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Comment by cultus | Hacker News Reader

What are the benefits of abandoning net neutrality if you are not an ISP?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Criticism

Which effectively states that the downside is that ISPs make less profit. I agree we want them to be competitive but I really don’t understand why many commenters here think that’s a design goal. The only consumer argument should be: “I want the Internet to be faster, not freer.” or “I pay to pay as little as possible.” Also the argument here that Facebook losses without net neutrality is a farce. Facebook gains because they can persuade telecoms to zero-rate and specifically pay telecoms to drop Tik Tok packets.

In my personal case: I'd much rather be able to buy special-purpose cellular plans with limited/restricted capabilities. I'd really like to see more $5-10/mo. device plans that offer connectivity that isn't artificially speed-throttled to dialup speeds. For instance, for the computer in my car.

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.

That doesn't make much sense to me - if the issue from an ISPs perspective is data volume, then why not just put a cap on data and remain content-agnostic? Doesn't that address the issue in a much more direct way? For example, if there is no data cap, but only a block on netflix.com, it seems that you could get around that using a VPN or something anyway.

I'd be perfectly fine with fully metered data plans at high speed: However, the same group of people who support net neutrality complain that data caps are also unfair. Notice that "unlimited data" is once again, however inaccurate as it is, nearly the only way to buy wireless service in 2020.

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.

> However, the same group of people who support net neutrality complain that data caps are also unfair.

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.

Running at higher resolution literally has consequences like higher GHG emissions. So yes I think there is an argument that network neutrality incentivizes waste. Althoughh one could also argue 4k streaming helped prepare the internet backbone for mass teleconferencing.

It was never an issue of "abandoning" net neutrality. The US never had net neutrality.

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

I think the downvotes are coming from the fact that net neutrality was the de facto standard, and once it was visibly broken by ISPs (e.g. after the Netflix and similar situations), Net Neutrality was quickly applied by the FCC under Tom Wheeler. This was overturned by Ajit Pai as one of his first acts and is the cause for this entire discussion.

I think your record of history is incorrect. Net Neutrality never existed and was not a de-facto standard. The time period involved most traffic flowing freely simply because there were no huge producers of content. When Netflix arrived it caused problems across the internet and the ISPs reacted to it. Tom Wheeler tried to introduce rules but didn't have the legal authority to do so which was overruled in court.

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