Thursday, March 11, 2010

Two-Tier Internet is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing, Says Esther Dyson

"The biggest problem that net neutrality has is nobody knows what they’re talking about when they talk about it," says Esther Dyson, noted computer industry analyst. "The issue is who pays and whether they’re monopolies or not, so there’s a whole lot of, I think, disingenuous discussion about control without ever really looking at the fundamental issue, which is somebody’s got to pay for more bandwidth if consumers are gonna be uploading and downloading video."

"As long as there’s healthy competition, I have no problem if someone pays extra for additional bandwidth, as long as that doesn’t cut off people’s access to the other stuff," says Dyson. That does not mean she believes access providers should be able to put up walls around Internet content. 

"There’s this disingenuous discussion of if you don’t allow us to pay extra, you’re not gonna get free content," she says. "Well, of course not, but let the consumer decide whether they want paid or subsidized."

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