171–180 of 337 posts
ISPs are desperate to be part of the monetary exchange of services over their infrastructure, they've been trying to become more than "dumb pipes" for decades and virtually no one wants that. Imagine if the water company could charge you more for a glass of water than a toilet flush.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was definitely someone who wrote the FCC (futilely) in support of net neutrality in 2017, and I figured the inevitable outcome of the FCC decision back then would be skyrocketing broadband costs, fast lanes, etc. Except none of it happened. It turns out there's actually kind of okay competition in this space. Maybe not as much as there should be, but prices have stayed reasonable, broadband access is expanding, and…
Yeah, the discourse around the Net Neutrality thing was intense . I was one the few people who argued it wouldn't change much, and I remember being struck by the state of near-internet-apocalypse people were predicting at the time. Helps that I was seeing the whole thing from the outside as a non-US-resident.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, the empirical record on this shows that we see more net neutrality violations by ISPs in marketplaces with high competition.[1] This is counter-intuitive but here's how it works: In a competitive marketplace ISPs have tighter margins and look for every opportunity for cost savings, so if throttling a high-bandwidth application only affects a small percentage of customers, and only a tiny tech-savvy minority…
Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins?
As to why it has not happened yet: it is easier to corrupt a new infrastructure from the beginning than change one that is already entrenched.
The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
I lived in Tennessee when Google Fiber was announced there. At the time Chattanooga (and a few small towns) already had fiber internet that were offered by the utilities companies. It was an absolute shitshow. Actually, a shitshow would have been cleaner. Immediately AT&T rolls out gigabit internet, but not everywhere. I was in one of the small towns with gig and the previous renter had AT&T. AT&T literally cut the l…
But yes, I mostly agree. Most of the people I know who would identify as libertarian, suddenly become much more comfortable with government action when the government is wanting to do something they like, or is even run by their person. Once "the other side" gets in control, they seem to rediscover their libertarian principles. Seeing this was a good reminder to me that we should look at actions, not words, when deciding who to vote for.
The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV = 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR)
The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TVs) I have in Canada is $65 + tax. And it's a discounted plan. The price on the ISP website is $100.
Also in China phone plans have fast lanes as well. SNS and video streaming data are treated separately (cheap or even free).
The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
> The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite... Speak for yourself, but I live on the west coast and my Internet connection is great. Edit: downvoters, what are the problems with U.S. internet?
once you get outside of truly major metro areas, internet access tends to go to shit.
i've got 1G fiber internet in Seattle now, but in Everett ~25M shared access comcast is the best you can do in a lot of places. and it isn't like you need to be surrounded by cows and horses to have bad internet, you can have the boeing factory just down the road, but you're living in a ~100k population city as opposed to a tech hub.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, the empirical record on this shows that we see more net neutrality violations by ISPs in marketplaces with high competition.[1] This is counter-intuitive but here's how it works: In a competitive marketplace ISPs have tighter margins and look for every opportunity for cost savings, so if throttling a high-bandwidth application only affects a small percentage of customers, and only a tiny tech-savvy minority…
Why doesn't the monopoly employ the same cost-saving measures for even bigger margins?
They would.
The issue is that competition alone wouldn't fix it, because there is an information deficit. Some people will pick the lowest price and not realize that the ISP offering it is taking kickbacks from incumbent services to degrade their own competitors. And since this is always bad -- it's anti-competitive in the market for over-the-top services, so this is an anti-trust rule -- it should be prohibited regardless of whether there is competition in the ISP market. Because you need it in order to preserve competition in the markets for other services.
The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
I immigrated from China to Canada and I'm not sure if monopoly is the root cause. In China, ISP is state-controlled and 100% monopoly, yet the plans are dirt cheap compared to those in Canada. I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV = 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR) The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TV…
The thing that is actually missing from this entire essay is competition. The biggest single reason why the USA's (and to a lesser extent Canada's) internet is shite is because of the monopolies that exist. In the EU there are similar offers for "enhanced" access, but its not speeding up/slowing down apps, but giving "free" access, as in not counting to your data cap. Instead of making the FCC stop fast lanes, the FC…
I immigrated from China to Canada and I'm not sure if monopoly is the root cause. In China, ISP is state-controlled and 100% monopoly, yet the plans are dirt cheap compared to those in Canada. I just looked up the price in my hometown in China: 1000 Mbps fibre internet + 3 mobile phone lines (105 GB data) + IPTV = 249 CNY tax included (30 USD / 42 CAD / 28 EUR) The 1000 Mbps fibre Internet plan alone (no phones no TV…
It was definitely cheap and affordable. But I always felt a huge speed bump (along with easy access to foreign web sites) when I went to Thailand or Indonesia for vacation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know there’s a gun pointed at my head, but listen, nobody has pulled the trigger yet, it’s fine.
It's been 7 years, but any day now we'll wake up to broken online video, random timeouts, paltry data caps, and skyrocketing costs.
Public sentiment was pretty high and we actually had network neutrality for the first 40 years of the Internet not to mention the over 100M people who live in states that adopted laws.
https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/net-neutra...