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Comment by ghba66 | Hacker News Reader

Why are people here so pro-net neutrality? I don't have NN in Europe and I'm happy: because of it, I enjoy zero-rated services at a fair price.

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The U.K.'s (government / regulators) stance on net neutrality) is that as long as there is competition in the market and there are services you can sign up for that “neutral” then there is no need to step in yet.

The competition in the U.S. isn’t as great as it can be in here in the U.K. where many will only have a single choice for their ISP (or have restricted cell/sat isp or have a service that we wouldn’t even consider as broadband as it’s speed is so low).

It’s strange how people from different parts from the world may require different rules that govern them.

The USA is big. Like, really fucking big. As a result running an ISP, wired or cellular, has an extremely high cost to entry. As a result of that, most people’s choices for internet provider is precisely limited to one choice, the local telco monopoly. No net neutrality means that ISP ca. Do whatever they want and get away with it because what are you going to do? Send a sternly written letter?

> The USA is big. Like, really fucking big.

So? Most of that is empty space nobody is trying to serve. The key metric is population density, which is comparable between urban areas in Europe and the US. The size of the US has nothing to do with lack of ISP choice, as evidenced by the fact that the same problem doesn't occur in countries with lower population densities than the US (33.8 people per km²) such as Sweden (21.5), Finland (16.2), Norway (13.4) or Australia (3.1).

ISPs serve more than just downtown urban areas.

They don't have to when they start. Google Fiber hasn't gone into any rural areas AFAIK.

Zero-rating is a terrible thing that helps stifle the free market and consolidate monopolies. It is also of questionable legality.

It does not consolidate monopolies because, by law, ISPs are required to add all apps from a category (chat, video, etc) to zero-rating. i.e. if you add Netflix you are required to add YouTube, etc.

All I see about NN is a lot of manipulation from both sides. And what's especially frustrating is that some people insist that NN is anti-customer. No thanks, I'll keep my zero-rating.

That sounds sort of like... zero-rating neutrality? Might be even harder to pass that kind of law over here.

I agree about the manipulation from both sides though. There's an acceptance that we have to be so shrill and lie for our cause, because marketing.

That's definitely not the case in the UK.

Three offers Deezer and Apple Music but not Spotify zero-rated. This puts Deezer and Apple Music at an advantage, no matter if they're technically better or worse

Three also does this for social media and video services. (Part of why I'm leaving them when my contract is up)

We long had zero-rating in the form of toll free telephone numbers while most long distance calling required per-minute fees. That system worked okay because it just transferred costs from one party (the caller) to another (the callee) and was available to any provider who wanted to subscribe to the model. Zero rating that works like that would be okay.

What people are worried about is when the ISP's get to play kingmaker about which services will get deals and which will not. The cable TV providers are among the most hated companies in the US for a reason, and those are the only broadband ISP's available to most Americans.

Zero-rating as we fear it is just another way to let them impose arbitrary and capricious costs on their customers.

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