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Comment by clammer | Hacker News Reader

Because it creates a more rules for ISPs. The more regulated a market is, the larger barrier to entry which perpetuates the monopoly.

Eventually, when smaller upstarts come along, the monopoly points at them and says, "Hey, these guys aren't playing by the rules" and then the government makes these upstarts comply with expensive regulations.

For instance, VOIP and 911. When you could get VOIP for nothing (or next to it) the big telecoms pointed to these new providers and said "We have to support 911, why don't they?".

In this case, the government jumped in to help the telecoms keep a foot hold on their monopoly. See: http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com/net_telephone_service...

This pattern repeats itself in almost all legislation attempting to regulate monopolies. In the end, it only serves to stifle competition and remove consumer choice from the market.

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Yeah but the value of the Internet isn't the carriers, it's the content. Your argument more relevantly applies to small startups stifled by the ISPs in favor of larger websites. There are more of those than small cable companies being stifled by regulation.

Becoming an ISP is hard; the regulations are among the least of your problems.

Regardless a number of small and micro ISP's exist - as well as some midling sized ones. Particularly here in the UK.

The issue is that there are already huge barriers to entry if one wants to become an ISP.

Read your econ. Regulation is hardly the only barrier to entry in a market.

The huge barrier to entry for cable, water, electricity, and telecommunications (for now excluding cellular) is building the infrastructure. There are good reasons why most of these are heavily regulated.

It's funny you say ISPs because in the dial-up age there were a ton of them. They were working on top of the highly regulated phone system. Fast forward to the broadband age, which sadly was give a lot of free reign under the regulation-averse Bush administration, and there are very few 'ISPs'. Instead most markets are given a bad choice between oligopolistic cable companies and a baby bell or AT&T itself.

These companies have way too much market power, people routinely get cable tv in order to get a decent internet monthly rate, and regulation could have huge benefits for consumers as well innovative businesses like Google.

Read my post. I never said it was the only barrier. Not sure why you put words in my post that weren't there.

There really isn't a problem right now with good Internet service. NN solves a problem that doesn't exist, yet wil have long term effects on the market in ways we may not fully understand today.

Do you get a discount for biying cable and Internet together, yes, but I also get a discount for buying my life, home owner, and car insurance from the same company. I'm unclear on why a bundled discount is a bad thing for consumers.

Insurance, a heavily regulated industry with many competitors, huh. You suggest that regulation always hurts competition and that is simply not true.

Bundling is an interesting topic and in some cases it not necessarily malicious. However, unlike your insurance company, cable companies have a ton of pricing power.

I don't know why you think NN problems haven't existed. Comcast tried to block bit torrent connections, the FCC shut that practice down, but just recently the courts said the FCC could not stop that from happening.

>Comcast tried to block bit torrent connections

That's exactly the sort of thing that is fine with me. Bit torrent isn't http traffic. Comcast also blocks port 25... It's their network, and I simply go around it anyway.

If Comcast does end up blocking torrents on their network, perhaps my connection will be faster and/or cheaper for it. Torrent fans can go to another provider, it's called choice.

This isn't a case of favoring one website over another, it's about blocking non-http traffic vs a totally open network. If they blocked youtube, then I'd be looking for another provider, but they're not going to do that.

> That's exactly the sort of thing that is fine with me. Bit torrent isn't http traffic.

Replace "Bit Torrent" with any other video on demand service. Now Comcast is slowing down or blocking people who compete directly with their ondemand video service.

Maybe bit torrent turns out to be a great video delivery system for a would-be competitor, but they'll never get off the ground because their would-be customers can't get decent download speeds when they connect from comcast.

Interesting to hear. I'm sure many people would be interested in certain things not taking place on their network, but do you really think it is appropriate for Comcast to make that call?

Also I'm trying to stress that you can only jump providers maybe once or twice. Not exactly a great situation to be in.

>but do you really think it is appropriate for Comcast to make that call?

I'd rather Comcast make that call than the FCC, who censors the public airwaves now. Some people think that's what NN is really all about anyway.

>Also I'm trying to stress that you can only jump providers maybe once or twice

True. Though I imagine that if all the networks started to enforce draconian traffic rules, there would be an opportunity for smaller, local startups (or a large well funded one) to offer an unrestricted Internet. I'm thinking Sir Richard Branson could start an ISP in that niche, Virgin Internet...

> True. Though I imagine that if all the networks started to enforce draconian traffic rules, there would be an opportunity for smaller, local startups (or a large well funded one) to offer an unrestricted Internet. I'm thinking Sir Richard Branson could start an ISP in that niche, Virgin Internet...

Not if they use the infrastructure of the larger companies to connect to their customers. Then the larger companies end up throttling the smaller company (and hence all of their clients)

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