Vonage may be gone forever if Net Neutrality gets destroyed

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 19, 2006 Posts: 16

Something bad will happen that concerns every website in the world even Vonage Phone Service.

Editors, and administrator don't delete this because this concerns us all and if we don't sign the whole internet and Vonage will be swallowed by big ISPs such as AT&T, Bellsouth, Verizon.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/335672945?ltl=1147420744

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

If they force our Government, and Congress to abolish the Net Neutrality Vonage could be brought down unless they pay these huge ISPs loads of money just to provide phone service. Even worse they could block Vonage all together so we are all forced to pay for a higher service and will stifle innovation.

If you all sign these petitions we can prevent this!

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 9:46 am Post subject:

Washington has done a pretty poor job of regulating technology. The net neutrality cause is poorly constructed because most supporters don't understand what is at stake.

If you prevent the large ISPs from favoring any service provider then you will stifle any innovation that requires assistance from those providers. For example, Akamai is a large company that provides cached web access in ISP facilities for paying customers. A large number of businesses pay to use Akamai for this service and Akamai in turn pays the ISP for hosting their equipment. Net neutrality as proposed by congress would make this business illegal.

Until net neutrality supporters can understand and agree on exactly what behavior shoud be prohibited and by whom we are much better not trying to have people who don't understand the technology write kneejerk legislation with unintended consequences.

We should be pushing instead for more programs that would increase ISP competitiveness. Instead we see the government permitting the massive conglomeration of cable and phone companies reducing competition and depriving consumers the choice of choosing an ISP based upon the ISP's stand on issues like net neutrality.

This is a serious issue, but one that is more suited to being addressed by market forces than by legislation. If, however, legislation is needed, it will be legislation that will once again force the major operators to open their infrastructure up for competition and possibly, because of their monopoly status, split their companies up into infrastructure and service provider elements so that all competitors have a level playing field.

The argument against open networks has always been that it slows expansion of broadband because it takes away the monetary incentive. This has not proven to be the case in other countries and there are even projects in this country, for example Utah's Utopia, that prove there are other ways to accomplish broadband penetration.

I remember when I first signed up for personal Internet access. The only local provider, because of their religious views, did not provide access to certain usenet newsgroups. I still feel strongly today that a business should be allowed to decide what content they choose to carry and that customers should have the option to pick providers based on the content they allow access to. It is the market's job, with the assistance of the government, to ensure that there are enough service providers to satisfy customer choice.

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 04, 2005 Posts: 5

Quote:

I still feel strongly today that a business should be allowed to decide what content they choose to carry and that customers should have the option to pick providers based on the content they allow access to.

OK - here's a possible scenario for you:

Your broadband ISP decides that they want you to use their VoIP service instead of Vonage (which would probably cost more). So, you decide to look for a new ISP that would allow Vonage traffic, which you seem confident you would be able to find. What would be the likelihood of other ISPs allowing external Vonage traffic on their lines when they can (force or "encourage") you to pay them to use their VoIP service?

Posts: 476 · Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 5:25 pm Post subject:

Whistler wrote:

Quote:

I still feel strongly today that a business should be allowed to decide what content they choose to carry and that customers should have the option to pick providers based on the content they allow access to.

OK - here's a possible scenario for you:

Your broadband ISP decides that they want you to use their VoIP service instead of Vonage (which would probably cost more). So, you decide to look for a new ISP that would allow Vonage traffic, which you seem confident you would be able to find. What would be the likelihood of other ISPs allowing external Vonage traffic on their lines when they can (force or "encourage") you to pay them to use their VoIP service?

Except scerruti didn't say that. In fact, here's what was said:

scerruti wrote:

We should be pushing instead for more programs that would increase ISP competitiveness. Instead we see the government permitting the massive conglomeration of cable and phone companies reducing competition and depriving consumers the choice of choosing an ISP based upon the ISP's stand on issues like net neutrality.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject:

The DMCA got rammed through in a very knee-jerk fashion, why wouldn't anything less happen with the telecoms?