Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsat | Hacker News Reader

My hope is that the highly tech dependent area I live in (Seattle) will force the market to keep an open internet. We have enough competition to ensure that, I think. However, that won't be the case for millions of Americans across the country. This is awful, but I think the outrage will eventually remedy the problem if telecoms overstep. Though telecoms may try more subtle means of manipulating traffic, which could be worse. Ugh.

View on HN

I live in a big apartment building in downtown Palo Alto, and I have the choice of cable company (fast) or phone company (slow). The % of Americans who have more choices is quite tiny... you're extremely lucky if you have even 2 fast choices!

That said, it would be awesome if Seattle did have enough competition to have a completely different market from elsewhere in the US: imagine the cable company trying to explain why they have wildly different offerings in places with and without competition.

That is, literally, the current situation. I moved from Baltimore to Seattle. I paid for Comcast for a time in both locations (in Baltimore it was the ONLY option, in Seattle you usually have 1-1.5 other options)

At least the year I moved, I went from 69$ for ~55 down 5 up to 50$ for something like 100 down 10 up. (Yes it was the "promotion rate" but I played that game on both sides.) Over the years Comcast played the same "Ratchet up the rates" game, and eventually I got a house specifically with the mindset to 'not have comcast' and moved to an area with I believe 3 broadband choices. I now pay 50$ for I believe ~400 down (was originally 250 but they've been sneakily upgrading their system, wave is fucking amazing). On top of that service reliability is MUCH better, support is _fantastic_ and I have much less concern that my ISP is doing something scummy.

Monoplistic local practices taking away any incentive for consumer friendly offerings is not a hypothetical, it is the reality for large swaths of america.

Internet companies have a lot of social power and a lot of mind share and general good will among the population. They were a huge part of stopping SOPA. They could fight hard against non-neutral ISPs in the same way, blacklisting and banning non-neutral ISPs, serving banners that explain e.g. Comcast is degrading service and destroying the free web, suggesting alternatives. It could cause enough pressure for ISPs to change or competition to emerge (people might take a slower service that can go on twitter and facebook and youtube vs. a faster one where many websites people use are blocked), or even possibly for politicians to change the law by passing a bill. Politicians use Wikipedia and google and twitter too. Especially twitter.

Unfortunately I don't see this happening: large tech companies benefit from this arrangement and so it takes moral courage to do the right thing here on behalf of the leaders of these companies. There's some of that but not enough -- maybe I'm just being a pessimist.

General grassroots political outcry to stop the actual law changing is possible, but very unlikely to matter in this case either, I think. Unfortunately while SOPA was a law passed by votes, cast by human beings who are accountable to someone and can be threatened by angry citizenry, this is a regulatory decision literally nobody who is not a senior vice president at Comcast voted for or wants -- Pai has no constituents, all the power and none of the responsibility. He can sell the Internet to his friends at Verizon and then undoubtedly receive their gratitude in the form of a cushy job and $400,000 speaking gigs.

Insufficient people will really notice, care, or act in synchrony to enact change as long as the abuses don't get overly egregious. This is how democracy works.

I hope that too. However, based on statements like this [1], I'm not sure that will be do-able unless the courts get involved and side with the masses.

1. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170517/05143337388/fcc-c...

I also live in Seattle. I'm not sure what "competition" you're talking about, but most of the city just has Comcast and maybe some slow DSL from CenturyLink. CenturyLink is expanding their fiber coverage, but if we're counting on Comcast and CenturyLink to retain access to the internet, then we're fucked.

Newer MDUs have fiber from Wave G (there used to be several fiber ISPs but Wave G bought them up).

There's no market in Silicon Valley, why would there be one in Seattle?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com