Financial sector awakens to Net neutrality issues

Battle between ISPs and online-product providers spreads to banks, which say a lot's at stake for them, too.

The story "Financial sector awakens to Net neutrality issues" published May 2, 2006 at 11:26 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Captain_Spock]

"If the industry...

... does not engage quickly, it may find that the matter has been decided without its input and that the fallout will affect the industry's cost structure and customer relations for years to come,"; also, in that the financial industry "is expected to spend $117 billion on information technology this year, tiered pricing could add billions more in expenses to maintain online-banking services and other Web offerings--costs that could hit the bottom line or be passed on to customers..."; it will be quite interesting to know what is happening with regards to spending and others activities at the international level!

[Chung Leong]

If you believe this story...

I have some Enron stocks I would to sell to you. We're talking about companies with thousands of analysts monitoring the telecom industry and who are briefed regularly by the telcos on their future plans. How likely is it that they'd been genuinely unaware and somehow needed to be "awakened" by grass-root net activists? The big finacial firms have a low profile because it suits their interest for the issue to be framed as the people vs. big bad telcos as opposed to big users of the Internet vs. big service providers.

[Captain_Spock]

You have said....

"I have some Enron stocks I would to sell to you. We're talking about companies with thousands of analysts monitoring the telecom industry and who are briefed regularly by the telcos on their future plans. How likely is it that they'd been genuinely unaware and somehow needed to be "awakened" by grass-root net activists?..."; If I were you, as far as the present situation with regards to petroleum is concerned... I would hold on to those ENRON STOCKS. What ever gave you the impression that the "thousands of analysts monitoring the telecom industry" were/are the best-of-breed with the best-of-breed analytical tools at their disposal... make no mistake any given condition in the financial industry has long been "sea change" ones and by todays "real-time information technology standards" these changes will occur even faster than the financial and other institutions can cope and not to be "to be "awakened" by grass-root net activists?" as far as I am concerned the financial industries can be pressing their own "delete" buttons! How about becoming your own analyst rather than relying on other people's projections? Sorry, our (computerized" product is still "under development"; how about doing your financial and economic analyses manually! ;-) ;-) ;-)

[umbrae]

I used to work for a ISP/Phone Company...

and if you think this is not already being done, than you are not paying attention. Companies may not be charging for higher speed access; however, many "interfere" with services of competitors or those with unbalanced bandwidth requirements.

Many people with Vonage (or other VOIP services from VOIP only providers) would disagree with you since many of them have tons of problem using VOIP when their ISPs offer a competeing service.

Many of these problems are sporadic and might to seem like your standard "internet hickups", but they are far from unintentional.

Without Net Neutrality, you WILL be at the mercy of your ISP. Of course, like those in China; you will not really know what you are missing.

[dondarko]

blah...

blah...blah...blah...blah...
Consumer gets screwed in the end anyways. Let's just stop spending money like retards and conserve. That will really hit the bottom lines of all of those 'do evil' corporations. Cheers.

[MercilessUnicorn]

Without neutrality, _no_ industry is safe from the carriers

The carriers could -- in a world without net neutrality -- enter any industry (especially online financial services) by simply blocking or delaying packets from competitive players.

That's not rhetoric. That's what Cisco's Service Exchange Framework -- the hardware that the telcos appear ready to deploy -- brags about doing.

Check out <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.savetheinternet.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.savetheinternet.com</a> for more information.