Net Neutrality Redux
It looks like another go around in the net neutrality debate. Comcast announced today, “a 54 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit to $602 million, or 20 cents per share, from $390 million, or 13 cents per share, a year earlier. “ At the same time they defend their practice of restricting the bandwidth used for certain practices that they find questionable [1]. This comes at a time when the congress is debating a new try at legislating net neutrality.
Is there anything wrong with Comcast throttling bittorent traffic? After all it is traffic that primarily steals revenue from Comcast itself. I mean if you download a movie and watch it rather than pay the PPV fee to Comcast it would be like, oh I don”t know, like the phone company (DSL) letting people use Skype. The fact that in both cases the pipe owners are getting paid regardless of the use of their pipe makes the question interesting. Do we have the right to demand unrestricted access using their pipes? Of course we do and this is my concern. The real issue here is that consumers have the right to know what they are paying for and to have a choice. This is the essence of the free market. If we know that Comcast is choking traffic for their own reasons we might just choose DSL. The legislation being considered would make it illegal for Comcast to throttle based on traffic type. That would keep a level playing field but seems counter to the principal of allowing companies to choose the features of their own products.
If we assume that capitalism is basically sound then how do we put market forces to work to solve this problem. First we would need to make the restrictions on access transparent to users so they can exercise their choice. Then we would need to have a choice. Fortunately in most places in the US we can get high speed internet access from either cable or DSL. We can vote with our money. Congress should protect our interests until such time as market forces take over and we can choose what is in our best interest for ourselves. Maybe we should be looking at breaking up the duopoly of one cable company and one phone company rather than regulating internet access. I know, that seems a bit much to ask for but it does make sense doesn‘t it?