4 ms·

How is this good for the Internet? Offering to cut deals with established players like Skype and Pandora who have the capital they've earned off the current fr

How is this good for the Internet? Offering to cut deals with established players like Skype and Pandora who have the capital they've earned off the current free Internet? How can the little guy in his garage out innovate a Skype or Pandora and then bring his wireless Internet service to the masses? The masses dont care about the guy in the garage only what they are fed; their WISP (wireless ISP) is going to market the heck out of their partners(established players) whose service runs the best on Verizon because they ponied up. I can't see how this good for the free Internet and the little guy starting.

btilly 16y ago
How can the little guy in his garage out innovate a Skype or Pandora and then bring his wireless Internet service to the masses? I can't believe that so many people have so little perspective. By far the most important tier in the proposal is called "the Internet". If history is any indication, "the little guy" is guaranteed to out innovate, time and time again. And as a result the service people will care about most will be called "the Internet". Sure, Verizon is free to prioritize traffic so that telephone calls don't get dropped and people's TV works even when a DoS attack is going on. But neither Verizon nor any other provider can afford to make the internet suck, and as long as it doesn't suck the guy in the garage is free to deliver what we haven't dreamed of yet. Don't forget, we've seen the tiered internet before. It is what broad access started with in the mid-90s where services like AOL and Juno had their nice little walled gardens and, on the side, offered access to the big scary internet. And guess what? The walled gardens weren't attractive to consumers then, and won't be now. So if the utilities go along with this agreement then breathe a big sigh of relief, and get on with your lives. Because it gives them all the rope to hang themselves trying to do what won't work, and give you the guaranteed free space to innovate to your heart's content.
- paul9290 16y ago
  Ok so you what if Verizon, AT&T, SPrint and TMobile all follow suit. They see WoW Verizon is making millions/billions a year via their deal with Skype. Let's go out and find a Skype competitor with big pockets; one that connects to Skype and Yahoo, MSN, etc. With all four WISPs following the money train who is left. Some random joe who is going to start building their own national WISP that provides as solid coverage as the biggies? THis may or may not happen but if set it stone it allows WISPs to do just that. Also If im trying to create the next Skype (a wireless IP service) the service created in my garage is not going to be as reliable and run as well as Skype runs on Verizon. If Im a consumer which one am I going to use and adopt?
  - btilly 16y ago
    Stop this. The sky is not falling. Skype itself, today, runs over the general Internet, and got to its current position competing against an entrenched dedicated network that literally had been optimized for decades. (Aka the telephone network.) Oh, and one that is prioritized over general internet traffic. In the nightmare world that you describe, any new Skype competitor starts with access to a better Internet than Skype did. Their main worry should be that Skype itself already exists, but for some strange reason Skype is choosing to spend hundreds of millions to billions making Verizon happy. And at the same time our new upstart can deliver to the exact same customers at very little cost! (Certainly a lot less per customer than Skype is paying.) Were I that entrepreneur I'd be crying, "Woe is me, don't throw me into that brier patch!" And by this agreement, Verizon et al can't shut off this upstart service because guaranteed customer access comes straight from the consumer protections they've all agreed to. In effect it is, "We have net neutrality, but the ISPs and anyone they can convince are allowed to waste as much money as they want in producing services with premium access." Given the history of the Internet I have no doubt that much money will be so spent, most of it will be wasted, and innovation on the Internet will prove to have been well protected.
  - paul9290 16y ago
    There's nothing to stop. This my opinion and others here too. We'll c how it plays out. Hopefully none of the scenarios i scribed here.

btilly 16y ago

How can the little guy in his garage out innovate a Skype or Pandora and then bring his wireless Internet service to the masses? I can't believe that so many people have so little perspective. By far the most important tier in the proposal is called "the Internet". If history is any indication, "the little guy" is guaranteed to out innovate, time and time again. And as a result the service people will care about most will be called "the Internet". Sure, Verizon is free to prioritize traffic so that telephone calls don't get dropped and people's TV works even when a DoS attack is going on. But neither Verizon nor any other provider can afford to make the internet suck, and as long as it doesn't suck the guy in the garage is free to deliver what we haven't dreamed of yet. Don't forget, we've seen the tiered internet before. It is what broad access started with in the mid-90s where services like AOL and Juno had their nice little walled gardens and, on the side, offered access to the big scary internet. And guess what? The walled gardens weren't attractive to consumers then, and won't be now. So if the utilities go along with this agreement then breathe a big sigh of relief, and get on with your lives. Because it gives them all the rope to hang themselves trying to do what won't work, and give you the guaranteed free space to innovate to your heart's content.

paul9290 16y ago
Ok so you what if Verizon, AT&T, SPrint and TMobile all follow suit. They see WoW Verizon is making millions/billions a year via their deal with Skype. Let's go out and find a Skype competitor with big pockets; one that connects to Skype and Yahoo, MSN, etc. With all four WISPs following the money train who is left. Some random joe who is going to start building their own national WISP that provides as solid coverage as the biggies? THis may or may not happen but if set it stone it allows WISPs to do just that. Also If im trying to create the next Skype (a wireless IP service) the service created in my garage is not going to be as reliable and run as well as Skype runs on Verizon. If Im a consumer which one am I going to use and adopt?
- btilly 16y ago
  Stop this. The sky is not falling. Skype itself, today, runs over the general Internet, and got to its current position competing against an entrenched dedicated network that literally had been optimized for decades. (Aka the telephone network.) Oh, and one that is prioritized over general internet traffic. In the nightmare world that you describe, any new Skype competitor starts with access to a better Internet than Skype did. Their main worry should be that Skype itself already exists, but for some strange reason Skype is choosing to spend hundreds of millions to billions making Verizon happy. And at the same time our new upstart can deliver to the exact same customers at very little cost! (Certainly a lot less per customer than Skype is paying.) Were I that entrepreneur I'd be crying, "Woe is me, don't throw me into that brier patch!" And by this agreement, Verizon et al can't shut off this upstart service because guaranteed customer access comes straight from the consumer protections they've all agreed to. In effect it is, "We have net neutrality, but the ISPs and anyone they can convince are allowed to waste as much money as they want in producing services with premium access." Given the history of the Internet I have no doubt that much money will be so spent, most of it will be wasted, and innovation on the Internet will prove to have been well protected.
- paul9290 16y ago
  There's nothing to stop. This my opinion and others here too. We'll c how it plays out. Hopefully none of the scenarios i scribed here.