A blogger's great letter to the FCC!

RTOD is Going to Bat for Net Neutrality Again

I just wrote up this letter to the FCC with the help of Freepress.net.

Dear FCC Chairman,

The public and the president have expressed overwhelming support for Net Neutrality. The FCC must now act to keep the Internet open and free of corporate gatekeepers.

Without vital Net Neutrality protections, the Internet would cease to be a public platform for free speech, equal opportunity, economic growth and innovation. Instead, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, which have a commercial incentive to limit the free-flowing Web, will decide whose voices are heard.

Please stand with the public and keep the Internet in the hands of the people who use it every day.

I’m going to speak as plainly as I can. The internet carriers, and I do stress carriers, and not providers, since they provide little to no actual content, should not be able to direct my traffic in any which direction they choose. They already charge site owners based on the amount of traffic that they expect to receive. There is no reason that any company or site owner should have an advantage by simply paying additional routing fees to their site.

As this is a letter to the FCC, I would like to use the following example, which compares it to a medium already well-regulated by your division: the telephone carrier setup. I, as the end user and customer, decide that I need to contact a plumbing service. After thumbing through the phone book, I decide to try Little Al’s Local Plumbing Service, because they are local, professional, and recommended by my family. I dial their number, wait for the pick-up, only hear a pick-up and then a staticky click. I dial again, and it takes an unnecessarily long time to even begin to dial, and the ringing tones are farther apart, making the telephone actually ring less often. I am forced to hang up, dial again, and this time I get through, but the connection is horrible. Static throughout the line, crosstalk, interference that is so bad that I can barely understand the person on the other end of the line. I contact CTWVA Unmentioned Telephone and Internet Carrier to explain my problem, and I am informed that the lines were fine on both ends, but, here, A-1 Big National Chain Plumbing Service is their suggested plumbing service. Then, they automatically connect me, without asking, and the connection will only take you to an automated “local site finder,” where I have to input my telephone number, area code first. Then, after dealing with said local site finder, you are placed on hold for a considerable amount of time for a “customer service representative” of unknown origin to deign it worthy to answer the line. All of this, and I still don’t have a setup to fix my plumbing issue.

It occurred this way simply because of a lack of “telephone neutrality.” A-1 Big National Chain Plumbing Service paid additional fees to ensure that their plumbing service got better quality connection, a better connecting speed, and were specifically selected by the telephone carrier to sell their service. Little Al’s Local Plumbing Service, however, did not have the money, or were not willing to put out the money, to guarantee that their service was selected by the carrier to be my service. Poor connection. Poor Quality. Inability to actually attempt business. And all because they couldn’t shell out the extra money to make it happen, or decided it wasn’t needed, since their local customers who know them know their quality and advertise for them.

Continued>>>>

http://thelonewulf.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/rtod-is-going-to-bat-for-net-neutrality-again/

IN the US, its all private property and there are no exclusive franchises (which makes it different from telephones). That needs to change, but that is the current state.

Note that if it morphed to a public utility, the entire concept of a IDP or UDP becomes illegal and spammers will have no threat of service disconnection.

The FCC can only do what Congress and the courts allow them to do.

Even if the FCC were entirely on our side regarding net-neutrality, if their efforts are defeated by a court decision shouldn't the letters be going to law makers instead? The FCC is only as powerful as Congress and the Courts will allow them to be.

We be soliciting the Congress to rectify this problem rather than the FCC.

The commission has stood on the side of net neutrality, it's the courts (stacked with booooshie ideologues) that ruled against it. Sounds like this matter will end up in Congress to support keeping the internet free and accessible to all.