On Internet Freedom
There was an interesting and right-feeling article in Scientific American (March 2011) Keep the Internet Fair. It is about ISP charges: and the mean idea is that charge for speed and gigabytes is OK, charge for content is not.
What is going on in Latvia?!?! The biggest ISP Lattelecom proudly announces agreement with Google to serve Google to their customers faster - to give it a higher priority.
Here http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/233268 press release about agreement in apollo.lv - a lattelecom owned news portal. I like Google services, but if I am looking for something else, I would like to find and use other web tools, too... with the same god speed.
Sometimes when page loads very slowly I try speedtest.net to determine whether speed is in agreed limits. Of course it is, because I am pretty sure (I can't prove that, bus it strongly feels that way), that speedtest.net is sped up, too, - just to make Lattelecom look good and not to give any proof that most of service is below agreed speed. But sppedtest.net (and speedtest.lv) and now Google, who paid for speed, are fast enough. How about everything else?
It seems like discrimination against other Internet content by ISP. I have not studied LV laws about internet freedom, but as far as I know there are no such laws. It means a huge (for LV) ISP like Lattelecom is free to judge content and sell access to their customers who are already paying for internet service. As a customer I am paying for ALL the internet, for ANY content I would like to down/up load as fast as the server on the other side can serve me (in the speed limit I have paid for to Lattelecom). About USA SA writes: "The Federal Communicaions Commission approved a rule last December that was intended to ensure equal treatment of content providers. [...] What would this mean in practice? Instead of the "all you can eat" data plans of today, Internet service providers could sell customers access by the gigabyte. They could limit performance at peak times of the day to help balance network load or offer super fast plans at higher prices.
Internet service providers would not, however, be able to determine which applications go fast and which go slow. They would not be able to reach a deal with Facebook to speed up that site's page loads while slowing down LinkedIn." It seems Latvia needs a law like that ASAP! Lattelecom is judging content already. Oh, it is biggest ISP and partially owned by state. SA:"[...] but a democratic society can't abide discrimination based on content." Therefore there is no democratic society in Latvia. The state is democratic just in it's words, not in it's deeds...
What is going on in Latvia?!?! The biggest ISP Lattelecom proudly announces agreement with Google to serve Google to their customers faster - to give it a higher priority.
Here http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/233268 press release about agreement in apollo.lv - a lattelecom owned news portal. I like Google services, but if I am looking for something else, I would like to find and use other web tools, too... with the same god speed.
Sometimes when page loads very slowly I try speedtest.net to determine whether speed is in agreed limits. Of course it is, because I am pretty sure (I can't prove that, bus it strongly feels that way), that speedtest.net is sped up, too, - just to make Lattelecom look good and not to give any proof that most of service is below agreed speed. But sppedtest.net (and speedtest.lv) and now Google, who paid for speed, are fast enough. How about everything else?
It seems like discrimination against other Internet content by ISP. I have not studied LV laws about internet freedom, but as far as I know there are no such laws. It means a huge (for LV) ISP like Lattelecom is free to judge content and sell access to their customers who are already paying for internet service. As a customer I am paying for ALL the internet, for ANY content I would like to down/up load as fast as the server on the other side can serve me (in the speed limit I have paid for to Lattelecom). About USA SA writes: "The Federal Communicaions Commission approved a rule last December that was intended to ensure equal treatment of content providers. [...] What would this mean in practice? Instead of the "all you can eat" data plans of today, Internet service providers could sell customers access by the gigabyte. They could limit performance at peak times of the day to help balance network load or offer super fast plans at higher prices.
Internet service providers would not, however, be able to determine which applications go fast and which go slow. They would not be able to reach a deal with Facebook to speed up that site's page loads while slowing down LinkedIn." It seems Latvia needs a law like that ASAP! Lattelecom is judging content already. Oh, it is biggest ISP and partially owned by state. SA:"[...] but a democratic society can't abide discrimination based on content." Therefore there is no democratic society in Latvia. The state is democratic just in it's words, not in it's deeds...
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