Paul Hammant's Blog: Network Extortion is what you get when network neutrality is dropped

Can someone who know depict this better than me please? Just take the OmniGraffle doc and give it another go please (and link back).

Network neutrality today (good)

A person or company sending a packet (and expecting packets back in response) pays for them once somehow.

Network extortion (bad)

A person or company sending a packet (and expecting packets back in response) might have to pay for them twice somehow, or see them slowed down.

The above is maybe the intention of the ISP. To get to that, they have to set up a multi-speed experience for the subscribers (you):

Telecos may go through the motions of suggesting there’s a “cheaper” price available for people that just want (list of companies that have already paid them an extra fee). Say have something that’s crap that’s lower than the current entry-level fee, and another fee tier that is much mre pricey that’s the unlimited you were accustomed to. Really though, the telecos want to walk all the price points upwards carefully over a few years (if you could not guess).

Remember that Apple’s 2007 “unlimited data” charge (through AT&T) was $20 of the larger fee that included calls and SMS. We’ve been walked up from that groundbreaking* rate many times, and persuaded to upgrade through 3G and into 4G/LTE for high-res-movie reasons I think. All the while blinking an paying a little more each year for that, as opposed to a little less which “progress” should dictate.

Problems with these diagrams

The per 10,000 users fees (red and per-month - mostly on the left) does not map well to the per user/account fees (blue, monthly) on the right. Sure, you could divide by 10,000 to arrive at blue legends of 0.15c per user on the left but that’s now intangible as well as confusing.

Also ‘startup’ is just one example.

And, CDNs are not depicted. Would they be legally extorted too?

Additional lines / questions?

What if the telecos try to ask Amazon for fees? No net neutrality means anyone could legally shake anyone else down if they were sure their users/customers moving somewhere else was sufficiently difficult.

.. Or Amazon ask the telecos for fees?

Are the contracts for this legalized extortion going to be under NDA, so we the public do not know they are in force?

What is the end game:

• Startups don’t start up?
• Startups have to charge end-users too, from the outset?
• Micropayments for everything - look how well that goes for healthcare?
• we (end users) bear the brunt of the extra costs, all because telecos want to increase their profits
• Google become a non-extorting teleco and benevolent to startups and little orgs/co’s?
• Breakup of telecos - because this is ultimately self defeating (it is said there needs to be five suppliers of a thing in order to get honest competition that would drive prices down)