[zmanian]

A lot of folks on the legal/policy side of this debate believe that a regulator can distinguish between network administration that is monopolistic rent seeking and that which is value added services.

I'm very suspicious of this as an engineer. I suspect it is very hard to tell the difference. In a competitive environment, we can more easily discover the difference. I strongly prefer imposing competition at the last mile rather than the EFF's suggestion of Title 2 + forebearance...

[sdenton4]

Right. We've had 'competition' in the last mile for the last twenty years, and it's led to terrible service and slower broadband than anywhere else in the developed world. Because that 'competition' leads to lots of local monopolies of the worst sort. We've already discovered the difference on this issue.

[snogglethorpe]

Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice.

Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of real competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.

[daxelrod]

Wait, who has been pretending that what we have now is competition? Most places I've lived have had a choice of the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly.