Jim Henderson wrote:
> With the cable companies in the US, they behave as a common carrier in 
> that they are the sole provider of the line, but you can't (AFAIK) choose 
> to use a different ISP if you use the cable provider.

Sometimes you can. But then what happens is you have things like Time 
Warner, who provides ISP, VIOP, and IPTV services, giving lower priority to 
traffic destined for Vonage's VOIP servers, Hulu, and so on.

I.e., by saying "It's my ISP, I can do whatever I want," they can provide 
VOIP at $50/month, and then refuse to connect you to the $20/month VOIP 
service, or provide cable TV service expensively and refuse to let you watch 
TV provided by someone else online like Hulu. TW already does this to some 
extent, until people complained to the PUC.

Then Time Warner gets pay-per-view, and decides that you shouldn't be 
allowed to hit CinemaNow or NetFlix download servers.

> What I think needs to happen is that the line provider needs to be 
> classified as a common carrier.  Common carrier status means they have to 
> treat all data equal, and the service providers (ie, the one providing 
> the network address and access to the Internet at large) then compete on 
> features, access, availability, and bandwidth options.

Exactly.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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