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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

The sky was supposed to fall if net neutrality were abrogated, and IME, that hasn't happened. The only change I (and people I know) witnessed was throttling once broad data limits were exceeded, which IIRC wasn't what was at stake, and which I for one didn't object to, i.e., that people would have to pay for what they use. In short, I have not seen bandwidth or pricing weaponized at all to target specific businesses other than for morally objectionable content. Maybe my awareness is limited - I can't confirm that!

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The sky was supposed to fall if net neutrality were abrogated, and IME, that hasn't happened.

ISPs aren't run by complete idiots. They knew this current switch back was a likely possibility. If they had rushed to implement service tiers, it would have given even more ammunition to the net neutrality debate.

Now they can say "See we had a chance for a few years to do it and didn't, so we need to pass laws to make sure net neutrality is illegal to protect our freedom." They'll pay some politicians to push something like the "Internet Freedom Act" and then they'll be good to go.

And how long do you expect your timeline to playout on? It's been more than 6 years now, and we're talking about corporations that regularly have difficulty seeing beyond next quarter, and have absolutely no qualms pissing off the entire world if it means another buck. Why wouldn't they have rushed to enact the new laws immediately under an FCC political establishment that would have been favorable to such?

It seems to me that simple market economics offers a compelling alternative. The more they screw the customer, the more room there is for new or existing competitor, be that something like Starlink or one of the many micro-ISPs being able to grow a bit. You need to create some economic model where these tiers are both profitable and don't expose you to a reasonable fear of competition. That seems quite difficult to do.

There is precedent of this happening in countries without Net Neutrality laws such as the Philippines, where ISPs have zero-rating agreements with operators of popular websites, which effectively cements the position of incumbents.

This is just not true. There is no competition. Cities have Comcast or Spectrum; they don't have both. #3 and #4 in Wireless just merged. It is literally T-mobile, Verizon, or AT&T. Where would the consumers go to? They all do the exact same thing. And once one competitor makes the switch, they all will, since they all make more money. This literally happened when T-mobile sold streaming as an addon package [0] or when AT&T zero rated DirecTV on their wireless plans.

The only reason the internet hasn't gotten significantly worse is because we DID have net neutrality for a while, and they knew it would come back once Democrats had a majority on the FCC.

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles...

It's not gotten worse strictly because California passed a very strong net neutrality law and the telcos were hoping the legal system would kill that so they could do whatever they pleased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Internet_Consumer_P...

Not working out for them so far:

> Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in January 2022 that California's net neutrality law may continue to be enforced and cannot be overridden by the FCC as, current as of the decision, Internet services were classified as information services

There are 2 'net neutrality' items in play and are conflated and team lines drawn up ages ago.

One is the double charging of services. Buy service XYZ on the internet then the ISP says 'hey you buy or special package or ABC is throttled'. That is the one most people think of when they hear net neutrality. Or 'we have not cut a deal with XYZ no data for you'.

Then there is the 'stop the cap' ones. Where 'hey here is a nice unlimited service except when you use more than X data then its not'. 'want more data pay for more on top of your "unlimited" plan'.

Then instead of passing laws to do it right they pretzelled the existing laws. Made some up and said yep thats good. Each "side" of the argument has had control of both houses and the presidential. Yet none of them got it done. Instead we are going to end up with more rubish and no real laws. Just made up interpretations that can change on a whim.

> One is the double charging of services. Buy service XYZ on the internet then the ISP says 'hey you buy or special package or ABC is throttled'.

ISPs also charge content providers to peer, getting paid three times for the same data.

This can't really be used to defend the abrogation of net neutrality, the sky might still fall, the only thing holding it up is how it's perceived in focus groups and that there is still some competition in the ISP market

The two are not set in stone

Give it a few years of throttling youtube to 480p if you don't have a premium plan and regular consumers will get used to more

California passed a net neutrality law.

At one of my previous places, AT&T offered FTTN, but only if you used their router. The router somehow managed to break next-level NAT, so there was no way to use FTTN without giving AT&T access to your LAN. That violates California's network neutrality laws that prohibit discriminating against certain devices (though so does every single cell carrier plan that prohibits tethering, or swapping a phone with a tablet or a 5G dongle).

The cell phone companies around here also all have some form of blurring video for some streaming providers, and bundling subscriptions to other video providers.

Comcast definitely weaponized data caps with absurd overage fees, and also didn't invest in backend network infrastructure until they were under 3MBps average video streaming speeds on their 100MBps plans.

> Comcast definitely weaponized data caps with absurd overage fees, and also didn't invest in backend network infrastructure until they were under 3MBps average video streaming speeds on their 100MBps plans.

This is almost certainly related to Comcast's handoffs to content providers, and not their backend which had plenty of capacity for commercial customers.

They instead hit consumers with data caps which you either pay overages against, or they had you sign up for additional add on which was, on average, $20-$30 more a month increase in your bill, for the same traffic, under net neutrality terms, that would not have cost more, because this would not be allowed.

I've seen the margins ISPs make on these connections, and they went from acceptable but good to absurd, its not like they were starved by net neutrality either.

The sky can’t fall, it’s not really physically possible. Also, maybe isps backed off for now, who’s to say this won’t change in the future? Shareholder value trumps all, you know

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