You know I don’t want this to be a rant…be aware it could be. Recently the FCC has release a broad document outlining some of the rule making for  They are seeking comments on their proposal over the next four months. Here is a quote:

The FCC has previously concluded that broadband providers have the incentive and ability to act in ways that threaten Internet openness. But today, there are no rules that stop broadband providers from trying to limit Internet openness. That is why the Notice adopted by the FCC todays starts with a fundamental question: “What is the right public policy to ensure that the Internet remains open?”

What is an open internet? To me at least it has to do with the basic concept of equality of data transmission. All bytes treated the same, whether I am watching a video that is from YouTube or a video from Vimeo. The bytes come through the same with no degradation in performance. Some ISP’s have their own content. That some content should have special treatment. The same goes for blogs and news sites. CNN should not have special treatment versus any blog.

There are many issues that relate to this. Much to say one of them is on going performance deterioration. I have noticed that over the years my cable internet service has degraded. Even though I suppose to get fast speeds (mine is suppose to be 20Mbps) I rarely get that speed. And if i get the speed things download slowly. I did a comparison with my ATT smartphone and my internet. The video on my phone played great while the cable internet service stuttered and stopped to buffer.

The issue of quality of service is important. I am not talking about bandwidth shaping. I am just talking about the service in general. Why am I getting better service via my cellular wireless than my wired cable internet? The wired service should be better. It is not.

So I pose this question; How do we keep the connectivity innovating and keep the bits & bytes free?

I like this photo, but it is missing Time Warner Cable. Photo credit: Free Press Pics / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)