Here, little guys, buy our bandwidth. We have the good stuff here.

<Little Guys> "Well, this internet is cheap, but there's ads... meh I can live with that."

<ISPs> "Hey, you can't do that!" *provides cheaper bandwidth*

Well, Guild, it's not really as simple as all that.  If you're reselling bandwidth to a downstream customer, that means your upstream provider is getting its beak wet too.  And in practice, when they offer cheaper Internet, it's cheaper by just enough to run the entrepeneur out of business, at which point they jack their prices back up.

A more detailed summary follows, as I reply to Constantine.

I dunno if that's accurate, but I'm fairly sure all of this will have been made moot once someone invents (my first point was that net neutrality will prevent the birth of:) a faster, cheaper, wireless, long-distance ISP

Hm, yes, net neutrality clearly limits innovation.  Why, the last thirty years we've had it, the Internet has been utterly stagnant!

Seriously, I'm...I'm here.  Do you even understand the subject we're discussing, or is this another "the judge wouldn't let Superman into the public domain" situation where you're arguing something you haven't even bothered to examine on a cursory level?

Net neutrality means ISP's don't discriminate on bandwidth -- every port, every protocol, and every IP gets the same data transfer speed.  What on Earth do you think that has to do with the development and deployment of new hardware for providing Internet access?

<Startup ISP> These guys charge a lot for internet, I'll provide it for cheaper but without as much profit margin!

* Big Name ISPs lower costs enough to undersell Starup ISP just long enough to force Startup ISP out of the market, then raises their prices again, claiming it's for better service and to provide you, the customer, with everything you need to blah blah blah

All right.  We have hit on a subject I have intimate knowledge of.

I've worked at a startup ISP.  Everything you've said is right, but it's only part of the picture.

You want to resell DSL in Phoenix metro?  That means you're reselling Qwest DSL.

I would just like to emphasize that.

The company whose line you are using, as a startup ISP...is the big dog you are trying to compete with.

So Qwest gets its money either way.  Qwest is getting something in the neighborhood of $20 a month for the line, no matter who the company is providing service over that line.

So guess what?  You want to charge your customer $20 a month for Internet?  That means the customer's paying $20 to Qwest and $20 to you.  You want to charge less?  Okay.  At what point does it become an exercise in futility?  $5 a month?  Most people charge $15 a month for dialup, fer Chrissakes.  (Which, incidentally, is a whole other story; dialup is pure profit.  But that's a tangent.)  $5 is probably about the point where you're even with Qwest (at least for the first year, after which they jack up their prices).  $5 a month.  Great.  Good luck paying your employees on that.

It gets better.  As Qwest expands into new areas, it offers ADSL, a higher-speed service.  Which it doesn't resell.  So all the new developments?  You're frozen out.  You can't offer service there.

Adding insult to injury, let's say your customer has a problem that's not your fault -- DSL modem dies, line's severed, whatever.  Say you refer that customer to Qwest support.  What do you suppose Qwest's going to do?  If you guessed "try to convince them it's your fault and that they should switch service," you win!  So I hope you're ready for a conference call so you can get Qwest to help your customer without cockblocking you out of his business!

So those are the obstacles to operating a successful high-speed Internet startup in this area.  I can't say for certain that they're insurmountable, but my opinion as somebody who's been there is that it's a fool's game.

Guild's not entirely wrong when he says that a startup could find good business if it deployed a wireless network smartly.  The trouble, of course, is range.  There are new businesses popping up right across the street from my old workplace that could benefit from a wireless connection from there, but you start talking about places that are even half a mile away, you've got to start talking about repeaters.  It's not impossible, but it's tough.

It also has fuck-all to do with net neutrality.

[Brentai]

I have to admit, I was going to bring up that we were way off the idea of what net neutrality actually is but it got to the point where I was starting to wonder if I had the wrong idea.  Which I think means Guild is winning.  God damn it.

[Guild]

Internet will become important. Vastly important. Important in that way football is important to your drunken uncle who has never missed a homegame and once quit a high paying job to see his team predictably lose the superbowl. People will NOT tolerate not having it. It's not like cable, where one package is as tolerable as another. It's not like oil where there's a limited supply. It's a whole different beast.

It's like water. Drinkable water is too expensive to produce to be provided by a small company. You need a big one that can handle the expenses associated with large-scale operation. That big company, because it is a monopoly, is subsidized and regulated by the government. It has to be or the company would charge a billion dollars a cup and everyone would die.

Except that nobody would die with no internet. So we have a very high demand for a product that is cheaper to run as a monopoly and already practically is that is NOT a necessity. The best possible solution is to let the beast grow as it will.

If the results are omg so horrible then I GUARANTEE YOU someone will come up with a new cheap badass solution, and viola, we have something new and cool.

[Brentai]

So basically you're saying that you don't care either way as long as somebody besides you takes care of it.

I actually feel a lot better about that.

[Guild]

...er, no?

[Thad]

If the results are omg so horrible then I GUARANTEE YOU someone will come up with a new cheap badass solution, and viola, we have something new and cool.

Step 3: profit!

[Guild]

Yes well I would be happy with step 2 as the stopping point, so you can cut that last rambling out and my point is still the same.

[Thad]

You missed the reference.  I was saying that you are proposing that the situation will just magically fix itself, without offering any kind of explanation as to how.

The forum's called Real World, not Blind Faith.  Your solution to everything seems to be "clap harder".

Whether it's a giant in the sky or an invisible hand, I consider myself too old for imaginary friends.

[Guild]

A good friend once said of me that I live in the world I want to live in, and that it seems to conform as a general rule.

[Thad]

Small comfort to the rest of us who have to live in it with you.

...All right, one more before bed: what's really boggling my mind at this point is how you're twisting logic like a pretzel and claiming that restricting people's access to ports and sites will INCREASE innovation.

Take a look at BitTorrent -- because that is what this is about.  ISP's want to kill BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is a fucking revolution in communication.  Multiple peers to multiple peers.  As one example among many of how it turns the past several decades of Internet paradigm on its head, consider this: if you're using BitTorrent instead of a traditional client/server model, the more people try to access the same file at the same time, the FASTER the transfer goes.

This has HUGE potential application, for the entire industry.  And a bunch of pinheads who are still living in the 1950's are trying to kill it because their utterly narrow perspective can't see past its uses that hurt their bottom line.

Consider that there are a potentially limitless number of ideas just as revolutionary as BitTorrent, and that if the major ISP's decide they're going to limit their customers to a handful of protocols on a handful of ports, then we may never see another idea as revolutionary as BitTorrent again -- and even if we do, it may be impossible to implement.

The Internet has gotten to where it is because it is open.  You start restricting the technology, and the result is going to be...well Jesus, the result is going to be that THE TECHNOLOGY BECOMES RESTRICTED.

The irony here is that the government regulation you're railing against is merely an attempt to codify the LACK of regulation that the Internet has enjoyed since the 1970's.  In a nutshell, you're arguing that freedom is slavery.

[Guild]

Picasso was a starving wretch his whole life. Conflict breeds innovation.

BitTorrent technology won't disaparate just because it becomes controlled... likely it will just be put to new uses.

You know what, Thad? You're right. In a perfect world nobody would die and the internet would be free forever: Too bad the world's not perfect.

[sei]

You've really outdone yourself, Guild.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Yeah, I'm impressed.

BitTorrent technology won't disaparate just because it becomes controlled... likely it will just be put to new uses.

I think I'm going to get that framed.

[Catloaf]

Except that nobody would die with no internet. So we have a very high demand for a product that is cheaper to run as a monopoly and already practically is that is NOT a necessity. The best possible solution is to let the beast grow as it will.

Can you explain why?  The situation is the same but without the possible side affect of death, and that means it's a good idea to do what would otherwise lead to disaster?!?!  If internet becomes as important as you say it will be, I suppose that would mean the end result is we all end up slaves to our merciful internet providers?