Wired: We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality — And the Internet as We Know It

Well, I guess if Netflix currently gets along well with Amazon, it stands to reason that every service provider will get along with every other content provider forever more.

It seems to me there was recently a story in the news about some content provider having a battle with a service provider in the cable TV space. I must be remembering wrong?

barfo

 

It's also worth noting that a lot of the ones that actually are ISPs do not cover the entire metro area. I've got comcast, but not FIOS, and I tried Clearwire - no service at my house.

Basically, my choices are comcast through the cable, or some DSL provider through the phone line. Or add a dish, I suppose?

barfo

 

You get competing movie channels offered over cable, too. Seems like they want to be a value to their customers.

As for the list of ISPs, there are several that offer competition to cable. The DSL guys.

There is no fairness or neutrality forced now. If there were these imagined issues, we'd have seen them already.

 

Comcast provides me only the channels that they want to provide. I don't get S2-TV and never will. Seems to me cable is an example of limiting access, not granting unlimited access.

Yes. If you are satisfied w/ DSL, then there is probably plenty of competition in the ISP space.

Hmm. So you are saying the law not only will have no practical effect, but has no legal effect either?

barfo

 

Cable has technical limitations as to how much content can be transmitted on the wire. A limit to the number of channels. So does satellite. So you'd be in favor of a law requiring the dish companies to launch infinite #'s of satellites to get you unlimited access to programming? How do you expect them to pay for it? It costs tens or hundreds of $millions, at least, to launch a satellite.

I think you're missing the point. There is plenty of competition now. If the status quo changes to the point where you buy Internet that is limiting the # of sites you can visit, the competition will grow. I would bet if you call your local govt. and ask, they'll tell you they'd love to have a 2nd cable provider come in and compete with the 1st. There's nothing stopping one from doing so.

When AT&T and Verizon decided to charge per gigabyte of bandwidth for phones and tablets, people griped. You can go to Sprint, competition!, and get unlimited. Doesn't seem like that's exactly what people want.

 

Did I say I was in favor of that? I believe I was just pointing out the current situation, not lobbying for a change. Plus I don't have a dish.

Yeah, that's why I have so many choices of cable providers. I sometimes lose track when counting, but I think it is... one.

Except basic economics. And the franchise agreement the government made with Comcast.

barfo

 

Comcast has no exclusive right to be the sole cable provider. The franchise agreement grants them access to pull their cable on phone poles or underground. If another company wanted to apply, the city could make a (second) franchise agreement with them.

The economics aren't there because it would be a huge investment with no guarantee of enough customers to break even or profit.

The economics change when Comcast offers only Bing and MSN. Otherwise AOL would still be king.

 

Agreed.

correct

No, they don't. Nobody comes in and lays new cable on my street so that I can get S2. People in Portland just learn to live w/o S2, same way people in the outlying areas learned to live without the Blazers the last few years.

Nobody lays new cable because it is frightfully expensive and there's no guarantee that Comcast won't blow them out of the water midway by simply turning S2 back on.

Now, maybe the government regulators prevent Comcast from turning S2 off in the first place, as a violation of their franchise agreement. But I know you'd rather have S2 turned off than have the government help out.

barfo

 

They're not going to turn off access to S2. How about a realistic scenario?

They're not going to turn off Google because M$ pays them to.

If they do turn off Google or netflix or Amazon, then the economics change.

Heck, Google may come in and give you even better internet.
https://fiber.google.com/about/

If Netflix requires 6mbit connection and comcast only offers 4mbit connections, who should pay to upgrade comcast's infrastructure to support ten thousand homes' worth of netflix bandwidth capacity?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/05/netflix-youtube-traffic/65210/

 

Sure, they can't turn off Google, or Netflix, or Amazon. In fact some of those might even have the power one day to make the cable company pay for the content, just as the cable company has to pay for TV content.

But you don't have that sort of power. If they decide to tell you (yes, S2) that you have to pay some fee to have S2 be carried on Comcast internet, what are you going to do? Lay fiber cable to my house? Wait patiently for Comcast to be driven out of the market? Or pay the fee?

maybe someday.

Not my concern. Don't care if they limit bandwidth for Netflix or other bandwidth hogs. There's a fundamental difference between restricting bandwidth and restricting access altogether. If someone pays for a fatter pipe though, so much the better.

barfo

 

They're not going to restrict anyone's access to anything, especially S2. If they restrict access to S2, it'll be them restricting mass quantities of the internet, and then it won't be "internet" access they're providing anymore.

As far as the 4mbit/6mbit netflix issue, that IS the issue. Any neutrality type law would require the ISPs to spend the money to provide 6mbit at their own expense. Netflix gets a free ride on their network.

Like I said, how about you come up with a real world scenario? A realistic one.

 

I don't know what's going to happen. But we have producers on one side, consumers on the other, and a middleman in between which is not easily replaced. You seem to believe the middleman will continue the existing practice of delivering all available content to the consumer for a flat fee in perpetuity. I suggest the middleman has a great deal of power in this situation and will find ways to extract more money, to the extent allowed by law and the limited competition they face. I think you might be sticking your head in the sand by asserting that

barfo

 

One of two possibilities:

I think the ISPs are going to either raise their fees to cover the cost of building infrastructure that will take advantage of netflix' 1080p and soon 4K resolution offerings. It's not going to be cheap, either.

Or ISPs are going to charge netflix $x per subscriber (x is a fraction, likely) and we'll all pay netflix a tad more.

S2 is already paying for premium bandwidth. It's not being run out of my house on some cheap consumer or small business line.

 

Funny how Maris posts two videos that contradict one another.

jlprk needs to figure out how the IP in TCP/IP works. What peering is. And that there are more than 5 carriers.