Oh No! The Internet is going down the tubes!

There are buffoons in high places in political administrations all over the world. We in the UK certainly have our fair share, indeed, many would say we have more than should be allotted to a small country with a population of a mere 65 million, but it’s always heartening to find out there are few others dotted elsewhere around the globe.~ ~ Take for example Senator Ted Stevens of the US. Mr. Stevens is an Alaskan republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, a body that has significant input into the telecommunications policy of the United States.~ ~ Last week he addressed the Committee and gave them, and the American public, the benefit of his knowledge of, and insight into, the workings of the Internet.~ ~ He did so in an effort to explain why he had voted against an amendment to the so-called “Net Neutrality” Bill designed to ensure that Web traffic be delivered on an “equal and non-discriminatory” basis rather than, as some US telcos are proposing, on a tiered basis according to a sliding scales of payments system.~ ~ He are some of his key thoughts. “The Internet is like a lot of dump trucks”, he says, “or a series of tubes’.

In an effort to make things even clearer he adds, “The other day, I got an Internet sent by my staff at ten o’clock in the morning, but I just got it yesterday.” What I want to know is how big a box did it come in, and how did the UPS man get it up the garden path?~ ~ Here’s another gem. “Ten movies streaming across that Internet and then what happens to your own personal Internet, that’s what I’d like to know?’ Wouldn’t we all Ted, wouldn’t we all. Answers on a postcard please (not in an email or an ”Internet” obviously) to the good Senator, c/o The US Senate, Washington, DC. Remember, the mail must go through.~ ~ Mr. Stevens has been mercilessly lampooned, blogged and ridiculed over “the tubes” since making his peculiar speech with some sites not only asking what the hell he was talking about but also pointing out that this is a man who, while apparently having no knowledge of what the Internet is or how it works, actually shoulders part of the responsibility for regulating it.~ ~ The Senator might gain a certain grasp of what is going on in the US if, instead of talking about dump trucks and tubes, he were to use the analogy of the cable TV industry. Here, subscribers pay for bundles of services, (basic, family, premium etc.) and have their content and communications delivered in accordance to the hierarchy their subscription confers. What those lobbying for anti-net neutrality are arguing for is a Web that will be pretty much like that. This is something that Senator Stevens seems to favour, even if he doesn’t understand it and certainly can’t articulate it.~