I got this letter from Ebay. Anybody knows what's going on? Net Neutrality and the eBay Community: A Call to Action ... Right now, the telephone and cable companies in control of Internet access are trying to use their enormous political muscle to dramatically change the Internet. It might be hard to believe, but lawmakers in Washington are seriously debating whether consumers should be free to use the Internet as they want in the future. The phone and cable companies now control more than 95% of all Internet access. These large corporations are spending millions of dollars to promote legislation that would divide the Internet into a two-tiered system. The top tier would be a "Pay-to-Play" high-speed toll-road restricted to only the largest companies that can afford to pay high fees for preferential access to the Net. The bottom tier -- the slow lane -- would be what is left for everyone else. If the fast lane is the information "super-highway," the slow lane will operate more like a dirt road. Today's Internet is an incredible open marketplace for goods, services, information and ideas. We can't give that up. A two lane system will restrict innovation because start-ups and small companies -- the companies that can't afford the high fees -- will be unable to succeed, and we'll lose out on the jobs, creativity and inspiration that come with them. The power belongs with Internet users, not the big phone and cable companies. Let's use that power to send as many messages as possible to our elected officials in Washington. Please join me by clicking here right now to send a message to your representatives in Congress before it is too late. You can make the difference. Thank you for reading this note. I hope you'll make your voice heard today. Sincerely, Meg Whitman President and CEO eBay Inc.
I've heard of this. If I remember correctly, it was bandied about regarding Internet2 (www.internet2.edu), which is to the Internet of the Future as DARPANet was to today's Internet. Personally, I think it's a great idea to charge for two-tiered service. It's the same as what we have in TV (pay-to-play cable/satellite vs. free TV), or in toll roads (the toll-based 91 Express Lanes running parallel to the free-to-use 91 Freeway in Southern California). I'd be happy to pay a premium for a higher-speed Internet if and only if there are: - bandwidth guarantees - bans on advertising, especially spam - non-compliant servers are blocked The best feature? There'd be a per-email charge of about $0.001 that would be levied on the sender. This would effectively prevent spam, since spammers would rack up millions of dollars in charges annually, while regular users would only have to pay less than a dollar a month. Considering that around 80% of today's total Internet traffic is due to spam, I'd say that we'd all reap huge benefits without a significant increase in Internet access costs. After all, my connection to IB's servers sometimes go wacko thanks to a downed or overloaded router somewhere between my local ISP and gw1.ibllc.com. When that happens, I can't trade at all--can't even hit www.interactivebrokers.com.!
Agreed, sounds like a a war between people that want freedom and privacy, vs. those that want control and safety. Recipe for disaster. In Europe they have very fast connections that are in some places cheaper than here in the USA. Increasing pricing for better internet? How about they give us what we deserve? We are currently paying for connectivity to high speed internet, where there have been attempts to have wireless web access for free in major towns and even smaller towns, repeatedly phone and cable companies shut it down because they want our bucks. It's a shame, we could all probably be paying 20 to 30 dollars for speeds at least 5 times faster than the average high speed internet connection. Just the big boys making sure all the ideas that will ruin them from charging a ton o money to us .... Yeah, big business sucks.
Chill out, all its going to amount to, is you getting CHEAPER internet access that is crap (ISP's have made deals with google/msn etc). Or pay a TINY premium for this not to happen. An ISP who doesnt let this happen, will let everyone know and get more business. It's the way capatilism works. Surely this would be obvious to those posting on a site named elitetrader.
msft wants to buy them and then eat, and ruin, their lunch. but, rest assured, GOOG will develop a better auction site and eat both of them, and a better OS taboot. keep in mind i would never buy GOOG, here, but mark my words, they are unstoppable and both MSFT and EBAY blew it.
Since when is the internet free? I pay $40/month to Time Warner for a cable modem. Seems to me that the success of the net revolves around classic network effects. Any attempts to provincialize it will fail. If businesses want to develop interwoven intranets, more power to 'em, but I don't see it affecting the public en masse.