Balloon Juice ? Blog Archive ? Hooocoodanode

By mistermix May 29th, 2012

Timothy Lee, a former Cato scholar, catches a clue:

In 2008, I wrote a paper for the Cato Institute questioning the need for network neutrality regulations; I argued that the Internet?s decentralized architecture made it inherently resistant to mischief by broadband incumbents. While I?m still skeptical about the wisdom of network neutrality regulations, I?ve become more concerned about the state of the broadband market in the four years since writing that paper.[...]

What changed my thinking was less the theoretical arguments set out in that piece than it was a sequence of developments in the telecom marketplace, all of which forced me to reexamine my own assumptions about the state of US broadband. [...]

He goes on to point out what?s been pretty obvious since well before 2008: the phone and cable monopolies control delivery of Internet to households, and if their infrastructure doesn?t support fast Internet service, they won?t make it any faster if they can get away with it. It takes a serious devotion to confabulation to see a free market and good intentions when your own lying eyes see nothing but a duopoly and the desire to milk every penny out of the customer.

Here?s a case in point: Comcast, which is subject to net neutrality rules, is nevertheless prioritizing traffic on its own Xfinity video streaming service over traffic from services like Netflix and Hulu. That traffic goes on a ?separate lane? from other Internet traffic, and, more importantly, it doesn?t count against the Comcast subscriber?s monthly cap. That?s exactly what net neutrality advocates warned against in 2008, and what our man from Cato poo-poohed, and Cato is still working to weaken the FCC?s enforcement powers to stop Comcast from exploiting its monopoly.

I?m glad Lee is finally learning that we have a problem with our Internet infrastructure, but in the time since he wrote that piece for Cato, we?ve been slowly losing ground to other countries (we?re 8th or 15th in the world in broadband penetration, depending on how you interpret the numbers) and the cable monopolies have been devising ever more clever ways to retain the profits they?re losing from cord cutters, no thanks to believers in free market fairytales like him.

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