Repent repent, for the end is near.
People like to say that the Internet interprets (censorship,
monopolies, clue deficits, et al.) as congestion, and routes around --
but they got the causality exactly backwards. The Internet is an
epiphenomenon of the possibility of bypass, which enables "cost
discovery," which enables cost-effective routing -- at least wherever
bypass is possible.
But bypass is only possible where someone has invested in alternate
paths, and those kind of investments (no matter how large or small)
have been almost always been entirely contingent on positive
regulation of the pro-competitive kind... That is to say, the kind
that the US pioneered but subsequently abandoned, the kind that Japan
and Korea et al. subsequently adopted (and which still holds), the
kind that many countries in Western Europe et al. have adopted even
more recently... and which still holds.*
Those who are currently willfully violating the conventional routing
services distinctions would be wise to be patient a little longer; the
only thing you'll buy now is cartelization, regulation of which may
not ultimately favor your interests. Those who are currently actively
attempting to kill bypass altogether would be wise to be desist; no
one is going to think that the idea/expectation/requirement of
multiple, fully redundant fiber entrance to every residence is
anything other than absurd, so the rhetoric of "facilities based
competition" is about find to its proper place in the ashcan of history.
Work it out, or else someone else will do it for you. And they won't
be entirely clueless if it comes to that.
TV
*re: the latest NANOG iteration of the AU debate: nothing that the
ACCC could have done would have made any major difference, because
Antipodeans speak English, and ever since 1999 the continent has been
captive to whatever CIT could/did (i.e., couldn't/didn't) do. Bu that
may be changing too...
