Hacker News Reader

Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage.

These are getting rarer and rarer these days. And the countries which raced ahead dropped quotas early, or never had quotas in the first place (France for instance, second ADSL market in Europe, standard ADSL contracts are all unmetered and metered never represented any significant portion of the market).

Even Belgium, historically one of the worst countries in europe quotas-wise (supposedly due to the very low level of computer-based production, meaning ISPs can get no peering), is moving away from quotas.

> Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US.

No.

View on HN

Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue?

Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

> Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue?

Net neutrality has nothing whatsoever to do with quotas.

> Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers

The first one simply does not make sense, the second one is at best irrelevant and at worst counter-productive (countries using quotas are historically the worst ones in terms of penetration and improvements over time, they're solely a way for carriers to fuck with above-average customers)

> and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

Bundled line sharing (mandated at acceptable prices by regulations), they let new isps start out as purely virtual and ramp up their operation by building their physical network over time (DSLAMs and local loop unbundling) instead of having to front these, and affordable local loop unbundling.

Those are what triggered internet access improvements in european countries with a former telco monopoly (just about all of them). As well as policy and explicit political drive for increased competition in the sector.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com