Net Neutrality blocked
As you may well be aware, Net Neutrality has been dealt a serious blow. At 1st look, I would agree that blocking net neutrality is bad. Government tax subsidies from public funds were used to help build this infrastructure. Cable company profit from the operation of said infrastructure is used to lobby congress for laws in their favor. It would seem, more and more, that he who has the most money can “buy” what they want – in more ways than one. Sure, it seems like we’d be facing a new controlled internet, where everything is a fee and tiers of service are forced like cable channel subscriptions…. But, what if the court is really saying that free market forces will dictate who wins and who loses? Look what Google did to Microsoft in the free market. Google’s freemium model busted Microsoft’s reign. No more was Microsoft the answer. Now, we have GMail (with lots of storage as opposed to the miniscule amount Hotmail once offered us) , Google Drive, and what-not. Google also gave us Android to combat IOS, but look what it did to Windows Mobile? The free market chose Google and Microsoft is forced to evolve with Office365. Microsoft and fellow competitors HAD to change to avoid failure, compete and hope to profit. I suspect, cable companies may be forced to do the same if they continue with their anti-net neutrality stance. Need I also mention the Linux effect on anything in the technology industry? From Servers to desktops to embedded micro-architecture, Microsoft has felt the pain in the free market because of Linux. I understand that cable companies do not want to be relegated to dumb pipes that only deliver data. Mighty Verizon felt the same way when they lost/rejected the iPhone – they also did not want to lose the market control they thought they had. When they rejected the iPhone, AT&T snapped it up and thus we had 5 years of ATT/Apple alliance. Within that 5 years, ATT cried about bandwidth and network congestion but profitted handsomely. It seems the free market spoke to Verizon loudly. Lets also not forget about wireless internet. Generally, consumers consume entertainment and this is trending to becoming a mobile internet society. I’m willing to bet that in the near future, a majority of your internet surfing would be done on a mobile device – any and everywhere. Where then does that leave cable companies? Cord cutters are hurting someone’s bottom line, as are cord nevers. I believe cable companies could see their landline internet connections subscription rate fall, too – especially if they get their way and start ‘nickle and dime-ing’ us for every website, service or alert. As a reminder, home internet subscriptions are subject to internet service provider constraints such as blocking port 80 incoming and smtp outgoing…and running a ‘server’ is also forbidden. There are also restrictions such as not reselling the service. A business class internet subscription is not subject to some of these restrictions. To get around ALL of this, perhaps buy your own T1 line (or even better, EOC) and you will have unrestricted access. Perhaps you may be inclined to ‘share’ this service to other neighbors. But wait, isn’t every town under some form of legislation disallowing competition from other cable companies? Google is coming. What about ISPs that lobby for legislation to keep out competition. Last I checked, Greenlight is still around….and others are getting in on the game. I think this is where the free market will have a nice chat with your ISP. Support your local ISP folks, especially if they are a non-profit organization. DMAC TECHNOLOGY GROUP wants Enterprise level service for you and your business and in conjunction with a local non-profit group, has plans for a fair ISP in its local community – does your technology company do the same for you?
