Since When Is The Net Neutral Again?

A while back I made a post called Since When Is The Net Neutral? and it generated a lot of great comments.  At the end of the day, the conclusion I came to with the help of PCLiberal (whoever he is) is that we are losing the battle of the last mile to the household and the rallying cry of net neutrality should be about local competition and not about content or hampering the little guy.  The issue was dead for me from a post perspective, because well, once a topic gets too hot and picked up by bigger sites I don't look original any more.

Well, my fellow MarketingProfs blogger Ann Handley wrote a good post called Dumb is The New Smart and it has to do with using humor to discuss boring, but important subjects like Net Neutrality.  Without stealing Ann's thunder too much, I republished my comment below.  As you can see, when people use humor to discuss important issues based on facts, it can become very effective.  When humor is used to confuse people or distort facts for the sake of making it funny is when it becomes an issue.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

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Good post Ann. I went through the site and I agree with you that using humor to tell this boring story is a great idea. What I like best about this is that they do a great job of getting to the heart of the issue which is the RBOCs have a legalized monopoly at the local level and now command pricing power at our access points. That's the heart of the issue and not if you are going to have access to content.

When I was at AT&T (the older version), we had plans to compete at the local level as I'm sure MCI and Sprint did. Sadly, the government allowed the SBCs and Bell Atlantics (Verizon) of the world to buy up the competition and form giant telecom companies. So these guys are dead on accurate.

Anything that gets the real message out and steers it away from the content argument is a great idea. If it makes us laugh too, well it is better the crying over spilt content.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Comments

[Ann Handley]

Thanks for picking up the post, Eric. You have a better perspective that I do -- so I appreciated your comment, too.