Comments on: Obama’s tech team filled with net neutrality advocates http://www.muniwireless.com/2008/09/02/obamas-tech-team-filled-with-net-neutrality-advocates/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=obamas-tech-team-filled-with-net-neutrality-advocates Citywide WiFi, smart grid, enterprise wireless, public safety, mobile apps Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:38:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Brett Glass http://www.muniwireless.com/2008/09/02/obamas-tech-team-filled-with-net-neutrality-advocates/#comment-35767 Brett Glass Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:18:29 +0000 http://www.muniwireless.com/?p=8195#comment-35767 This position is shortsighted and demonstrates what happens when Washington lobbyists try to take on tasks which are more properly handled by engineers. Saying that there should not be different tiers of Internet service would be akin to banning UPS or FedEx from having "Red," "Blue," and "ground" classes of service, based on the absurd notion that no one deserves to be able to pay to have his package arrive faster than someone else! This is silly, of course; you should be able to pay more for urgent delivery, and the little guys as well as the big ones benefit from having premium service available. The "network neutrality" lobbyists also want to prevent network operators from stopping bandwidth hogging by software such as BitTorrent, which try to monpolize the network. This is a show stopper for municipal networks; if they can't stop bandwidth hogging, they will not be able to control their costs nor will they be able to provide reasonable quality of service. This position is shortsighted and demonstrates what happens when Washington lobbyists try to take on tasks which are more properly handled by engineers. Saying that there should not be different tiers of Internet service would be akin to banning UPS or FedEx from having “Red,” “Blue,” and “ground” classes of service, based on the absurd notion that no one deserves to be able to pay to have his package arrive faster than someone else! This is silly, of course; you should be able to pay more for urgent delivery, and the little guys as well as the big ones benefit from having premium service available.

The “network neutrality” lobbyists also want to prevent network operators from stopping bandwidth hogging by software such as BitTorrent, which try to monpolize the network. This is a show stopper for municipal networks; if they can’t stop bandwidth hogging, they will not be able to control their costs nor will they be able to provide reasonable quality of service.

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