Well, Hurricane Earl brushed our beautiful island of Puerto Rico. It was a close one, however, my apartment is still without power (over 36 hours now). Its really incredible, the storm did not hit us. We got a lot of rain and moderate (25 mph) winds, but the electric grid should not go down so easily.
The fact that our power company (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) is owned by the government has not eluded me. The main problem is based on the premise that government operations (well most of them) are inherently inefficient. Since PREPA is owned by the government, it responds to political pressures. This causes its priorities to be misplaced and, as a result, the consumers suffer the consequences.
The last two nights I had trouble sleeping. It was hot and muggy. Needless to say, I had time to mull the situation over. My thoughts brought me to the Title II Reclassification effort proposed by the FCC. It makes no sense. Why would we want to put an efficient design, that has consistently expanded broadband adoption throughout our great nation and place it in government hands? Why would we want a government agency to impose early 1900’s regulations to a 21st century network?
I hope I don’t end up wide awake on a future hot, muggy night wondering how government intervention has again failed us.
Here’s a section discussing net neutrality from an article in The Economist about the future of the Internet. Note how it places net neutrality on a basis of “broadband access versus corporate profits,” the same argument I’ve made before:
“It is telling that net neutrality has become far more politically controversial in America than it has elsewhere. This is a reflection of the relative lack of competition in America’s broadband market. In Europe and Japan, “open access” rules require network operators to lease parts of their networks to other firms on a wholesale basis, thus boosting competition. A study comparing broadband markets, published in 2009 by Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, found that countries with such rules enjoy faster, cheaper broadband service than America, because the barrier to entry for new entrants is much lower. And if any access provider starts limiting what customers can do, they will defect to another.
America’s operators have long insisted that open-access requirements would destroy their incentive to build fast, new networks: why bother if you will be forced to share it? After intense lobbying, America’s telecoms regulators bought this argument. But the lesson from elsewhere in the industrialised world is that it is not true. The result, however, is that America has a small number of powerful network operators, prompting concern that they will abuse their power unless they are compelled, by a net-neutrality law, to treat all traffic equally. Rather than trying to mandate fairness in this way—net neutrality is very hard to define or enforce—it makes more sense to address the underlying problem: the lack of competition.”
Read the entire article here: http://economist.com/node/16941635
Thank you Gil! I will review the article and write a piece about it!