DOJ and Net Neutrality. You were expcting something positive?

Net neutrality: "not normal" Grant Gross reports:

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should resist calls to impose net neutrality regulations on broadband providers because such rules could hurt the Internet, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday ... [it] said net neutrality rules could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare." Rules that would prohibit broadband providers from giving priority to their own Internet traffic and prohibit them from blocking or slowing competitors' traffic could also prevent providers from charging fees for priority service ... [and] could, in turn, cause fees to increase to all broadband users ... [and] could also discourage broadband providers from investing in new, high-speed services and keep providers from managing their networks efficiently. (ComputerWorld)

At the risk of getting kicked off the net, this is bullshit. Pure and simple. The FCC has been in the hip pocket of the ISPs and telcos for the bulk of this administration and some of the previous one. How else can you explain some their decisions to support HDTV, Broadband over Powerline and other technologies that bring little or nothing (or are outright detrimental) to the end user but provide windfall profits for companies that do not have to upgrade systems or provide anything resembling services to their customer base, who is paying for the services.

Now, the Department of Justice says go ahead and write more rules that will inhibit technology growth and deployment (Google, Vonage, take note, the FCC and the DOJ are directing this right at your forehead) of slick solutions that would make doing things much easer. Instead, they are going to enable Verizon and Cox and Time-Warner to contiue to degrade service for third party applications, that probably work better then the crap they are trying to shovel, while continuing to jack up the price for their own applications (VoIP is the current one that jumps to mind) and pushing off technology upgrades as long as possible.

I read an article in just the last few days that looked at broadband speed and saturation levels in the world. Want to guess where the United States came in that study? Remember, the Internet was invented here. If you said anywhere but the bottom, go back up and read the DOJ's opinion again. Japan is leading the way with almost Gigabit to the desktop. Why? Several reasons. First, no surprise, they have an advantage because of density and a need to rebuild their phone network following World War II that the United States never had to face, but almost more importantly, the Japanese government forced, by law, the telcos to open their gateways to "upstarts." The end result is more competition, more bandwidth, cheaper prices and more services. Even Canada, which has vast wastelands of empty space has more bandwidth and more adoption than the United States (although not by much).

So, the next time you are wondering why that video on demand service so slow and there has to be a better way to do it, or you read about this really cool technology but it only works on "their" network, remember to thank the Department of Justice the FCC and your local telco and cable provider. They are there to help you...fail.