Blog: John Myers

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Utopian Vision of Net Neutrality?

The Boulder Weekly is labeled as the "true independent voice" of Boulder County. For those who know Boulder, Colorado and the surrounding county, this is quite a boast. I mention this because I recently found the cover of the Boulder Weekly proclaiming a "speed trap" relating to how "Big Telecom wants to control the flow of the Internet":

In this article, Pamela White does a good job of presenting the Net Neutrality argument from the side of Google and others who favor Net Neutrality. It was an interesting contrast to an article that I wrote last year from the perspective of, I guess, Big Telecom.

While I don't have any problems with the other side of the Net Neutrality arguement (particularly with the thoughts and ideas of the 110th US congress...), I do have issues with the presentation of the Net Neutrality argument without a mention of how much bandwidth next generation Internet-based business models will require and who exactly will pay for the last mile of connectivity in a true Internet neutral world.

For example, if one wanted to download a large special edition video (imagine the special edition of the Lord of the Rings) from a vendor, like iTunes, it would take between 2.5 and 10.5 hours to complete the download of the approximately 56GB (12 DVDs at 4.7GB per DVD) of information depending on your download speed (note - this is assuming that you don't have any drops during that time period of downloading the content.... my service provider managed to have three glitches in my service while i was writing this blog...). Those speeds are assuming a relatively fast Internet connection and significant investment on the part of the telecom consumer over and above the investment in the actual content purchase.

Sooner or later, video, and possibly audio content, vendors are going to want a "pipe" with considerably faster speeds and higher quality of service agreements than those currently offered to enable the unforeseen/future Internet-base business models predicted by Pamela White. I am guessing that they will be interested in paying for that improved speed and quality of delivery option to develop a competitive advantage over other content delivery models.

While I could be wrong, I am guessing that "fast lane" (ie higher speed and quality of service) "pipes" may find a similar audience to Fred Smith's ideas about sending packages across the US overnight.... Doesn't that Yale econ prof wish that instead of a C, he had given Fred Smith seed financing to develop the business case that became Federal Express... :)

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, Business Plan

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