Congressman to Conspiracy Nut: Let the Market Work!

Chris Soghoian is claiming that Congressmen Rick Boucher wants to slap some regulations on Comcast for engaging in Admission Control. Not so: [Soghoian] asked Boucher what he would do if Comcast stuck to its guns and kept discriminating against BitTorrent. In particular, [Soghoian] asked him if he would propose legislation compelling the company to treat … Continue reading “Congressman to Conspiracy Nut: Let the Market Work!”

Chris Soghoian is claiming that Congressmen Rick Boucher wants to slap some regulations on Comcast for engaging in Admission Control. Not so:

[Soghoian] asked Boucher what he would do if Comcast stuck to its guns and kept discriminating against BitTorrent. In particular, [Soghoian] asked him if he would propose legislation compelling the company to treat all traffic fairly.

Unfortunately for fans of Net neutrality, the congressman said he was not ready to go down this path and instead stressed market-based methods of fixing the problems. Instead of tinkering with packets, the congressman said that in the short term, Comcast should “simply tier their offerings and engage in a pricing structure that allocates more bandwidth to those who pay more, and less to those who pay less.”

However, he said “the long-term answer is to deploy more capacity. That is what municipal broadband and other telecom companies are doing. Ultimately, the cable companies will have to deploy fiber to the house.”

I don’t think it’s appropriate for the Congressman to dictate wiring specifications, but he’s entitled to his opinion as long as he doesn’t try to legislate it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.