Yes. Imposed costs on companies are passed down to consumers on the corporate side.
On top of being able to charge ordinary consumers for fast lanes independently
Edit: As an aside, as a voter/consumer, I would happily swallow repealing ALL NN functions and never revisiting the topic if the ISP/media companies were willing to give up the MASSIVE govt subsidization and govt exclusivity contracts that gut competition and artificially force prices to global records.
This one is interesting, and was brought up in the article TB posted.
People are VERY passionate (as we ALL would be!)…about going “backwards” in terms of overall Internet Speed (for those of us old enough to remember Dial Up (AOL!!!)…can you imagine going to take a shower waiting for a Web-page to completely download? and TOTALLY forget streaming/gaming). Yet some of the Big Players are “suggesting” consumers pay more…AND deferentially…for Higher Speeds/Greater Bandwidth.
The point the proponents were trying to make to the Industry was that lower speeds at this point would be an overall disaster that would have consumers ready to hang executives.
In a NN free world with consumer fast lanes it wouldn’t really be a suggestion.
As sound and video quality continue to climb (think 4k Netflix streaming, UHD TVs, etc) you need more and more bandwidth. That’s why it’s such a slam dunk to repeal NN and start now, so that you can essentially force consumers to pay for the fast lanes if they even want the capability of doing something like streaming Netflix.
The shit are the consumers gonna do about it? Switch from Comcast (who’s doing it) to ATT (who’s also doing it)?
Cancel their internet subscription (lol)?
People who don’t like NN tend to forget that ISPs in their current state enjoy virtually all of the benefits of being a public utility (monopolies, absurd subsidies, negative tax rates, etc) with almost none of the drawbacks.
There are certain things that Americans will get really, REALLY pissed about…and I think that the point the author was trying to make in the article was that diminishing Internet Speed is one of them. (I know, I know…in a World of starvation and Human Trafficking…this may be a small thing…but hey…we are Americans…!)
If you get pissed at your electric company what do your options look like? Mine are nil personally.
Absolutely. It impacts individual homes, small businesses, etcetc.
BUT, it’s a very safe move from the ISP side of things, because like with your electric company, they know most people don’t actually have access to an alternative
This is one of the biggest issues I see personally. There’s no fucking way I’m paying the outrageous prices they want for shitty service and a product I don’t even really care about.
I firmly believe that if we could break up these non-compete regional “treaties” that we’d see lots more innovation. At least on the customer end. Right now they have no incentive at all–and they are falling behind as a result.
I think so, but more by virtue of the small number of players in the game and even more so by the cost of laying fiber, which most companies would not want to do even if they could.
Right. And that is exactly why I want to see this going on. I’m not pro or anti NN right now, but I believe you need to have an accurate sense of the root problem before regulating things. If we try these regulations but still allow companies to hack up the country into little mini-monopoly service areas, ultimately I don’t think it’s going to have the desired effect.
Capitalism is lazy. It will do the least amount possible to return good profits. One of the reasons we are seeing so much innovation in high tech and tech assistants is that Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet are all battling each other for the next big thing (yes I know they’re also buying out startups, but leave it aside for now). And, it’s a battle EVERYWHERE.
Cable companies and ISPs don’t do ANYTHING remotely like that. If we keep NN but continue to allow companies and ISPs to hide, then we’re not really benefitting in my mind. Slap a band-aid on it.
Of course net neutrality is good. The whole point of writing it into law was to preserve the conditions which allowed the early Internet to flourish, to give us Netflix and Spotify and Alex Jones and Amazon.
The FCC was moved to take action because ISPs wanted to be paid twice for the same service of delivering bits, by both consumers and producers of content, whilst enjoying the power to throttle those content producers and push their own possibly shitty alternatives. Surely it makes sense to make all bits equal, as this is in the consumers’ best interest.
I don’t quite understand how so many people can be, often justifiably, distrustful of government, over which they have some small measure of control, yet trust corporations, which are profit-maximising entities, to have their best interests at heart.
I think it’s probably because interactions with corporations are generally optional and they don’t have guns…
Hypothetically speaking, if Samsung announces they’re shutting off service to all of their phones except their newest one (let’s say it’s $2k) I can a) stop using a cell phone, b) buy an iPhone, c) buy an unlocked Motorola, etc… If the government passes M4A, I have to pay the additional taxes or I’ll go to jail. Corporations might do some shady shit and sometimes they do things that are impactful to the greater population (Worldcom, Enron, sub-prime loans), but the government is has done far worse and is much more powerful than any single company or industry.
ISP’s are a special case (and why I think this is an issue at all), but I can still opt not to have the internet, go with DSL, go with satellite internet (big thing around here actually), and can use my cell phone’s data plan (hotspot). If I lived in the city I would also have the option of using fiber.
I don’t think many people do trust corporations to have their best interests at heart
Consider that the people you are thinking of might just have lower levels of trust all around than you are thinking, rather than having a different distribution of who they consider to be trust worthy
Edit: there is a strain of thought that trusts corporations on the basis that they would hypothetically be kept in check by competition or the government, but that is distinguishable from trusting corporations to have your best interests at heart