[TriLUG] OT: URGENT: H.129 to be heard in Thursday's Finance Committee!

[Cristóbal Palmer]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Chris Merrill <chris at webperformance.com> wrote:
> I dunno, looking at the pricing, it looks very fair to me. It is not a cap,
> it is tiered pricing. If you use more, you pay more...just like electricity,
> water, food, gas.  What am I missing?

Water is a utility and is highly regulated. Steps in the oil/gas chain
are highly regulated at the state and federal levels. Food production
and retail are highly regulated at both state and federal levels.
Internet Service is not highly regulated.

All the regulation (or lack thereof) aside, there's the fact that AT&T
provides separate (or bundled!) TV and Voice services in addition to
Internet services, so they have a business incentive to discourage
people from using competing services like Netflix, and usage pricing
would fit with that. What incentive does the gas retailer have to keep
you from filling up your tank more often?

AT&T and TWC fight pretty hard to keep their Internet business from
being regulated* (and the Koch brothers** do, too). It would take a
very poor student of history to forget that Ma Bell was broken up and
read some of this behavior today as institutional memory about that
period, but actually I think the better parallel here is the very
early days of the telephone--before regulation or even widespread
adoption. To that end, I really, really hope some people on this list
will buy and read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/America-Calling-Social-History-Telephone/dp/0520086473

If we put the first phone company doing business at 1877 and the first
commercial ISP at 1989, then compare today's arguments to what was
happening in 1899ish. Granted, the rates of technological change and
diffusion of innovation have accelerated, but you can read the book
and get a sense of what I mean.

If anyone is interested in chatting about the book with me, I'm happy
to have that conversation--off list.

Also, happy Pi day.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal Palmer
Still not speaking for my employer....

* AT&T spent 5.9 million in Q1 2010 on the federal level alone.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/3095 Though it's unclear what
percentage of their spending was in opposition to proposed Net
Neutrality or on Muni broadband changes.
* http://www.americansforprosperity.org/051110-afp-launches-14-million-advertising-blitz-expose-fccs-proposed-internet-takeover