Must Watch Video: Senate Hearing on Broadband Deployment Act & Net Neutrality

By Alexander Grundner | June 14th, 2006 (0) Comments

I can’t even begin to tell you just how painful this C-SPAN video on bill S.2686 was to watch, though I knew I had to view the entire hearing to get the full unbiased story as to why the HR 5252 Net Neutrality bill was recently rejected. As you might have already guessed, greed had something to do with it. The vast majority of the panelists (who all but one had business or corporate ties) applauded the rejection of the Net Neutrality legislation and cited that it would harm free market competition in the broadband market (which cable and DSL make 98% of). But to my surprise, both Senator Dorgan and Boxer (BTW, Boxer gave the green light to the Broadcast Flag at the hearing – time 1:21:45) brought up the example of how well – sarcastically meaning, not well – deregulation worked out in California for electricity customers with Enron’s price gouging. Another proponent of Net Neutrality was Ben Scott, Policy Director at Free Press, who tried, but in my opinion, failed miserable to describe what not having Net Neutrality would signify to users, Internet start-ups, and content/file-sharing/service providers not affiliated with the broadband networks they’re data is passing through.

I also found it interesting that most of the panelists were in favor of broadband providers charging users more money if they used non-affiliated IP services. Of course, they used more flowery terms like “deferential pricing by use.” So let me get this straight. I’m paying Comcast $42.95 a month for supposed unlimited 5Mbps broadband, but if I actually make use of my connection for doing something more than just surfing the net (i.e. downloading large files via BitTorrent, watching lots of high-bandwidth streaming video, using a third party VoIP product, subscribing to IP video services like Akimbo and CinemaNow), I should have to pay a surcharge? I don’t think so. And get this. Most of the panelists where selling the big lie that only with deregulation and by letting providers create tiered networks will U.S. consumers finally get to see network speeds comparable to Asian countries. Ahhh, yeah… OK. I don’t see the reason why we shouldn’t already be at 30-50Mbps speeds with the prices the whole of America has been paying for the past several years. I think there’s more to the story as to why this hasn’t happened besides just money.

Lastly, Senator Jim DeMint was a piece of work. This guy not only stated Internet discrimination is “a good idea” (time 0:54:35), he repeated it several times to bring home the point… actually I couldn’t really tell you what his point was. Bottom line: DeMint disagreed adamantly with Ben Scotts’ stance that Net Neutrality protects against discrimination. Of course, what Scott meant by “discrimination” wasn’t clearly understood either. I swear… watching this video was like watching a group of English-as-a-second-language speakers trying to having an intelligent conversation on topics they’re not familiar with. What’s more, no one – I mean literally no one – had a workable universally acceptable definition for Net Neutrality. Maybe we should start there folks!

UPDATE: Classic, the first comment on Digg to this story is: “Network bandwidth is a limited resource, just like oil. What’s so bad about paying for it. In a capitalist society, that’s how allocation of scarce resources is determined…” OK. So blame the infrastructure woes on the customer? Maybe if the broadband providers got with the program and started laying down fiber to the home, this would be a none issue. So if $42.95 is not an acceptable price to pay monthly for the third party services I use, what would be $80, $120? Give me a break.

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