My main gripe with Net Neutrality is simple economics. For almost any good or service you can pay for different tiers of quality.
Why should the internet not be this way too? If the answer is because its a monopoly I would have to disagree.
Why should the internet not be this way too? If the answer is because its a monopoly I would have to disagree.
Like TWC/Spectrum secretly intentionally congesting Netflix, then telling customers that upgrading to a faster plan will fix it (which it won't, because the customer's plan wasn't the bottleneck). Then TWC/Spectrum secretly stopped congesting Netflix after Netflix secretly paid them.
Like AT&T/Verizon charging content providers to bypass caps, then probably secretly charging their own content provider much less than they charge other companies.
In theory the FCC's "not my problem" policy may allow these cases to be solved by the FTC, but first the FTC would have to somehow find out that this stuff is going on.
Because you already do?
You want more speed and bandwidth, pay for it. You want yet more, take a look at corporate plans.
The internet is a meta creation on top of the bandwidth. It's the conversation you have over the telephone.
The ISPS Are asking to double dip. They want to charge based not on network usage and speed subscription. They want to charge based on what you say and whose you listen to.
I am willing to bet that if someone offered an internet package that included full speeds for Facebook, Wikipedia, and 30 YouTube videos for $5 /mo, and then 20% speed for everything else, it'd do really well.
Interestingly, this is a really a question about keeping the internet a free market. Just as a local boutique retailer would not be happy about the shopping center charging customers $1 per store they entered, small publishers, as usual, will be the people harmed by a non-neutral internet.
I'm sure the big players are enthralled by the idea that their competitors will soon have an even harder time accessing alternatives, as if it wasn't difficult enough with a rabid copyright regime and restrictive network access. IMO, the only reason tech incumbents oppose net non-neutrality is because they're worried that Comcast will use it as a kludge to stymie the growth of their platforms as media platforms (which Comcast et al are desperate to do, because cordcutting is eviscerating the cable industry).
It's too bad that the mainstream conservative party in the US has interpreted "free markets" and "competition" to mean making the startup environment extremely difficult for the little guy.