Life in Balance: Amit D. Chaudhary’s Blog
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By way of the O’Reilly Radar and 27B Stroke 6 Blog, I came across Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska’s speech to represent the majority position on an amendment for Net Neutrality. He is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Being someone working in the technology field, it was funny as well as sad.

As I tend to ask for issues I am concerned about, “What can I do about it? or What did I do about it in retrospective”, I thought why not write a letter to Senator Stevens and who knows it might help in some small way. Below is the letter I sent today.

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Respected Mr. Stevens,

I read a transcript of your speech as the majority opinion for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation: Hearing on Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006, dated June 28th 2006.

I have a few comments\additions to make and am hoping this might help you in your job in some way.

First and foremost, I can having known many of my parents generation, appreciate the fact that you have got over the typical technology phobia that is so common and know about the basic stuff pretty well. Though, I would also say, knowing about is a small part of your job among many other things.

Next I would like to elaborate on the impact of loss of Net Neutrality.

a1. On consumers: Your basic point is right. Messaging(Be it Email or Instant Messaing), the most common activity on the internet between typical users, for example this email to your official address, will not get impacted by loss of Net Neutrality.

Consumers do get impacted. Here are a few examples:

-If a user uses internet to communicate through voice, a cheaper\free version of the phone service (Examples among others: Yahoo messenger, Skype or Vonage), his or her options no longer depend on his\her own internet service (Dialup, DSL, Cable Modem), but on the provider.
-Consumers might no longer view video or do any large size transfer including a photo album software or a better browser from any website. It will depend on who pays how much at the provider site and as you can see, the above do not charge anything, so are more likely not to pay to make speedier downloads.

a2. On American startups and innovation

The biggest impact by far of loss of Net Neutrality would be on the reducing areas available for American startups and innovation. These will be reduced to low bandwidth\traffic applications, thereby crippling American innovation in the technology field for decades to come.

Allow me to elaborate: Right now, many innovations happen in the USA, in addition to the talent and opportunities, due what is called “low barrier of entry”. This creates tomorrow’s Amazon.com, Google, Hotmail and other such companies.

It should be obvious that American companies have been crowded out of many fields including electronics (Digital Cameras, DVD players) and manufacturing to name a few and loss of Net Neutrality will reduce or shut off Technology fields including Video and Voice over IP. As you can imagine, this affects commerce, employment and the standard of life.

a3. Services by established companies
The loss of Net Neutrality will also affect decision on services that existing established companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc choose to offer as the cost of high bandwidth services will increase.

I hope this might convince you and other members that “Net Neutrality” has it’s benefits.
Finally on the actual text of the transcript, a few corrections and comments:

b1. On one traffic affecting other, your comments

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

and

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

This is incorrect, unless both the video(a movie being streamed) and the email were being sent to the same house or office with same link. Even in that case, the delay for the email would be in seconds.

The internet or an internet cannot technically be sent by your staff with the technology we have today, it helps to put in the correct terms, like for example, an email was sent yesterday by my staff (Also see b2. below.) The delay if you decide to dig in deeper, probably due to your internet services at other ends instead of general traffic going on the internet.
b2. Term corrections

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

It probably should be put as “Department of Defense network”, as generally Internet is a single entity referred all the computer networks connected together.

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Should probably be put as “people are arguing whether they should be able to transfer any amount of traffic on the internet”
b3. Other corrections

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

It is ‘not practical’ to watch 10 movies at a single time. More so, the later statement might be better put as “what happens to your own internet connection?”. Minor technical grammer mistakes like this distract from the meaning you are referring to.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

and

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.

This is also incorrect by a large margin. Especially if we refer to a large part of Internet known as Web or WWW. A lot of internet users do use internet for commerical activities. Some numbers with sources are below:
Alexa shows Amazon, Ebay and Craigslist in the Top 10 visited US sites which are obviousily commerce related and others in the Top 10 including Google and Yahoo are made possible by those tiny ads next to the results or paid services like classifieds.

comScore Media Matrix(See Table 4) in Dec 2005 found Amazon, Ebay and Walmart.com in the Top 10 websites visited in the US.

That wraps it up. I would welcome a reply if something needs clarification or any more information.

I will be putting also be putting this email up on my blog at http://blog.rajgad.com

This is my attempt to do my part or as it is said, meet the universe half way. It is also done with the expectation that years down the future when I or others of my generation are falling behind the next technology curve, someone would put a primer or point out things in addition to laughing at our errors.
Best Regards

Amit D. Chaudhary

Bellevue, WA

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Update: Boldheaded.com remixes Ted Stevens Speech with Techno music. Hat tip to Evergreen Politics blog.