No prob, little buddy, we would never block your access to Google Video or prevent you from using your Skype. That would be dumb business.

But if you don’t trust us (and why should you, really?) you have a champion in the US Senate. Call your own Senators and tell them to support the video franchising bill sponsored by your namesake, Ted. It has language making the practices you fear illegal.

Right now it’s being held up by Google ‘n Frenz seeking a subsidy for the big guys in something called “free QoS”. If that bill doesn’t pass, well, you’ll just have to trust us some more.

Thanks for the note,

Pete’s ISP

I have a contract with you in which I pay you money every month in exchange for access to the whole internet, at a certain rate with a certain bandwidth cap. Your job is to deliver the packets I’ve paid for to me when I ask for them irrespective of where they come from.

I as your customer have paid you to deliver Google Video to me. I have paid you to deliver VoIP services. Until you update your advertising for new customer to explain that video, VoIP and other services are excluded from your internet offering please refrain from disabling them from your existing customers who are already paying you for those services, and any other internet service that may or may not be invented.

Most NN-advocates want QoS. But most don’t want it without competition at the last-mile. And without any existing business models that account for mutually agreed-upon inter-carrier handoffs.

Without the latter, NetFlix will have a real fun time trying to wire their data-center into every cable- and telephone-company to ensure QoS to the consumer.

I am not sure where you want to tweak the language or its purpose. If you want Section 12(a)(1) to read “not block … the ability of any other broadband service provider to use a broadband service …,” it wouldn’t make sense. Other broadband service providers don’t “use a broadband service” as that phrase is being used here. You would probably have to write a new section entirely.

I still am not sure what Whiteacre is talking about, but let’s assume your interpretation is correct, and he wants to charge content providers for moving their data through AT&T’s network.

First, I am not sure if anyone wants legislation to prohibit fees from being charged by ISPs for data that comes from other network owners. The NN amendments probably would not prevent AT&T from doing so. The reason is that it might not be necessary because of expense and effectiveness of the practice. (See my post above.)

Second, the market might prevent AT&T from charging Google. Google pays its ISP to deliver its traffic, which pays a backbone provider, which pays another backbone provider, which pays another, and so on until the traffic arrives at another ISP (say, AT&T). If AT&T blocked Google’s incoming data from the last backbone provider, AT&T might be violating its peering agreement with that backbone provider.

I cannot speak for the the save-the-internet folks. (FYI I have not taken sides.) However, if you mean “customer” to exclude content providers, you would have to define “customer” as such. And further, I am not sure that would appease the pro-NN regulation folks. There seems to be a concern with protecting competition, that is, preventing the last-mile wireline owners from squeezing out competitors, especially in broadcast video and voice services. That means protecting these competitors.