Fred Upton is a bad man. He is a very bad man.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5063072.stm

“Representative Fred Upton, head of the House telecommunications subcommittee, said competition could mean people save $30 to $40 each month on their net access fees.”

Representative Fred Upton has TWICE pushed through a policy that will have a negative impact on all but the weathly.

Network performance Tiering is not competition. Competition is when CONSUMERS have the ability to chose between a number of distinct organizations providing similar services. That sort of competition is a good thing – people will not pay more when they can pay less for the same thing.

Internet service tiering ONLY BENEFITS THE TELECOMUNICATIONS COMPANIES. Nobody else. They will be given the ability to arbitrarily decide that one server does not deserve the same bandwidth as another. Who do you think will get highest priority? Why the telecomunications companies themselves, and their business partners of course.

This is a slippery slope. There is a slight – VERY SLIGHT possibility that consumer internet bills might go down a little. But the bills for service providers will go up.

Already companies have to pay exorbitant amounts for an OC3 connection. It really is obscene. But once they had that connection to a backbone they were set.
Well not anymore. Now you also have to bribe the owners of the backbones to let you use enough bandwidth. Sure, the internet ACCESS cost may go down, but the SERVICE costs are going to go up. Free services could disappear. Hosting costs, colocating costs are going to shoot through the roof once you start seeing any quantity of traffic.

THIS IS VERY BAD FOR THE FREEDOM AND OPPORTUNITY ON THE INTERNET.
THIS COULD STRIP THE INTERNET OF EVERYTHING FREE.

The argument being made is that phone companies cannot offer video services because the internet is too congested. This is bogus. Video streaming is not possible because residential internet bandwidth is not high enough yet. The infrastructure is capable. The congestion is not the backbone, it is the endpoints.

But lies from wealthy people have a way of becoming truth.

And the words of slimy politicians like Fred Upton have a way of ruining things for everybody.

Please people, tell your republican congressmen that they represent you, not big businesses. Tell them to support internet neutrality, and set the dollar signs in their eyes aside.

Save the internet.