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.
LOL the competitors here are a bad cable company and a much worse phone company that charge the same thing. So much for competition.
Exactly. State and local laws prevent anyone from being allowed to even try to compete. Government meddling at its worst and most stifling.
All Net Neutrality aimed for was greater federal control over those monopolies and a way to skim profits off them by making any new decision by the ISP have to go through an FCC "permission" racket that likely would have involved simple bribes to the House and Senate in order to do whatever they want.
Lack of competition at the ISP level IS THE PROBLEM, not greater federal control over a monopoly they created. Just ask wireless broadband, which has always been exempt from these rules, as well as the stifling roadblocks to competition that wired/fiber ISPs face. As a result of being exempt from federal, state and local meddling, plus existing in an arena of serious competition for your money, wireless service has increased in quality, value and reliability much faster than wired over the last 10-15 years.
Think of it this way. The internet is a 3 lane highway and red trucks, white trucks, and blue trucks drive it. Now you maybe get your internet service from Comcast. Guess what...Comcast also owns the freight in the red trucks so Comcast sets aside one lane for the red trucks to use so they can go faster. The rest of the traffic is forced into the remaining two lanes. Any company, like say Netflix and go to the red truck lane, but they have to pay a toll, which means less profit for them or more costly Netflix for you. That is a pretty simple version and in the past internet service providers were not allowed to do that.
Think of it this way. The internet is a 3 lane highway and red trucks, white trucks, and blue trucks drive it. Now you maybe get your internet service from Comcast. Guess what...Comcast also owns the freight in the red trucks so Comcast sets aside one lane for the red trucks to use so they can go faster. The rest of the traffic is forced into the remaining two lanes. Any company, like say Netflix and go to the red truck lane, but they have to pay a toll, which means less profit for them or more costly Netflix for you. That is a pretty simple version and in the past internet service providers were not allowed to do that.
Right if that happens, we just build a competing highway.
Thank you both for the good explanations. Sounds like we need it.
So WHY are we getting rid of it — who profits from getting rid of it?
The ISPs. ComCast sells cable TV as well as Internet, right? People are cutting the cord to use streaming services left and right. This makes ComCast sad. So if they can put an extra charge on Internet traffic to streaming services and stamp on traffic to streaming services that don't pay up, they can make their favorite streaming services - or their own - more attractive. It's not as if traffic to streaming service A costs more for ComCast than traffic to streaming service B - but they can manipulate the market to favor the service that pays them best, so of course they'll do that.
Anyone who claims to believe in a free market should be in favor of NN.
Who stands to gain?
The operators and service providers...
You’ve probably guessed: Internet service providers stand to gain enormously. For a long time, they’ve been dreaming of more room to maneuver. AT&T has more or less already done it with their “zero-rating”, a capacity to bypass the American law by offering some services to users for free and charging for others. In practice, this allowed them to beat their competition to the post as they were offering their own services in the package.
In addition to this, without net neutrality, companies will be able to create packages to facilitate access to certain data, for example, a Facebook package that allows users who buy it to not pay for data when they access the social network platform.
Think of it this way. The internet is a 3 lane highway and red trucks, white trucks, and blue trucks drive it. Now you maybe get your internet service from Comcast. Guess what...Comcast also owns the freight in the red trucks so Comcast sets aside one lane for the red trucks to use so they can go faster. The rest of the traffic is forced into the remaining two lanes. Any company, like say Netflix and go to the red truck lane, but they have to pay a toll, which means less profit for them or more costly Netflix for you. That is a pretty simple version and in the past internet service providers were not allowed to do that.
Net neutrality, per Obama's overreach, existed for just over three years from 2015 to 2018. Did Netflix exist before 2015?
And the solution to your above example is allow other people to build more roads, then ComCast's bizarro rules for their road don't have to hold the traveler prisoner, since they can exit an travel on a different road that allows for faster travel for all colors of trucks.
Right if that happens, we just build a competing highway.
See my post on costs.
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.
