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If internet access regulation can be compared to railway regulation it seems like providing a fast lane service is a fair option from the ISP point of view. The
by dtdt1 12y ago
If internet access regulation can be compared to railway regulation it seems like providing a fast lane service is a fair option from the ISP point of view. The only wrinkle is when the ISP is a monopoly, in which case the definition of the tiers and the pricing in the individual tiers must be regulated.
- nitrogen 12y agoUnfortunately, the Internet is very difficult to analogize to anything else. Bandwidth is not an exhaustible resource, so it's not comparable to power or water. Throughput can be increased without modifying the medium just by replacing equipment in a few locations, so it's not like roads or railways. This makes it difficult to reason about the Internet without direct knowledge of its distinguishing characteristics, thus making it easy for entrenched interests to sway legislators and the public. We need to convince people that the Internet is special, that we need to think carefully about how we run it, and that we can't lazily shove its square peg into the round holes of ill-fitting analogies.