going to go with Tim Karr's interpretation of these developments. I've known Tim for several years and I was one of the founders of the original Net Neutrality campaigns with The Free Press.

This is dire.

^{"Sí che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso."}

-Dante

Considering the fact that 75% of internet traffic could ultimately be through wireless, any restriction would create a dire problem. Wired Magazine has some great stuff about the battles the content providers have been having with carriers, and I also have a high regard for Tim Karr.

I do know it is a wireless issue right now.

...for the majority of traffic to go wireless over any reasonable distance (i.e., more than 40 feet from your router)?

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

No. At least not using today's technology. We simply can't transmit the same amount if info through the air as we can using traditional lines.

it's a lot farther than 40 feet, but the idea is the same. Everybody's telephone is becoming a point of internet interaction. Pushing data through wireless links to telephones eats resources like no tomorrow.

ATT has been begging Apple for relief for at least two years now. Apple is helping with methods of data compression, as is Netflicks, as is skype, etc. It is becoming a horrible problem for phones to be honest, and it is also bogging everything down. Have you noticed the delay before your mobile rings when you call someone, the increase in dropped calls, etc. The system is exploding with traffic, way beyond what was imagined just six months ago.

So the issue is a lot more than the router. Net neutrality is a legal issue to be sure, and it should not concern itself with costs and structure, but there is a physicality to this problem and that is where all the negotiations are coming in to play. At the same time, ATT is a big boy and should pony up and simply make the upfront infrastructure spending. They respond that there does not appear to be any end to the exponential increase. They may be right. But is that a bad thing? Everybody benefits from an open and expansive web. I believe the government is going to take on the rural piece (to the tune of $500 billion), that was part of the negotiation, and the other issue is that ATT and Verizon systems do not overlap well, they use completely different types of data transmission protocols that require completely different chipsets in the phones, which brings us to the issue of standardization.

But how do you standardize to enormous systems that are about the same size with each other.

This is all going to get very hairy. I've seen stats that wireless internet has been doubling like every two months!

AND somewhere between 5% to 10% of cell phone users to date are on a smartphone. What happens when it is 100% and the appliances start using wireless spectrum to talk to each other, and the cars, and the ubiquitous ipads, and street signs, and advertising billboards, and television and who knows what else.

Cisco has said that the internet is currently at 2% of its eventual stabilized size, and I am beginning to believe them. They are probably underestimating it. It explains why some of their routers are being designed to move the amount of data currently in San Francisco in a single device. This thing is clearly at its beginning.

...then there is no way in hell that a majority of web traffic will be wireless. I might buy the notion that a majority of the "last xx metres" will be wireless - where xx is a pretty small number and/or majority doesn't actually measure the number of bits moved.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

smartphone penetration in the U.S. market was reported to be 25% according to statistics released Tuesday by the Nielsen Co.

Link here.

______________________________________________________
May we have the clarity to see what is required of us, the courage to accept it, and the capacity to discharge it.
Robert Fripp

Plus Gore didn't convert to populism soon enough. Admit it, he ran a piss poor campaign.

All that Gore would have had to do to get leftists to vote for him was address some of their most important concerns. But he didn't. So they didn't.

Your fallacy, and that of all the other Nader haters, is that Nader voters would have voted for Gore if they hadn't voted for Nader. That's tantamount to assuming that if you take away a hippie's tofu, you can get him to eat either Cheetos or Funyuns instead-- which is a faulty assumption. I have only made that sort of mistake once in my voting life-- I looked at my (poor) options, took note that the Texas ballot now effectively excludes third party candidates, held my nose, and voted for...

Obama.

I now wish I hadn't. But I have never felt sorry after voting for a candidate, like Ralph Nader, whom I could believe in.

We can look forward to the invasion of Iran when all these closet Republicans (er, Naderites) vote indirect Republican.

Ummm . . . I hesitate to point this out, but you do know that Gore received more legal votes in Florida than Bush, right? That's according to NORC, the official recount project. And by legal, I don't mean anything esoteric like hanging chads or assuming that people voting for Buchanan really meant to vote for Gore or any other such nonsense.

But my vote for Nader was a vote for Nader and not anybody else. So I have no dog in that particular hunt.

If Gore hadn't stolen the election from Nader maybe things would be different...and i say this as someone who never has/wouldn't vote for Nader for a variety of reasons.

Come off it, ScotJen, you're projecting a whole lot of things that might have happened under Gore. Campaign promises are meant to be broken. And all the while conveniently forgetting to mention that Gore had his chance to stand up to Bush's election stealing. Instead he played the role of a good Democrat and rolled over for this colleagues across the aisle.

It should also be noted that it was the Clinton/Gore administration that made regime change in Iraq a stated goal of US foreign policy.