From: Mike Leber (no email)
Date: Thu Nov 03 2005 - 04:34:46 EST
That's a wonderful bluring of what Randy's issue was to the point of
indistinction. Yes, try to flip it. The issue is when a consumer buys
access to the "Internet" what do they get?
One way of tackling this is a truth in advertising defintion of what
selling access to the "Internet" means.
If you sell access to the "Internet" does that mean everybody except
companies that offer services that compete with you? (for example:
competing VOIP for phone companies, or competing IPTV for cable networks)
Does access to the "Internet" include prefixes of:
* prefixes of networks willing to pay you money
* prefixes of networks willing to call it even
* prefixes of networks that wanted you to pay money
At some point, what you would be selling would not be access to what the
average business customer or consumer would call the "Internet", in which
case you shouldn't be allowed to market it that way. You should have to
call it access to the "Partial Internet", or "Some of the Internet", or
"The portion of the Internet willing to pay us money". i.e. "Contains
only 50 percent Internet". (heh, just like a can of mixed nuts letting
you know the amount of peanuts, or "fruit juice" that discloses whether it
really has any fruit juice in it at all.)
Most of us can probably agree that you should be free to sell whatever
concontion of network connectivity you want. Certainly AOL, Compuserve,
and Prodigy were all walled gardens before the Internet. Knock yourself
out, just don't call it Internet access.
Mike.
On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Randy Bush wrote:
> > the two year window is far too low given the sbc ceo's recent public
> > statements on the use of his wires by google and the like.
>
> Should content suppliers be required to provide equal access to all
> networks? Or can content suppliers enter into exclusive contracts?
>
> If Google sets up a WiFi network in San Francisco or buys AOL with
> Comcast, can Google create a custom content for users on its networks? Or
> must Google offer the same cotent on the same terms and conditions to
> everyone? Should AOL be able to offer selected content to only its
> customers, such as music downloads? Or must AOL supply that content
> to everyone equally? Comcast offers its users access to the Disney
> Connection web site, should Disney be required to offer it to all Internet
> users equally? The NFL offers its Sunday Ticket exclusively through
> DirecTV? Or must the NFL offer the same content to every network?
>
> What rules should exist on how Google operates? Or is it just
> traditionally lobbying? Google says regulate the other guy, but
> not itself. The other guys say regulate Google, but not them.
>
+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+
| Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 |
| Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 |
| http://www.he.net |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|