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Mitchell Ashley

Net Neutrality - Somebody Get John McCain A VoIP Clue Phone

The FCC's actions on net neutrality are about keeping the Internet open. You should try it sometime, McCain.

By Mitchell Ashley on Mon, 10/26/09 - 9:56am.

Net Neutrality vs. John McCain. Consumer vs. Ignorant Politician. Party affiliations aside, anyone proposing we allow carriers to clamp down and determine what content we can run through our Internet and ISP connections probably still has their secretaries print out emails for them. Would you allow Verizon or AT&T to determine who you can make calls to on their wireless networks? No. It's a ridiculous thought, and doesn't belong throttling our on ramps to the Internet either.

The core problem here is the rapidly increasing usage of 1, 2, 5, 7Mps connections, changing the economics of the carrier's oversubscription model for shared service to our homes or businesses. That's how the economics of shared infrastructure works - we can't all run our DSL or cable modem connections at full capacity, or pipes upstream would quickly fill up and no one would have the bandwidth they need.

As more customers come aboard, usage patterns change, and capacity stops meeting demand, it's time to upgrade infrastructure. And carriers take advantage of the economics of faster and cheaper networking equipment and pipes.

That's how it's supposed to work, not by carriers creating choke points for certain kinds of traffic they don't like. The alternative to throttling certain kinds of traffic is to stay competitive by upgrading infrastructure, or offering premium services for higher priority types of traffic. 

Did hard drive manufactures put limits on their disk drives if you stored big video and music files on them? No, but that's the argument McCain, Bailey-Hutchinson and the carriers are making. And it's on the wrong side of this argument. When are our politicians going to start representing the consumer and not just big business? Frankly, these politicians run the risk of angering not hundreds or thousands, but tens of millions of Internet users by blocking the FCC's attempts at keeping our Internet highways free of toll booths.

I support the FCC's action to put regulations in place that actually helps keep what we have, rather than allowing carriers to traffic shape our service to their own desire and benefit. It's because of the open access the Internet provides to all types of data that we have continuous innovation and entrepreneurial creation of new products and services.

McCain. Leave well enough alone and let the FCC do its job and protect the consumer rather than just big businesses for a change. We've had enough corporate bailouts. Let's not give the Internet carriers theirs.

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About Converging on Microsoft
Mitchell Ashley has a diverse background in software development, network engineering, information security, mobility, collaborative technologies, and IT management and operations. An early adopter of social media in business, he began blogging about security and information technologies in 2006 at theconvergingnetwork.com. Mitchell is VP of Information Technology at CableLabs in Louisville, CO, and previously held positions as CIO, CTO and VP Engineering at prior companies.
 

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