Revisiting Net Neutrality: Now that Obama’s Got It
Sometimes it’s hard to know who you can trust. It would be foolish to proclaim that businesses never mistreat their customers. And no one is likely to express complete confidence in government as a champion of consumers. So the old term ‘caveat emptor’ is still relevant these days. The burden of buyer beware is well placed. We all need to take responsibility for the choices we make. But when the options are severely limited rendering one’s choices to the ‘only game in town’ the choice is not really a choice at all. You either accept what is available or decline to participate.
Here’s the rare personal example for illustration. This blogger has not subscribed to cable, satellite or pay-tv for almost a decade. The short version of why goes like this. I used cable tv for years. The price continued to rise. The content quality continued to decline. The couch potatoes helped support the trend by paying anything to watch nothing all the time. You know, 57 channels and nothing on. And this blogger realized watching less tv was probably a good idea on its own merits.
Cable tv companies were essentially petitioned to offer channel by channel pay schemes which never materialized. Programming became redundant as one successful channel after another spawned new channels based solely on previously successful formats. The programming schedules became several hours in length followed by repeats of the same programs for the remainder of the day. It was no better than broadcast networks and getting worse. The plethora of channels offered increased by leaps and bounds while one was hard pressed to find a few that were useful in some way.
Wireless human to human voice communication followed a similar price/quality conundrum for the thinking consumer. Actually talking to another person on a wireless telephone was lost in the promotion of other meaningless or non-essential services or bells and whistles. As if telecom was focusing on an old description of top salespeople they were trying to sell the sizzle not the steak. Prices have increased dramatically with wireless communications and savvy entrepreneurs have exploited the ‘gotta have it’ mentality with picture phones, net access with wireless phones and even convinced some consumers that texting was practical.
This blogger’s response to the ‘telephone’ situation is also about a decade old. Perhaps before it was fashionable the land line was abandoned in favor of a cell phone. As the costs continued to rise and service continued to decline this blogger opted for a pre-paid disposable phone where one buys airtime with cards or online. So as with cable tv, this blogger while not eliminating the use of a phone has greatly minimized the use of it. And as for internet access I have opted for broadband at the lowest price/speed available for my needs.
So what is the point in all this babble? Up to this point this blogger was in favor of the idea of net neutrality as he understood it. It appeared to me the argument against it by telecom companies was feeble. It appeared as the anecdotes above this was one more consumer ripoff waiting to happen where quality takes a nose dive and prices inflate dramatically. It also seems that ISPs could tackle the problem of users who take more than their fair share of bandwidth through other means.
But all that or other views on the issue may be moot. Not until Barack Obama’s FCC guy publicly expressed net neutrality a good thing did I question my position. You may think that unfair but given the performance of the Obama Administration, his liberal legions and controlled Congress to date a red flag has been raised. So some new research and study will be required for a follow up post on the topic. Until then you can read the excerpt below and follow the link for the rest of the story. And feel free to submit comments to enlighten or inform this blog(ger) on net neutrality’s status and true intent.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com