A Bunch of Tubes

Ted Stevens is the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Committee has a broad jurisdiction which covers many issues including telecommunications. Ted Stevens has been a member of the Senate for 37 years and he is Alaska’s senior Senator. Perhaps too senior.

The issue of Net Neutrality is under heavy debate.

Net Neutrality means that everyone can access content or run applications and devices of their choice on the Internet. The network’s only job is to move data ”” not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. There are companies that are actively seeking to control the wires and discriminate against content based on source or ownership under some questionable assumptions about tiered services. You can find out more at Save the Internet.

Ted Stevens is being ridiculed for his speech on voting against the net neutrality provision in a review of the United States federal telecommunications laws. His speech, part of which is reported here, describes the Internet as a series of tubes:

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on.

It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

The senator also complained that his staff sent him an Internet, whatever that means, and that the Internet took five days to reach him because of what has been happening to all of those tubes running amuck on the web.

I suppose this response to his delayed Internet is as good as any.

Thank heavens there are informed politicians, like Ted Stevens, helping to decide important technical issues.