It sounds like completely invented scarcity. If necessary have the state chip in if the infrastructure is too expensive but do we really need to ration internet access?
No, we don't, it's a ploy for major ISPs to rake in more money without needing to invest in anything.
Yes, of course ISPs need to make money in order to upgrade, and they already do that. The point of net neutrality is to ensure that ISPs and content providers are not stifling competition.
If these businesses don't reconsider their zero-rating & data capping practices I wholly expect a future FTC's Antitrust to look closely at the ISP and digital content landscape.
Have you ever wondered why most home internet speeds top out at 35Mbps? It goes back to legacy spectrum stuff, they never needed upload to get cable to you, so the reserved spectrum was small, on docsis 3.x it tops out at 35Mbps.
The internet backend isn’t some wonder of engineering, it’s tubes held together with duct tape and bubble gum. A lot of old ways of doing things.
There is a very real practical limit to “just building out capacity”. Because of exisitint equipment, legacy standards, etc.
Running fiber to everyone directly, wouldn’t fix things. Beyond specs and standards, it would become a space, power, and heat limitation at these isps, and this is all totally ignoring cost.
I agree there is a practical limitation but
1. We're nowhere close to it, but it turns out a few large entities running the show is not efficient and slows it all down.
2. Information Technology is one of (if not the) the most rapidly changing fields
3. The cost of bandwidth will abide by Moore's Law, which means the price of producing it should as well. Couple that with the fact we're referring to an immensely wealthy sector and the cost argument loses merit pretty quickly
New tech changes, ISPs and telcos aren’t actually built on new tech, they add new tech, but there is a lot of 25 year old hardware around that only gets phased out when the people that know how to run it start retiring.