Listening to an interview with him, I could feel myself thinking that he had a ton of valid points about the FCC and industry as a whole.
And before I get called a shill, I disagree with many of his policies and am glad hes leaving the post.
It seemed like policy that was supported mostly because it was pro-consumer and because honestly the ISPs are getting lots of taxpayer money.
Comcast could easily install CDN servers if they wanted.
And everything related to Netflix and peering was ridiculous. Charging because the traffic is unbalanced, even though it's the ISP's customers requesting the data? What, they'd peer for free if netflix clients uploaded 5mbps of random data so that uplink and downlink are perfectly matched?
So sure, Netflix and Google are a monopolistic threat in other areas. But when it comes to ISPs getting into conflicts, it's almost always the ISPs in the wrong.
Am I getting wooshed or are these both great reasons to support this policy and thus oppose Ajit Pai?
If every single mobile network plan is legally required to support Netflix 4K and YouTube streaming, that's not workable from a business standpoint. And that's exactly Google and Netflix's goal: Require everything support their modern reincarnation of the boob tube.
I feel a very small group of companies are pushing an incredibly wasteful business model, because they aren't the ones paying for all of the waste. Google, Netflix, Spotify, etc. would rather you wirelessly stream content that makes... a lot more sense to store locally. And they're pushing things like streaming 4K... even when the cost/benefit of streaming 4K to a phone is questionable at best.
We're all paying for the extreme network contention of 90% of available bandwidth going to these very wasteful business models. It's pretty unsurprising ISPs would like to charge extra for them, either towards consumers or the streaming providers themselves.
I haven't noticed that - I have noticed opposition to other anti-consumer business practices, like inaccurately calling a plan "unlimited data", or pushing low-income people into capped data plans and charging excessive per-GB overage fees. I think a plan like you're suggesting is perfectly compatible with net neutrality goals - I just think there's not much of a market. But Google Fi is pretty close - as in not throttled and constant per-GB prices, and you can get extra sim cards for free for your other devices.
> Notice that "unlimited data" is once again, however inaccurate as it is, nearly the only way to buy wireless service in 2020.
Note that this is not the case in situations where bandwidth is actually scarce, such as satellite internet plans.
I think you're saying that these businesses have externalized the cost of bandwidth to consumers. I agree that ISPs charge a ridiculous amount, but are you sure this is actually the reason? I would have assumed it's more due to the lack of alternative providers that most in the US face.
As to reasons on why to not enforce net neutrality strictly is that it stifles investment in ISPs infrastructure.
This is a good discussion on the topic with more detail than can be summarized in a few characters in a hacker news comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKD-lBrZ_Gg
Net neutrality died, and all of the doom and gloom we were told would happened never materialized.
It seems likely that this is because they consider the looser regulations likely to be overturned in Biden's presidency, not because they don't actually want to make changes they spent millions lobbying for the right to make.