From whom? For quality Internet, you need wires running from the provider to your house. The phone company and the cable company both already have those wires, but everyone else would need to lay them from scratch, miles of them. That’s a huge competitive barrier to entry.
There are lots of solutions; maybe a company can start using wireless routers. Or maybe a competing company will install new cables that are much faster than the current ones. I am dubious of the assertion that no company could come in and compete if the current ISPs were throttling data to a point that annoyed their customers.
I am, however, open to legislation that would mandate that cables/wires on public property (like streets and roads) be open to any competition. There are some things that would have to be worked out but that, to me, would be the best guarantee of net neutrality.
From my perspective, people get this issue backwards. There’s not much threat that any company is going to throttle the competition. Instead, they want to give free bandwidth a service they own or have some kind of strategic partnership with. This can be called many things - but anti-consumer it isn’t.
What does “free bandwidth” mean? Right now, I pay my ISP, then I get to download whatever I choose, there is no additional content-based fee.
If net neutrality were abolished, IPSs would preferentially allow faster downloads from some content providers that they choose, and slower downloads from other content providers that they choose. That is the definition of throttling.
It’s anti-consumer because I want to download what I choose to download, not what my ISP wants me to download.
It’s anti-consumer because in most markets there is very little competition between ISPs because of the huge barrier to entry, so if the ISP is throttling content that I like, it’s unlikely that I can find another ISP.
It’s anti-competitive because it creates an uneven playing field among content providers, who also have little choice over how to deliver their content to consumers.
???
At my house the only choices are CenturyLink, the horribly-expensive horribly-laggy HughesNet and a couple no name services.
With the current market, it’s unlikely that isp’s will specifically slow any content. Instead, they want to offer customers better access to priority content. As an example, your ISP might speed up Netflix so people can watch it in hi-def with no lag. They’re probably not going to go out of their way to clamp down o the bandwidth for other data, though technically all other bits in the pipeline would be slowed by some small amount. Of course, this costs money - but that funding is likely to be paid by the source (in this example, Netflix) and not the customer.
You are free to interpret this as a bad thing. Some people are concerned about what happens down the line or by whether there are bad side-effects. But it isn’t self–evidently a bad thing for the customer.
Edit: Also, not everybody has unlimited internet. Many people are softcapped or even hardcapped.
This seems like sophistry to me. If my ISP can speed up delivery through it’s pipeline, I don’t want my ISP to be allowing that speed increase selectively. If X is sped up relative to Y through the ISP’s pipeline, then Y is by definition throttled, even if Y = everything that is not X.
Of course, if X is sped up by increasing the capacity of X’s servers to upload, that’s a different matter, that has nothing to do with net neutrality. A free competitive market has always operated in this: if Netflix’s servers are too slow, I’m going to cancel my Netflix content subscription and subscribe to another content provider.
What you may envision is that this distinction between “Netflix upload servers” and “ISP pipeline” disappears, and they become intertwined to speed up delivery. If so, I think this is a terribly retrograde step. It creates whole other huge barrier to entry at the content provision end, for any content provider who wants to compete with Netflix.
So long as the pipeline into consumers’ houses is an effective monopoly (or at best oligopoly) in each region, it must be regulated to ensure that all content providers have equal access to send us their content through that pipeline.
This is not relevant to net neutrality. Under net neutrality, the consumer can choose to pay for whatever he wants, fast or slow, with or without a total download cap; but the ISP cannot selectively cap or throttle.
Under net neutrality:
(1) ISPs compete to provide a better pipeline to consumers.
(2) Content providers compete to provide better content (including content upload speed to the ISP’s pipeline).
Market (2) functions competitively and well. Market (1) functions poorly, because of the huge barrier to entry for building localy delivery infrastructure (cables into houses). It is an effective monopoly or oligopoly; many ISPs have terrible reputations for customer service.
But if we repeal net neutrality regs, it will certainly not make market (1) more competitive. Why should it? All it will do is allow the inherent monopoly/oligopoly problems of market (1) to bleed over and fuck up market (2) as well.
That is technically true, but also kind of trivial. Whether you like it or not, in a world of finite capacity, it makes sense to add to the system in whatever way works rather than quibble about abstract moral principles. Net neutrality may hinder the development of the network.
Let me make this clear.
(1) Many customers have some sort of data limit, which can make it very expensive to watch hi-definition video or consume large amounts of internet services.
(2) Some internet service providers may be willing to leave out data consumption from certain services, such as those providing movies, from the monthly bills of the aforementioned consumers.
(3) They cannot do this under net neutrality.
You seem to be imagining a world where everybody has 100% access to super-fast download speeds and can spend a couple hundred on the unlimited-cap services. The fact is that isn’t there today, and it’s very likely to take a long, long time for this to happen. In the imperfect world we live in.
So, here is where I think your real objection is. The problem is that this isn’t related to net neutrality at all. Local carrier competition has nothing whatsoever to do with net neutrality. It was basically the default since forever - nobody bothered. Yet there hasn’t been aggressive competition for local service for several reasons. Net neutrality does not address any of these.
First, ISP’s just don’t have a reason to compete. It costs a lot of money to lay down a network, there’s almost no financial return, and most customers aren’t going to switch anyway. Hence they are primarily competing internally to try and move customers onto more lucrative bundle deals or higher-tier services. At the same time, the bandwidth use is heavily weighted towards certain sources. Adopting some kind of data prioritization scheme
Could service providers adopt an anti-consumer scheme? Yes, or at least, it’s not impossible. But I would argue it’s more likely that these will spur more competition, by providing another area for providers to compete. The entire point is to deliver the content that customers do, in fact, want to consume. Further, I would point out that one of the major possibilities for investing in bandwidth is for the major sources of content to subsidize network development.
I never claimed that it did. You are ignoring what I said. What I said was that under network neutrality, we have poor oligopolistic market for ISPs, but a good competitive market for content provision; and that removing net neutrality would not improve the current bad market for ISP provision, but would just screw up the content market too.
So your principal claim is that removing net neutrality will improve ISP service, and I dispute that. Sure, in the short term Netflix & ISPs can get together, integrate, and figure out how to provide service faster. But now you’ve created an even worse monopolistic situation, where the monopoly at the ISP level is just integrated with content provision. In the long run, I think this will be a disaster, because it decreases transparency and makes it even harder to regulate the ISP part of the service with the huge barrier to entry.
If we abolish net neutrality, ISP service is likely to resemble the ridiculous way that cable TV companies (who are ISPs of course) package TV channels to consumers: arbitrary bundling and endless add-on charging, minimum transparency for maximum profits.
What scenario would result in the market for content being diminished. The only way (again, to use an example) Netflix has the incentive or ability to push content is if consumers are eager to get that content under favorable terms. If Netflix does not deliver, it won’t have the money or the . At the same time, there’s no reason to think that new competitors can’t muscle into the market if they have the content. Having better speeds for your company’s content is great, but it’s not an inherent game-changer in the market.
Leaving aside that I don’t agree with the likely-hood of your scenario, we really don’t have much to be afraid of here. Right now, people are pushing Net Neutrality over the possibility that something somewhere some-when might go wrong. Which will, at worst, slightly inconvenience people. But this can’t happen in secret: the FCC isn’t exactly going to stop watching this issue,which means that if it turns out to be genuinely anti-consumer, we can stop it.
If the companies who want to avoid Net Neutrality abuse the privileges, then I am all for correcting them - harshly. But it is incredibly foolhardly to regulate away alternatives simply for the possibility that they might not be ideal. The internet itself was once one of those alternate possibilities. Let them experiment and see if customers like, or don’t.
Bundling is economically efficient and under plausible scenarios, does not result in increased cost to the consumer. On the contrary, it is probably the cheapest alternative. People like to imagine that they would only have a fraction of the cost without bundling, but in fact they would most likely pay through the nose for every channel individually.
All those folks arguing that the free market will take care of it, or that net neutrality is somehow anti-consumer, need to remember that we tried it your way, and it failed miserably. Net neutrality was passed in the first place as a response to almost ubiquitously widespread anti-competitiveness.
Hell, the conglomerates are still (usually successfully) getting laws passed to prevent cities and small companies from even providing competition, with accompanying glee and chortling from the GOP “free market is great unless it affects our contributors or helps poor people” congress.
The fact that the biggest advocates against net neutrality are libertarian free market types is utterly baffling to me. There has been no greater boon to your philosophy than the internet under network neutrality, and yet you are always the most outspoken people who want to gut it in favor of the profitability and control of telecom companies.
The neutral internet is the greatest demonstration of the free market in action there has ever been. The brilliance of an idea, the execution of a great service, and the creation of a great product can make it right to the consumer without having to fight its way through the established market powers who wish to act as gatekeepers and stifle innovative startups to protect their own power. Never before in history has a product or service had so much of a chance to succeed on its merits.
Neutrality is what has made the internet such a game changer, but in terms of the free exchange of information, and in terms of economic innovation. Blockbuster had a dominant position in the market - and netflix came out of nowhere and completely destroyed them because they had a better idea and a better product. A non-neutral internet would’ve shut that down. Comcast would’ve blocked Netflix in favor of you buying their own streaming service. Or they would’ve taken bribes from Blockbuster to shut it down to keep their old business model powerful. Either way it would have never got off the ground.
The idea that telecom companies need to crush neutrality in order to have reason to innovate is also ridiculous. How do we know that? Because the internet HAS ALREADY PROVEN that it will become faster, better, and more widespread under neutrality. Neutrality has been what the internet has been from the start, and we’ve seen it grow into being an integral part of our daily lives. The idea that telecom companies have no incentive to get better with neutrality in place is already thoroughly demonstrated to be wrong. We’ve seen it happen.
And the idea that if telecoms do abuse their power - which they’re practically guaranteed to do if neutrality goes away - then competition will spring up out of thin air is fanciful. It’s really hard and slow to lay telecom infrastructure. Land wire/fiber based connectivity is by far our best option, and it requires digging up lots of ground, securing easement rights, securing the cooperation of local and state governments (which are already proven to be in the pocket of the existing big telecom companies) - it’s extremely difficult for a new player to enter the market. Google has the resources and will to do exactly that with their fiber rollout and look how much trouble they’ve had.
Saying “oh, don’t worry, sure telecom companies will be able to screw you in all sorts of ways, and that has a 99% chance of happening, but there’s the possibility that effective competition will spring up instantly, which has about a 1% chance of happening, so YAY FREE MARKET” is anti-consumer. We know the perversion of the internet by empowered telecom companies will happen at a far greater rate than any increase in competition.
In effect, you’re selling out your philosophy for the benefit of big telecom companies. You’re the staunchest advocates for crushing the greatest free market tool ever implemented in order to benefit a few established and powerful companies. This is one of hundreds of reasons that no one can take libertarianism seriously - you can’t even get over your drive to help the powerful become more powerful by protecting the best real-world demonstrator of your philosophies. You want to gut what should be your greatest rhetorical asset about what economic freedom can be in order to submit to the control and profitability of telecom companies.
It is still utterly baffling to me that libertarians can’t even see the greatest case for free markets and economic freedom, and not only that, but that they’re the loudest voices out there advocating for crushing it.
It’s not so baffling when you realize that they’re philosophy seems to be freedom from coercion by government and damn the consequences. Coercion and control by big business is just fine and dandy, but not by government. Only those who have no obligation towards citizens should have any real power. Elected representatives can’t be trusted but corporations can because free market!
I just wanted to say, SenorBeef, that was one of the most cogently and compellingly articulated damnations of libertarian support for removing net neutrality that I’ve come across. Kudos!
The internet exists the way it does *because *of the profitability of telecoms and the other companies that make up the commercial internet. You seem to think that ‘net neutrality’ is synonymous with ‘open, free speech internet’ or something.
Where are you getting this from? We didn’t have net neutrality rules until very recently. Which innovative content providers were being shut down by rapacious ISPs? What ‘power’ are they trying to protect? How does Comcast benefit from trying to restrict its user’s access to the internet?
Net Neutrality also doesn’t apply globally. Can you point to some other free-market countries that have become despotic internet hellholes because their governments didn’t pass laws preventing ISP’s from charging more for more expensive services?
The internet WAS non-neutral when Netflix showed up. Didn’t seem to hurt them.
You say that as if it’s an obvious matter of fact rather than a conspiracy theory just made up. Netflix is in a LOT of countries that don’t have net neutrality rules.
Have there been any known attempts by Blockbuster to bribe any ISPs? Have there been any ISPs with their own streaming services that tried to block Netflix? Do you have ANY evidence of any of this? Or does this just spring from the general idea that corporations will always descend into despotism, corruption, bribery, and other malfeasances the minute the government takes its boot off their necks?
Yeah? So let’s say I want to start up a real-time, massively multiplayer Virtual Reality world online. The thing is, unless I can get latency below 5ms, there will be a lot of puking players. So I need my ISP to install fiber, high-speed switches, and other expensive hardware before my vision can become a reality. But the ISP says, “Oh, sorry. Under Net Neutrality, the only way I can provide 5 ms latency to you is to also send web traffic and E-mail at the same speed. Of course, no one cares about latency for E-mail, but rules are rules. So we would have to upgrade the entire network - not just have a high-speed expansion for you. And also, we aren’t allowed to charge you what it would cost us to upgrade, so there’s nothing in it for us. Buh-bye.”
Without net neutrality, the ISP could offer a price for a low-latency sub network, bill the entrepreneur for part of the setup costs, and now VR gets a new high speed network. With it, we’re out of luck.
No, it is not. How did you get the idea that the internet has always had ‘net neutrality’, unless you’re using it as synonymous with ‘the government leaving it’s big hands off it’, which is largely true.
I think a better description of the history of the internet is that it has grown the way it has precisely because it has been almost completely unregulated. But you’re saying that to keep it that way, we need new regulations. Does not compute.
As we speak, SpaceX is gearing up to launch a satellite constellation that will provide global high speed internet. Google is laying fiber for its own competition for local ISP’s. Phone companies in many regions are in direct competition with cable companies for internet service. Amazon is experimenting with national internet using high altitude balloons. There are lots of potential competitors, and they’d be working even more feverishly if they spotted a huge market of potential streaming video customers locked out of Netflix by their ISPs.
And you don’t have to wait for those services, because the knowledge that they are in the wings means the current ISPs have to be very careful about not screwing their customers, lest they hasten their own demise by causing their competitors to speed up investment and effort in providing alternatives.
This is why Canada Nickel, which owns 95% of the world’s nickel reserves, does not gouge the market but in fact provides nickel at non-monopolistic prices. And it’s also why OPEC got its ass handed to it when it colluded to drive up the price of oil. It surely did - but it also drove up investment in fracking and oil sands development, and now they have created massive competition to their own product.
Here in Canada, various ISP’s have tried to start up their own streaming services. Not ONE of them has done so by attempting to throttle or shutdown other streaming services. It would be suicide. I can switch from Shaw to Telus with a phone call. Or, I can switch to wireless with Bell or several other wireless providers, which are starting to catch up with wired internet in terms of speed and bandwidth costs. They’d catch up even faster if the big cable or phone ISPs did something as stupid as restrict access to the most popular streaming service on the internet in favor of their own crappy offering.
The answer to the ISP problem is not more regulation, it’s more competition. If you must have regulation, it would be smarter to force cable companies to share their infrastructure with smaller providers, while charging them a fair cost for doing so.
And just HOW do you know this? What evidence do you have that the big ISPs are just waiting for government to look the other way so they can start restricting access to the internet? Just what do you really expect them to do? Maybe to say, “HAH! Now that we are free from the long arm of government, we’re going to charge Netflix a mill… no, a BILLION dollars! Then everyone will be forced to watch SuckTVOnline for $50/mo, and we’ll all be RICH! Rich, I tell you! Hand me another cigar - mine stopped blowing dollar signs.”
Let me get this straight - not wanting government to coerce a business through regulation is ‘selling out’ a philosophy which says it’s fundamentally wrong to use coercion to gain the economic ends you are looking for. Is that about it?
And do you not see the inherent contradiction in acknowledging that the internet is the greatest free market in history, but that free market supporters are crazy for not supporting regulations that would make it less free? Is this one of those ‘regulation is freedom!’ things? Orwell’s 1984 was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
So the internet demonstrates the correctness of the libertarian worldview by being an example of how well an unregulated free market can work, but you can’t take libertarianism seriously because libertarians don’t agree that even though it’s been a huge libertarian success, the time has come for government to regulate it because obviously the lack of regulation leads to a corporatist dystopia? Do you see the inherent contradictions here?
Economic freedom, if it means anything, means that telecoms get to be free too. And the internet IS what economic freedom can be. And it is the way it is because it has successfully resisted the regulation-happy busybodies that have infiltrated the brick-and-mortar world. I’d like to keep it that way.
Absolutely bizarre reasoning. Keeping the government’s paws off of a successful free market now equals ‘crushing’ that free market? The internet demonstrates the power of free markets to sort out their own affairs, but anyone who can’t see that government needs to regulate it to ‘save’ it is baffling to you?
I will grant you that there is a root problem for free markets here in that some ISPs have been either granted a monopoly or have used previous infrastructure to gain a temporary natural monopoly. The answer to that is not government regulation of the operation of the internet - it’s to get rid of the exclusive deals, tax breaks, and cronyism that keeps some ISPs as the only game in town. The answer to markets without competition is to foster more competition. Net neutrality would make that harder by forcing everyone to provide internet access in exactly the same way.
In a competitive world, there’s nothing wrong with having an ISP that specializes in low-latency traffic while allowing non-critical internet traffic to piggy-back along at slower speeds. There’s nothing wrong with them charging either the provider or the user more money for access to that higher-speed network. If you don’t like it, find another internet provider. Let’s focus our efforts on making sure you have that choice, rather than regulate the day-to-day business activities of ISPs.
Bet all the objections from free market advocates would disappear the first time some major ISP decides Fox News and Breitbart are “low priority traffic” and starts majorly throttling them.
I don’t believe for a second that a start up like Sam Stone envisions won’t slow everyone else down. And not just email. The ISP’s aren’t going to lay new fiber just for them. Might as well have Walmart pay extra road tax to let their trucks go 10mph over the speed limit. What could that possibly hurt?
Or just shut off entirely all sites that carry news that paints them in a negative light.