Dear FT editors,
Your January 4th editorial,
Surfers should pay congestion charges, made painful reading.
The Network Neutrality debate isn't centred on the ability to buy preferential access to to the Internet. This is a canard floated by parties with an agenda to muddy the waters and obscure the real debate.
The real issue is to prevent vertically-integrated media companies from exercising unfair competition.
Imagine an ISP who's parent company also owned a competitor to Skype, the popular Internet phone service. Network neutrality regulations would seek to prevent that ISP from selectively reducing the quality of service between Skype users.
It has little or nothing to do with CDNs, "selling access to special fast lanes" or "preventing the market from rationing a scarce resource."
Yours sincerely,
Richi Jennings.
In Monday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches the One Laptop Per Child project give up on making laptops. Not to mention Ice Invaders...
In Friday's IT Blogwatch
In Thursday's IT Blogwatch