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Shel Holtz
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Fairpoint Communications makes the case for Net Neutrality

imageAll you opponents of Net Neutrality, explain to me why this is okay:

Verizon customers living in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are being switched over to Fairpoint Communications (Verizon sold its land-line business to Fairpoint in order to erase some debt from its books). (Details here.)

Fairpoint has announced to customers who use the service to access the Net that, effective February 6, subscribers to Yahoo, MSN, and AOL will no longer be able to access their email through those sites. If you want to retrieve your email from the Web (as opposed to routing it through to an email client like Outlook), you’ll need to do so through MyFairpoint.net, the company’s own dedicated (and, presumably, ad-supported) portal.

Some are suggesting that this is one path Fairpoint is taking to profitability with Verizon’s money-losing land-line operation. Whether that’s true or not, it’s a shining example of why Net neutrality is a must. The core principle of Net neutrality, regardless of how complex the issue gets when you dig into it, is simple: Those who provide you with access to the Net should not control the content you’re able to see. In this case, Fairpoint is telling its customers that they are not permitted to visit the AOL, Yahoo, or MSN email sites, that if you want your email you have no choice but to do so through the MyFairpoint.net portal.

If I were a customer, I’d be furious and seeking alternatives. Even if I had to get a satellite dish, I’d dump Fairpoint like a bad habit. I suspect many of their customers are already looking to make a change. I would also counsel anyone who asked to avoid using Fairpoint as an ISP at all costs.

But for those who don’t like the idea of legislated Net neutrality, why would this be an acceptable tactic for an ISP? And if it is, what’s to stop Fairpoint from re-routing any traffic to Google to their own advertising-laden search engine portal (as this post suggests)? And if they do, what makes that acceptable?

I’ll read any arguments inf avor of this with as much objectivity as I can muster. But in all honesty, I think this sucks. If I pay for access to the Net, I should be able to go where I want.

12/29/08 | 7 Comments | Fairpoint Communications makes the case for Net Neutrality

Comments

  • 1.AOL, Yahoo, and MSN should sue Fairpoint, because this tactic is hurting their businesses as well (probably not significantly, but it's the principle of the matter).

    Christy Season | December 2008 | Columbia, SC

  • 2.If the customers don't like their ISPs policies they should seek out alternatives. Are there any alternative internet service providers available to customers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire? I'd bet their are choices? What about internet delivered by the cable companies?

    It's just a simple concept that does not require the FCC to take control of the internet. If you're not happy with the service provided by one company then use the services of another company.

    Robert Safuto | December 2008 | Albany, NY

  • 3.Sorry, Rob, I don't buy that argument. First, what happens when ALL the ISPs, realizing they can get away with this, adopt the same behavior? Second, would you make the same argument about a Wall Street financial services company engaging in high-risk investments with no thought to the impact on their investors? Governments regulate for a reason, and I have no problem with a regulation that simply says, "Access providers, hands off." That's not "control of the Internet" by a long shot; in fact, it's preventing others from taking control and limiting/controlling access.

    Shel Holtz | December 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 4.Over in the US you seem to have been engaged in a discuss about net neutrality that hasn't even started over here in the UK yet.

    Has something like this happened before in history? Have a read of this fantastic article by Rob MacDougall called The Gilded Age Internet and the People?s Telephone:

    http://www.robmacdougall.org/index.php/2008/07/the-gilded-age-internet-and-the-peoples-telephone/

    AndyW | December 2008 | London

  • 5.Wow. What a story.

    Net Neutrality aside, off the top of my head, residents of these states include some pretty heavy hitters in the social media space like Dan York, Katie Payne and Chip Griffin, just to list a few.

    Let Verizon feel their wrath!

    And happy new year.
    Mark

    Mark Story | December 2008 | Washington, DC

  • 6."If it's too bad to be true...it probably is."

    http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20081230/NEWS01/812300333/1002/NEWS01

    "To clear up any confusion from a Saturday story on FairPoint Communications takeover of Verizon's Internet service, FairPoint said it does not intend to block customers from accessing any legitimate Internet site.

    "FairPoint Internet customers will still be able to go to Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail, and read mail from those pages directly (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and so forth)."

    Allan Jenkins | January 2009 | Copenhagen, Denmark

  • 7.The net neutrality debate is also raging here in Canada as our telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), just ruled that Bell Canada can continue to slow the connections of people using peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent because, according to Bell, these customers' heavy usage slows down the Net for everyone. Two things make Bell's claims suspect:
    1)One thing people use BitTorrent for is download movies - which directly compete with Bell's own video-on-demand service
    2) If the issue is really congestion and bandwidth, Bell could easily solve this by using the loads of "black fiber" it has - fibre optic cable left unused because, after it was laid, Bell found ways to get more bandwidth out of the fibre it was already using. (thanks to the CBC podcast Search Engine for this one)

    Robin Browne | January 2009 | Ottawa

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