On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:13:32 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> 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.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. :-)

> 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.

Yup, and that's something that should be illegal - and I think people are 
perfectly reasonable to complain to the PUC about it.

>> 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.

I worked for a company that owned a common carrier; as a common carrier, 
they were required by law to carry signals for competitors in the primary 
business (food and drug retail - yeah, I know, how they came to own a 
common carrier....well, I do know the history) and had to do so in a very 
clearly segmented way so as to not expose competitor data to our primary 
lines of business.

Jim

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