Net Neutrality

[ToomuchStuff]

I understand the reasons to be against it and if it weren't for enforced monopolies, I would be on that side. (let the market decide) But allowing those monopolies to be enforced, makes me think about long distance phone calls and Ma Bell (when it was whole), or the post office, without UPS or FedEX.
If you allow a monopoly and enforce it, then it needs to be regulated.
As to Allens do you want the government to decide what your looking at, they already can. Big business due it with marketing, bandwidth restrictions, protocol blocking (remember the Torrent lawsuits), etc. The government has that ability plus National Security letters. Kind of like choosing the lesser of two evils, is still choosing evil.

[bae]

I understand the reasons to be against it and if it weren't for enforced monopolies, I would be on that side. (let the market decide) But allowing those monopolies to be enforced, ....

Is there a widespread monopoly issue?

Here in my remote, "underserved" rural area, which is a small lightly-populated island 20 miles offshore from the mainland, I have at least the following options for Internet service:

- CenturyLink - they have the bulk of the market share here at present, because they are cheap, convenient, and provide horrible service. Nobody likes them, almost everyone buys their "service" oddly...

- Two local ISPs, each of which maintain their own links to the mainland, and offer wireless or wired access to their networks. Both provide better service and more leading-edge technology, at higher cost, while providing local jobs.

- At least 4 different satellite ISPs, offering different technologies, speeds, pricing.

- 3 different cell carriers who offer high speed data service for reasonable pricing, that is often much higher speed than any of the other solutions.

- Our local rural electrical cooperative, which has a fiber loop throughout the island, and its own backhaul to the Real World. They are rapidly working on offering all customers on the island Internet service, they have hundreds of customers already using their pilot. High speed, low cost, reliable, operated by locals.

- Two areas on this island maintain their own neighborhood cooperative ISP, using wireless mesh within the neighborhood, point-to-point Ubiquiti hardware to link up disconnected chunks of the mesh, and their own microwave or satellite links to the Real World

- There is a cable TV company that offers cable and Internet service here, which is expanding with some success. Decent pricing, decent customer service.

- I personally also have backup HF, UHF, VHF, and microwave internet connectivity from my home, as I have one of the nodes for our county's emergency communications system here in my radio room. I can get low bandwidth Internet out worldwide, or fast-enough-for-email-and-photos Internet out via microwave or whatnot.

This sure looks like competition between business models, technologies, and customer service to me. And not a monopoly.

And in a couple of years, Google will have its fleet of zillions of satellites up there providing broadband coverage to everyone. Probably competing with Amazon's drones and Tesla's autonomous wireless mesh.

Unless we step in now and allow a few companies to use the force of government to cement in place their business models and technologies, denying our children the future.

[peggy]

Is there a widespread monopoly issue?

Here in my remote, "underserved" rural area, which is a small lightly-populated island 20 miles offshore from the mainland, I have at least the following options for Internet service:

- CenturyLink - they have the bulk of the market share here at present, because they are cheap, convenient, and provide horrible service. Nobody likes them, almost everyone buys their "service" oddly...

- Two local ISPs, each of which maintain their own links to the mainland, and offer wireless or wired access to their networks. Both provide better service and more leading-edge technology, at higher cost, while providing local jobs.

- At least 4 different satellite ISPs, offering different technologies, speeds, pricing.

- 3 different cell carriers who offer high speed data service for reasonable pricing, that is often much higher speed than any of the other solutions.

- Our local rural electrical cooperative, which has a fiber loop throughout the island, and its own backhaul to the Real World. They are rapidly working on offering all customers on the island Internet service, they have hundreds of customers already using their pilot. High speed, low cost, reliable, operated by locals.

- Two areas on this island maintain their own neighborhood cooperative ISP, using wireless mesh within the neighborhood, point-to-point Ubiquiti hardware to link up disconnected chunks of the mesh, and their own microwave or satellite links to the Real World

- There is a cable TV company that offers cable and Internet service here, which is expanding with some success. Decent pricing, decent customer service.

- I personally also have backup HF, UHF, VHF, and microwave internet connectivity from my home, as I have one of the nodes for our county's emergency communications system here in my radio room. I can get low bandwidth Internet out worldwide, or fast-enough-for-email-and-photos Internet out via microwave or whatnot.

This sure looks like competition between business models, technologies, and customer service to me. And not a monopoly.

And in a couple of years, Google will have its fleet of zillions of satellites up there providing broadband coverage to everyone. Probably competing with Amazon's drones and Tesla's autonomous wireless mesh.

Unless we step in now and allow a few companies to use the force of government to cement in place their business models and technologies, denying our children the future.

You are totally trying to mislead here. You are basically using the "What possibly could go wrong..?" argument.
Well let me tell you. First of all, congratulations to you and your wealthy neighbors for having so much choice. From past posts I realize it's pointless to try to point out to you that most of the US doesn't enjoy such riches and choice in so many ways. Never mind.
Net Neutrality is keeping the internet as. it. is. now.
Does everyone like the internet now? Do you like that you can bank on line, watch videos, check out library books, or watch goat porn if that's what turns you on? Do you want Verizon or Comcast to decide to slow down your on line banking cause your bank doesn't want to pay their price for a 'fast lane'? Ok, maybe the extortion won't actually get you 'faster' down/up load speed, but if the bank doesn't pay, maybe Comcast will slow it down just a little bit, cause, you know, they don't have space for everyone, do they? Think, Bank that pays, fast speed, bank that doesn't pay, dial-up speed.

Now, that bank certainly wants all their customers to have the fast/regular speed, but they can't pay ransom to every ISP, can they. Certainly not in a market like bae's where there must be, what, 10-15 choices. So they pay the big guys, the one's with the biggest market, and the little guys just wither away.

And speaking of the little guys, if you have a small store, or a catalog on-line, or sell art or books or, well, what business doesn't have at least a small presence on line these days. Good luck there. Do you want to pay every ISP out there to deliver your content? Or maybe you're happy just being visible in your area of the state/country. Especially if you are in competition with one of the bigger ones, like Walmart. Part of their business deal with Comcast just might involve putting 'the thumb' on your website, slowing it down juustt a tad...

Yeah, Walmart. Remember how they moved into so many small towns and destroyed the local competition? Yeah, remember that? Well, without Net Neutrality they will be able to do that on line. And, knowing how WalMart works, is there really any question that they won't try?
Net Neutrality simply says all content is the same, availability wise. Net Neutrality says Comcast, or some other, can't slow down, or block altogether one site in favor of others (who just happened to pay a little something don't'ch know).

Comcast, among other greedy reasons, doesn't want to spend the money to up grade. They just want to sift out the chaff (small, inconsequential you) in order to deliver the big ones, with big money and big sites.
What could possibly go wrong!

[bae]

First of all, congratulations to you and your wealthy neighbors for having so much choice. From past posts I realize it's pointless to try to point out to you that most of the US doesn't enjoy such riches and choice in so many ways.

Try again. This is by many metrics one of the poorest counties in the state. The people here using these different services are the year-round not-billionaire population.

But by all means, continue to distract and blow smoke and engage in personal attacks.

I see even more options available for Internet service over on the mainland from here. I don't see a "monopoly" - there are many competing services, technologies, business models, pricing schemes, service levels available.

[Alan]

Peggy, if the internet is the information superhighway, let's compare it to our interstate highway system. Everyone gets to use it although some have to pay a higher price to do so such as commercial shippers needing to be licensed in each state in which their trucks operate, higher vehicle registration fees, higher federal tax on diesel than gasoline, etc., all designed to have high capacity users pay for their access. I know you're in favor of that since we've talked about it before. What makes the internet different?

Twenty years ago web traffic was predominately text based traffic consisting of emails and static web pages. The volume of data was nearly insignificant. Today, virtually all media has found a place on the web and a huge array of data travels the pipes in all directions. Pipes that must be able to accommodate new protocols in order to keep up with technological innovations in various types of media. If the government, through a net neutrality law, forces low usage subscribers to subsidize the high volume media conglomerates, and you are in favor of that, does that make you an evil Republican?

[jp1]

Try again. This is by many metrics one of the poorest counties in the state. The people here using these different services are the year-round not-billionaire population.

Perhaps Peggy had it backwards then. The reason I have no choice is because I live in one of the wealthy counties in California. Perhaps I should move to Chowchilla, one of the poorer towns in the central valley, to have more choice beyond crappy comcast internet.

[jp1]

Peggy, if the internet is the information superhighway, let's compare it to our interstate highway system. Everyone gets to use it although some have to pay a higher price to do so such as commercial shippers needing to be licensed in each state in which their trucks operate, higher vehicle registration fees, higher federal tax on diesel than gasoline, etc., all designed to have high capacity users pay for their access. I know you're in favor of that since we've talked about it before. What makes the internet different?
)

What makes the internet different (besides the fact that no one but you and perhaps a few elderly politicians have called the internet the information superhighway in at least a decade) is that Comcast has sold me unlimited service at X speed. What I choose to download at that speed shouldn't matter. It should come through at X speed to the best of Comcast's ability and if a significant portion of their customers are not getting this service than Comcast needs to upgrade their network, refund me money, or downgrade their customer promise to what they can actually deliver.

If the government, through a net neutrality law, forces low usage subscribers to subsidize the high volume media conglomerates, and you are in favor of that, does that make you an evil Republican?

If there's a market for people who want cheap internet with usage restrictions net neutrality shouldn't be a problem. Comcast and the other internet companies could offer a seperate discounted plan for people with those desires. This plan could promise X/2 or x/3 speed (compared to what they offer me) and restrict usage to Y gigabytes per month. As long as they didn't discriminate what content could be downloaded by those parameters it would fit in with net neutrality just fine.

[Gregg]

I'm in agreement with jp1. Tiered pricing for various speeds or services seems like a logical business model. Technology Y costs more than technology X to build, but if you're willing to pay for it I will build it. I don't understand why that should be a problem and from the arguments above I'm not sure it is. Peggy? Beyond that, it should not matter in any way shape or form what the content I'm viewing with my service is. Furthermore, the providers and the government should not be in a position to monitor what content I'm viewing, but we all know where that statement ends up.

[kib]

I'll give a conservative thumbs up to JP1's plan, my only caveat being potential marketing nonsense: it starts out with offering the JP Plan for $50 and the Y plan for $20, and before you know it, the Y plan is $50 and the JP plan is $100. I'm not really groking the rate of inflation for media service, but it's no longer single digits. Yes yes, free market and all that boola boola, but it's so exhausting already, you think a pricing schedule is reasonable only to have it disappear with the dodo two months later.

[JaneV2.0]

As far as the Internet itself, I think the old axiom "If it's not broke (sic), don't fix it." applies.

I agree with KIB that the less competition for access there is, the pricier it will get. Witness health care.