There must be a workable plan for America to catch up to the global market leaders of broadband supremacy. IMHO, it’s going to take take bold action by the Obama adminsistration. Regulation tweaks won’t break the current logjam that’s designed to mantain the staus quo.

If the duopolies don’t want to be in the dumb pipe business and be happy with billions in profit they can just buy NBC and create content. Or build a better search engine and COMPETE for profit. Profit by lining politicians pockets has got to stop. Otherwise the rest of the world will kick our asses in very short order.

As the issue evolves, the FCC is getting deeper and deeper into regulating how the ISPs run their business. I can sort of see a rationale for wireless broadband as the amount of spectrum is limited and that the FCC should play cops in making sure of some sort of fair play in the use of the spectrum. I continue to be amazed that while ISPs spent billions of dollars on spectrums, Google can come along and insists that the spectrum owners may not give preferences to their own contents or applications.

But the case for FCC doing the same thing on the wired broadband is much less compelling. There is no natural limit to wired broadband. If it is a lack of competition issue, then the government can mandate market share cap rather than getting into the details of how an ISP allocates its network resources. The regulators are not in position to do that level of balancing.

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/11/eff-study-reveals-evidence-of-comcasts-bittorrent-interference.ars

…Google Voice rejected, Ad nauseam

I suggest you install Wire Shark and watch the “demonstrated problem” be applied to your internet connection.

Instead of risking an adverse impact onnetwork investment I think it would be more prudent to consider regulations like this only once it becomes a demonstrated problem. That is, only if the non-managed pipe becomes adversely constricted.