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February 4, 2010
Obama Tzar Waves His Scepter
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/02/03/feds-ipad-network-congestion/
Soon the iPad will be upon us, and the US government is worried about the congestion it will cause.
Phil Bellaria is a staffer in the Obama administration. Specifically, he's the director of scenario planning for the federal government's Omnibus Broadband Initiative. He published a blog post earlier this week describing his initial concerns about the future demands on our networks.
"With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband's ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy. "
This slays me. A government beaucrat warning us of the perils of the free market. Haw Haw. The free market is what drove the internet's success. It's designed so that it can't be taken out even by a nuclear attack (that was DARPA's input). The network is redunant. If any nodes are taken out if the network, the system automatically re-routes the packets. Half the internet could drop off the earth and the internet wouldn't skip a beat.
So far as the cell phones are concerned - If the traffic on the cellular networks gets too congested, then the carriers will have to upgrade their cellular networks, or people will switch to other providers. What we don't need, obviously, is government intervention.
Posted by Rob Kiser on February 4, 2010 at 9:29 AM
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