Net-Neutrality is the Law at the Death Star

Submitted by kebernet on Wed, 03/22/2006 - 23:26

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Technology

Ed Whitacre -- one of the "Google is stealing my bandwidth! WAAAAH!" guys at AT&T seems to be changing his tune:

"Any provider who blocks access to the Internet is inviting customers to find another provider," Whitacre said in his keynote speech. "It's bad business." He then emphatically stated that AT&T would not block independent services, "nor will we degrade [Internet access]. Period, end of story."

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RE: Net-Neutrality is the Law at the Death Star

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Thu, 03/23/2006 - 09:03.

Thats what I have been saying all along about this stuff. These companies keep saying they will charge more or throttle, and if they do, they are just going to lose customers. The market will fix that shit, dont need any legislation. Provider A starts throttling, then provider B might start advertising that they DONT DO THAT CRAP. That, "market will fix it" view comes with a few caveats though. First off if there is a localized monopoly the market cant do its work. Second if there is collusion among companies, effectively creating a localized monopoly, same deal. Unfortunately in the states, just about ALL of the time, "the market will fix it" is not allowed to fix it, because we dont have any free markets, we have pretend free markets and government subsidies and regulations and taxes and so on, that make it whomever has the best lobbyist wins, rather than whomever has the best product which the consumers will find/choose wins.