Richard Notebaert, CEO of Qwest (Q ) has a short op-ed in today’s WSJ discussing how the Net Neutrality has been twisted to serve the interests of the digital elite.
From the editorial:
According to the FCC, Net neutrality means that providers of Internet services must allow unfettered consumer access to the Internet. No one should deny or impede access to lawful sites on the Web. Everyone supports that position.
But some very big corporations are trying to redefine Net neutrality away from a focus on access, and toward something far more nebulous and self-serving. Case in point — assume an online movie provider negotiates a commercial agreement with a company like Qwest to guarantee download speeds of, say, five megabits per second, for all its customers. That’s a pretty good idea in a world where every company is trying to differentiate itself from its competitors.
“Not so fast,” cry the naysayers. They claim that the idea of a premium level of service violates Net neutrality because that online movie company’s competitors may not want to offer their customers the same benefits. Essentially, they argue that doing this would give some content providers an advantage over those that choose not to provide this service.
Well, yes it would. As an industry, we’ve always sold bigger pipes and faster service to those who wish to buy them. And yes, I suspect much of that enhanced capacity has been bought to give the purchaser an edge. That’s how a competitive marketplace works.
Once fiber and high bit rate DSL gets deployed to the curb the bottleneck will no longer be the ‘last-mile” but will be the infrastructure between the user and the supplier of media and content. Taking away the ability of carriers to use variable pricing to distribute costs according to use and demand will result in a stagnation of investment as well as higher prices for people who fund the heavy usage of others.
Notably, Notebaert isn’t a complete Telco shill, he recently indicated that the hype over peer to peer usage isn’t warranted, and isn’t impacting his network. Maybe that’s because Qwest customers have the worst DSL and broadband penetration and technology. P2P may not be as popular on Qwest’s network as it may be with others that support much higer bit rates and can deliver even-more-instant gratification.
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