I appreciate your point, but the fact that mergers are occuring does not necessarily mean that competition does not exist, nor that it is not thriving. There are still several competing bandwidth providers; I just pinged my employer from my home (a distance of less than half a mile) and the packet traveled over two different backbones to get there. And the backbone providers are constantly adding capacity to avoid falling behind in the race with their competitors.

Wireless broadband holds a great deal of potential, but I doubt it’ll ever replace wired broadband. Wires by nature are capable of carrying more bandwidth than the wireless spectrum, and I doubt we’ll ever see wireless broadband capable of carrying multiple high-definition video streams.

The fact remains that so-called “network neutrality” is a terrible idea for several reasons, both ethical and practical. Even if you don’t find compelling the argument that the government has no business telling people what they can do with their own networks nor the argument that federal regulation of the Internet is a slope so slipperly it may as well be greased, there’s the plain fact that scarce bandwidth can best be allocated by a pricing system. I’ve yet to hear anybody come up with a good reason why network neutrality on the backbone would be fundamentally different from network neutrality on the last mile… nor has anybody been foolish enough to assert that network neutrality on the last mile would be anything but catastrophic.

Ironically, the big winners from “network neutrality” would be the very companies that advocates claim it’s needed to fight against. The cable companies, who would face no competition on their private municipal-area networks (which are most definitely not “neutral”), and the telcos, which would stave off the inevitable obsolescence of their outdated landline networks. The current scheme of “network neutrality” means that VOIP remains more latent and less reliable than landline telephone service, and laws preventing companies like Vonage and Skype from paying backbone providers for better service means that the situation will remain static.

I think what Mr. Dunsdon found disagreeable was the comment that there is “thriving” competition in the telecom market.

Truthfully, while you are probably more right than not regarding the free market vis-a-vis the internet, I agree with him on that point. Competition in the telecom space as been decreasing for years. Giant mergers are returning us to the world of one AT&T, which the government will likely have to shatter a second time eventually. And, of course, government regulations benefiting the large telecom providers have a long history as well.

There are a lot of wonderful companies and services taking advantage of telecommunications technology these days, but the core providers are hardly involved in a strenuously competitive battle.

Off topic, but relevant, I think, is the possibility that wireless WAN technology may change that eventually, as there’s no analogue to ownership of the (very expensive) overland or buried cables as there is in the existing wired network space. For now, of course, it’s not near fast enough or ubiquitous enough. Nonetheless, wireless could change the market topography in substantial ways.

I’ll fully agree that the Net is not what it once was; it’s unimaginably better. Thanks to those “exploiting” businesses, we have a mind-bogglingly immense array of content available to us, including products and services undreamed-of just a few years ago. It’s impossible to overstate the sheer boon of the Internet, and it’s all (well, mostly) thanks to those greedy thieving exploitive businessmen pursuing their self-interest in a free market. That’s the way free markets work, and I roll my eyes at those who believe that “greed” is in any way bad. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” –Adam Smith.

Free markets exist within the “framework” of laissez faire, when people are left alone so long as they don’t initiate force or fraud against others. That’s what built the magnificent Internet we have today, and that’s what people like you are trying to destroy. As far as your constitutional example, I thank you for the chuckle. Rights are not goods, and you have no constitutional right to bandwidth. Should one customer be permitted to utilize more bandwidth because he’s willing and able to pay for it? Yes, absolutely.

I’m afraid your comment was unclear; what’s the “one small point” you strenuously disagree with? Why is it that you’d balk at the government dictating that all cars be sold at the same price, or that all food be sold at the same price, but insist that the government dictate that all bandwidth be sold at the same price?

I would normally agree with your notion that less regulation is better if it weren’t for the one small point that I strenuously disagree with. Your statement that competition in this market is “thriving” is laughable.

As for your silly “extorsion” argument, the same sort of logic has been used to “prove” that private land ownership simply cannot work… after all, what’s to stop a malicious individual from buying all the land adjacent to your house and preventing you from leaving? Competition in the telecom market is absolutely thriving. Nobody has a stranglehold on the market or even close to it; any competitor who attempted to maliciously extort a customer would quickly find itself driven out of the market by competitors who aren’t stupid enough to attempt to leverage monopoly power where none exists.

I’ve been on this Internet thingamajiggy since 1991, which certainly puts me in the 99th percentile of longevity, and I don’t recall anything about “equal access and opportunity for all types of information delivery, irregardless [sic] of who might be sending or receiving it.” I do, however, recall the Internet being founded on staunchly libertarian principles with an extreme bias towards laissez faire and a healthy distrust of government regulation. Once again I invite you to consider Akamai, consider a home customer, and consider the disaster which would result if the two were required to accept the same level of service regardless of willingness to pay.

Bandwidth is a scarce resource, and like all scarce resources, it’s allocated most efficiently in a free market, where prices can communicate information on supply and demand.