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Comment by naner | Hacker News Reader

Companies like Netflix are "putting a great stress on the Internet and there's no incentive for companies to invest in maintaining the Internet." Usage-based billing would encourage people to adopt more bandwidth-efficient technologies

Charging more for less won't provide incentive for companies to "invest in maintaining the internet", though.

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Have you seen the selection from netflix Canada ?

Nobody is downloading that crap - there is no way there is any bandwidth

Actually, yes it will. It'll set a low standard for cheap internet, thus making it economically viable for new boutique entrants to the ISP market, bringing with them new technologies and strategies. Google? Wireless?

I don't believe in government interference.

Giving more incentive for better encoding is also a valid point. Netflix offered 10 million for better recommendations. I'd like to see them offer the same thing for better encoding.

I'd have more sympathy for this argument if government interference didn't play a large part in the construction of the status quo.

In Canada, government regulation and taxpayer money played a significant role in building the infrastructure. In the US, government granted monopolies built the infrastructure and still serve to squeeze out competition.

Government interference isn't a shiny new monster imposing itself on private sector infrastructure. Rather it has been a key player since the beginning and shaped the market in ways that need to be accounted for.

  > I don't believe in government interference.

But that's just it. Most of the telecoms in the US and Canada were built off of government subsidies, guaranteed (regional or nation-wide) monopolies, and/or guaranteed profits (see AT&T in the US). How can you then say that the government needs to be 'hand off' with a market that they've already skewed in favor of certain players? Not to mention that Bell in Canada is regulated this way by the CRTC because they control the last-mile telephone lines for DSL. Legally they are the only ones allowed to lay such lines, so should the government allow them to do whatever they want with their government-granted monopoly?

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