I think this will only affect the big bandwidth sites, like Youtube and Netflix and that the small bandwidth sites like Straight Dope won’t be affected. With cord cutting the big bandwidth video sites will start consuming much greater amounts of bandwidth.
By which time it will be too late. Keep in mind, you’re not a consumer who watches your traffic shaping. Others do, and saw this becoming a problem prior to 2015.
Net neutrality is pro-competition. That is the whole point of it. Without regulation, you grant automatic monopoly to whoever owns the wires in the ground. Unless of course we dig a new trench in the ground everybody someone orders Netflix.
Honestly, saying that net neutrality is anti-competitive demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of all the issues in play. Before you toss your consumer rights in the trashbin, at least get educated about it.
Usage caps are legal. They do not violate the spirit of net neutrality as long as they are published and apply equally to every internet service.
Wanna know what Internet looks like after the end of net neutrality? Consider what happened to cable and sat-TV after deregulation in the mid-1990s. The tel-coms made many of the same arguments then that they’re making now: we can have more competition, more innovation, blither and blather. Republicans (and some “new” Democrats) stuffed their stockings full of tel-com campaign cash and tried to sell it to the public. And we went from cable with 50-60 channels of stuff we were somewhat interested in watching for about $30-40/month to cable/satellite with 500 channels of mostly crap that we’re not at all interested in watching for $60-100/month (Yes there are specials but they bait you and make you pay for it later). We’re so used to the suckage of cable that we don’t complain about it anymore. That’s what’ll happen with internet. It’ll become worse, but we’ll just pay for it because we’ll forget what it’s like not to pay or not to pay as much.
Why would it be too late?
If the doomsday scenario comes to pass and these cable companies become wildly profitable, how would that not drive competition? If the ISPs are making money hand over fist then we will see a rush into the market. It’s contradictory to say that a policy will drastically increase the profitability of a market segment while stifling competition.
Uh, are you saying TV was better back then? Like, you’d rather watch Dallas on CBS than Breaking Bad on AMC?
My question is, do you think the ISP’s are gonna demand extortion money from every single website for traffic and speed, or will they only do that to their competitors like Netflix and Amazon?
I could see basic cable/internet still allowing access to most text based websites, but only letting you see Fox News and Breitbart or my dad’s personal favorite, True News. But if you want to access any actual news sites you have to subscribe to the HBO premium level.
Maybe your ISP provides a free email, but if you want to get your gmail that’s an upgrade, any social media would probably require an upgrade, too. But they’d squeeze Facebook and Twitter to not make that subscription plan too far up the tier. But it would still be extra money that not everyone has got.
My biggest worry is whether I’ll still be able to publish my books through amazon’s kindle publishing program. I’m not making enough money yet to buy my own internet so I’ll be stuck with whatever plan my cheakskate parentals order, and if KDP isn’t included in basic or maybe the lowest cable option I’m not going to have it anymore.
They will be able to shape traffic in whatever way is profitable for them. Obviously direct competitive threats get kneecapped, as we’ve already seen Verizon try with Netflix. But they could price out media threats as well… Breitbart goes after a Comcast affiliate? Welcome to the higher priced “fast breaking raw news package”, for an extra $20 a month.
According to broadbandnow.com, I have a whopping TWO internet providers in my neighborhood. I had one (Verizon), but fired them when they became either unable or unwilling to provide reliable service to my house. Now, I use (NewWave) and find that they are expensive and their service is less than stellar. So, just how is the magic hand of free-market capitalism supposed to help me? There is a small, independent company wanting to lay fiber in the area, but they have been unable to get it done for several years. They have run into problems with getting rights to use poles and easements from the city, as well as getting enough capital together to install the hardware.
With a very large player and a somewhat large player in the area, I figure the small company is doomed to fail.
If it’s reversed and you decide you don’t like it, you don’t just get to ask for backsies. It’s a years-long political process.
Not if you understand utility monopolies and barriers to entry. I don’t want a new trench dug in my yard every time a new streaming provider wants to expand into my neighborhood. Does that sound appealing to you?
About a third of the country doesn’t have another ISP to choose.
Stolen from Reddit:
If it’s reversed and you decide you don’t like it, you don’t just get to ask for backsies. It’s a years-long political process.
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Even if we assume it’s a years long process that’s miles away from it being too late.
So do you want competition in ISPs or not?
Yes, of course. I want ISP’s to compete with other ISP’s, based on their ability to provide the best performance for all internet traffic. That’s what net neutrality is all about.
What I don’t want is for ISP’s to pick winners and losers among non-ISP streaming services based on their own commercial interests. Do you want anti-competitive practices? Because that’s how you get anti-competitive practices.
This is effectively the same as saying “I want limited competition in ISPs”.
I think you need to decide what you’re position is here and what you want. Because in this thread you’ve said:
(1) No regulation will lead to monopolistic and anti-competitive ISP behavior (which is bad)
(2) No regulation will lead to your lawn being dug up for every new streaming service (which is also bad)
Do you want competition in ISPs or don’t you?
You might wish it’s the same, but it’s not. I want ISP’s to be entirely competitive within the market of providing access to the internet, distinct and separate from the internet content market.
If you think this is anticompetitive, you are betraying ignorance of the services involved and their competitive interaction. Please come back when you’ve educated yourself on the subject.
In other words, “I’m going to continue to ignore my contradictory positions and, on top of that, insult you.”
I think there’s a fair bit of parsing of that statement that you’re leaving out, but maybe I’m wrong. Cite?
No regulation would lead to his lawn being dug up for every new ISP (not streaming service), if there were perfect competition in the market for service provision. This is not the case. Any potential new entry faces humongous sunk costs and resistance from wealthier, entrenched ISPs.
Could someone explain the specific benefit of repealing net neutrality? So far, the only “pluses” I’ve heard has been “something something regulation bad competition”. How, precisely, is repealing neutrality going to make it easier (or even possible) for competition to flourish?