Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
In Canada, which does not currently have net neutrality and virtually every ISP has stringent and unrealistic data caps with obscene overage charges, the largest cable ISP dropped their bandwidth cap the day Netflix announced its Canada service.
Now another Canadian cable co, which has bandwidth caps and obscene overage charges, has announced a Netflix competitor. The catch? Their service won't count towards your paltry bandwidth cap, while Netflix's will. Of course, the service sucks. It's over twice the price with only 139 titles, but Netflix isn't very practical with the low caps anyway, so it's not like you have much choice.
In Canada, which does not currently have net neutrality and virtually every ISP has stringent and unrealistic data caps with obscene overage charges, the largest cable ISP dropped their bandwidth cap the day Netflix announced its Canada service.
Now another Canadian cable co, which has bandwidth caps and obscene overage charges, has announced a Netflix competitor. The catch? Their service won't count towards your paltry bandwidth cap, while Netflix's will. Of course, the service sucks. It's over twice the price with only 139 titles, but Netflix isn't very practical with the low caps anyway, so it's not like you have much choice.
Are you aware that bandwidth costs money? If a provider can provide a certain service for a certain price, they'll do it. If they can't, they won't. It's called competition.
Net neutrality is not about charging for bandwidth. It's about throttling content from competitors or companies whose philosophies the ISP disagrees with. For instance, the ISP who has its own video streaming service can allow their content to stream full speed, and slow Netflix down to a crawl.
With net neutrality, all content would be transmitted at equal speeds, regardless of the source.
Net neutrality is not about charging for bandwidth. It's about throttling content from competitors or companies whose philosophies the ISP disagrees with. For instance, the ISP who has its own video streaming service can allow their content to stream full speed, and slow Netflix down to a crawl.
With net neutrality, all content would be transmitted at equal speeds, regardless of the source.
Right but a provider that does this will obviously be hated and people will jump on the next competitor. As I understand it though, net neutrality reaches farther than this. Throttling and other content discrimination is actually a very valid response in certain cases.
Why should the government step in and force providers to modify the service they provide? Sets a very bad precedent IMO. Drives up prices too. The consumer should be given the choice, period.
Right but a provider that does this will obviously be hated and people will jump on the next competitor. As I understand it though, net neutrality reaches farther than this. Throttling and other content discrimination is actually a very valid response in certain cases.
Why should the government step in and force providers to modify the service they provide? Sets a very bad precedent IMO. Drives up prices too. The consumer should be given the choice, period.
The question is, do you want your source of information to be controlled by your ISP? Not all areas actually have choices in internet service, and so a liberal or conservative ISP could conceivably block an opposing viewpoint or slow it down so far as to effectively block it. Or several ISP's could get together to kill a competitor's website, etc.
This is within the government's purview in regulating commerce.
The only reasonable rules regarding NN is to prevent an ISP from doing what is being done here. They need to be treated like a utility, service needs to remain neutral.
On the other hand bandwidth caps are also perfectly reasonable as long as it remains neutral to the services.
As long as the motivation is technical ones I'd agree. The issue becomes is when the ISP can leverage that bandwidth to squeeze out the competition.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
