Thus spake "Christopher L. Morrow" <christopher.morrow@mci.com>
On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Tony Li wrote:
What good is 6Mbit DSL from my ISP (say, SBC for example) if only a small portion of the net (sites that pay for non-degraded access) loads at a reasonable speed and everything else sucks?
One might argue that in such a situation, the end user is getting less value than they did previously. End users might then either demand a price break or might vote with their connectivity.
the last 2 times this has come up I think there was the suggestion that given other options at reasonably close to the same end cost users might switch to alternate access methods. That works as long as there are alternate access methods, and as long as the telecom's don't 'cabal' and all do the same hideously bad thing...
Congress appears to be working hard to make sure that happens.
I do think it'd be funny for SBC or BS to do this sort of thing and get massive customer loss when their customers defect to cable modem networks.
Do you really think the cablecos will be significantly less evil than the telcos? I'm not as optimistic about the result of a legislated duopoly. S Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking