Utah leads the way! How the FCC can please everyone on Net Neutrality.

By
Andrew
on February 27, 2008 11:32 AM | | Comments (317) | TrackBacks (0)
Remember a few years back, when at the urging of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (R), Cable Television providers started offering "family tiers" of service? When certain groups complained about not being able to get rid of channels with content that offended them, they demanded the ability to "unsubscribe" from them, or purchase the ones they wanted "a la carte."

Obviously, the cable companies did not like this idea, so they compromised. Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox, the "big three" of cable television, started offering "family tiers," or packages without the channels that some considered too racy. In effect, they gave customers the option to "opt-in" to having the selection of channels they received be censored.

Yesterday, in this space, I wrote about a Utah legislator's proposal for "family-friendly" Internet service. I thought it was a good idea that parents, or anyone who wanted content-filtered service (schools, some businesses, etc) could have the option of paying for it instead of filtering software that is often questionable in effectiveness.

Just two days ago, the FCC held hearings on Comcast's alleged throttling of BitTorrent traffic. One of the issues raised was that of transparency, that when people buy what they think is "unlimited" service they are really agreeing to Terms of Service that let the ISP do certain things to manage the network.

Whether or not what Comcast did was proper is up to the FCC to decide. On the other hand, if the cable companies can offer "family tiers" and Utah can have "family" broadband, why can't the broadband providers offer a "tier" of service that is truly "all-you-can-eat" for the power user? Much was made of the need for "full disclosure" of restrictions on bandwidth by broadband providers. I agree that this is true. You should know what you are buying, and you should get what pay for. If a small percentage of users really does use such a large percentage of bandwidth, they should be offered the option of paying for the ability to truly use as much as they want.

Network management is reasonable. Full disclosure is reasonable. Paying a premium for guaranteed maximum bandwidth is totally reasonable. The market for "all you can eat" broadband exists.

If you build it, they will come.

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