[governance] [Fwd: The Not-So-Neutral Net]

[Roland Perry]

In message <4D46BC86.40002 at itforchange.net>, at 19:13:34 on Mon, 31 Jan 
2011, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> writes

>>> Net neutrality is being violated wholesale on wireless networks. No 
>>>one is noticing much less complaining.  One top telecom rather 
>>>pointedly calls it 'pay per site' tariff plan. see
>> >http://www.tatadocomo.com/pay-per-site.aspx
>>
>> That seems to be a "pay for volume of traffic" plan (eg 200MB for 
>>10R's - approx $0.20), which I thought we'd agreed was acceptable. 
>>[And about a tenth of what you'd pay in Europe].

>I am not at all able to understand how you see a pay-per-site plan as a 
>'pay -for-volume-of traffic' plan (volume being a site-neutral 
>concept).

It's only a "pay per site" plan if those sites are excluded from access 
when you buy the general connectivity package.

It seems to me that these "pay per site" plans are a way for users to 
get cheaper access to their favourite sites, while not using up their 
monthly quota which can therefore be used for everywhere else.

>This is moving towards a cable TV scenario - just many many more 
>channels.

The cable TV plans I'm familiar with have one price for "everything", 
and cheaper plans if you don't want to pay for channels you'll never 
watch.

>[ A MIME image / jpeg part was included here. ]

I also fundamentally disagree with the marketing image that the Internet 
is just websites, and that websites are just like cable TV channels.

On the other hand, I'm old enough to remember when you needed to have 
separate subscriptions to AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy etc. and different 
dial-up numbers to get to each.

What's happened with the advent of the Internet, is that all these sites 
are available via one network, and almost by accident most of them are 
subscription free.

Some websites (newspapers seem to be leading this) are now going behind 
paywalls. That's not the fault of access providers, it's not censorship 
and it's not a lack of network neutrality.
-- 
Roland Perry
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