[173059] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Net Neutrality...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Naslund, Steve)
Tue Jul 15 11:28:58 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: "Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund@medline.com>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 15:19:47 +0000
In-Reply-To: <53C46491.4070206@meetinghouse.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
I don't believe either of those points. I will grant you that the LECs are=
near monopolies in some rural areas, but these are few and far between. Y=
es, a LEC may control the last mile but I can usually get circuits from a l=
ot of carriers. A company I work for has over 50 locations mostly in rural=
areas and we do not have much problem getting Sprint and CenturyLink acces=
s circuits to them regardless of location. In fact, we have never found a =
location in the US that I can't get both of those carrier to deliver to us.=
In a lot of areas there is also a cable provider available. Residential =
users have somewhat more limited options but you do always have the option =
of deciding where to live. Most of us in this group would consider the bro=
adband options available to them before they move.
Being a content provider has very little to do with market forces. Comcast=
is, of course, a major content provider and access provider but if they li=
mit their customer's access to Netflix (which they have been accused of) th=
e customers will still react to that. The content providing access provide=
r has to know that no matter how good their content is, they are not the on=
ly source and their customers will react to that. I think the service prov=
iders are sophisticated enough to know that and they will walk the fine lin=
e of keeping their customer happy while trying to promote their own content=
. It is like saying a Ford dealer does not want to change the oil on your =
Chevy, sure they would like for you to have bought from them but they will =
take what they can get.
Steven Naslund
=20
>>>Steve, the key piece you're missing here is that the major broadband pro=
viders are both
>>>- near-monopolies in their access areas
>>>- content providers
>>>Not a situation where market forces can work all that well.
>>>Miles Fidelman
