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I wouldn't say the competition is very tough in the Netherlands, as there are also only a few large players (each with multiple brands/subsidiaries under them). Furthermore, a couple months ago, the dutch FTC put major telecom providers under review for making alleged cartel price agreements.

On a higher level, I am certainly for a free market, but don't dismiss government regulations purely because they can 'only hinder competition'. That is a very dogmatic statement as regulations aren't always 'bad'/hindering competition. No personal offense intended, but I always find the strength of belief in a purely free market for some people to be almost the same as how other people believe in religion, very idealistic and extreme. There are a lot of subtleties and nuances to free markets. Also, is pursuing a free market a goal in itself, or a means to an end in creating a 'good society'. In the latter case, other advantages of certain regulations should be considered as well.

Lastly, regarding the issue at hand, next to economical arguments, I think a large part of getting this regulation has comes from other motivations such as valuing equality and accessibility for all etc.

I do agree with what you say and I'm sure that our current economic models are far from perfect and in fact there is no such thing as a truly free market, being more of an ideal that's as hard to pursue as true communism (probably because reality is too complex for such models).

I'm not being religions here. However, I do think that capitalism does work because of competition and in the context of capitalism, the worst that could happen in a market is the creation of a monopoly / oligopoly.

The context is important here. I'm against government regulations, because such legislation increases the chances of such monopolies and despite what many people think, few monopolies are "natural", with most of them being driven by legislation.

     > valuing equality and accessibility for all

Since you brought religion into discussion, you know how they say: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". This is another way of saying that decisions based on good intentions often have unexpected and far-reaching consequences, that may actually have the opposite effect of what you're trying to do.

My problem with "net neutrality" proposals is that I haven't seen any unbiased and throughout analysis of its pitfalls from its proponents. Another problem I have is that the Net was never "neutral", so why is that an issue right now? And sure there are problems, but aren't we fixing the symptoms here rather than the cause?

I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. [...] Also under our law, you can always interrupt a contract, the only penalty being that you have to give back the subsidized amount for the remaining period

So much for believing in a free market...

Also you can not really expect ordinary people to care about stuff like this. They will gladly pay more for getting rid of net neutrality only realizing their mistake when it is too late.

Telecoms are such a highly regulated market already (just to start with, you have to have paid a few hundred million for a bit of spectrum, if there's some available at all), that I don't see this extra regulation breaking it even more.

On the other hand, it's an essential bit of regulation to ensure that the market for services running over those networks works more like a free market. That is, I think you should favour this one ;)

This is getting off-topic for Hacker News, but you need some legislation to maintain the parameters of a free market. Net neutrality is the fair basis of an online market.

Legislation is useful as long as it promotes consumer choice.

But if you pay close attention, legislation in the U.S. is also the reason for why there is a lack of choice for consumers in regards to Internet providers. I invite you to read this article:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-6.html

It's also why the phone system works at all, not to mention the Internet itself. But I agree that the extent of the Bell model was too far.

Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in regards to your net provider depending on location.

Actually, 98% of US zipcodes have 2+ broadband providers, and 88% of US zipcodes have 4+ broadband providers. This is from the FCC's own data and excludes 4G providers, which are popping up like crazy (I'm posting this via a Clear mifi device for example).

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-292191...

That includes things that are clearly not broadband, like satellite and "3G" that has a 2GB cap. Very few homes have access to more than 2 "real" broadband providers (your choices are the cable company or the telephone company, period.)

From the report: "The terms “high-speed connections” and “broadband connections” are synonyms in this report" and defines them as 200kbps+.

We could let this devolve into a semantic argument about "broadband," "real broadband," etc. but what would be the point?

My point is that according to that 2008 FCC report, 99.7% of US zipcodes have a choice of 200kbps+ internet provider, and most have even better. This doesn't include any of the networks that have been built out since 2008, like the 4G 6Mbps network I'm using right now.

It's simply not true that "very few homes" only have high-speed internet through a cable or telephone company.

The FCC's idea that 200kbps is "broadband" is bullshit. A hard drive fedexed across-country overnight is "broadband" by that definition, but the latency makes it pretty unpalatable, don't you think?

No idea what you're getting at. Are monopolistic internet providers about to slam us all with 48 hour round trip times? Unless we let the FCC (which doesn't have a clue about what it's regulating, according to you) enforce net neutrality?

It's easy to claim 99% of the country has multiple broadband options if you count satellite as a broadband option, since theoretically everyone CONUS can get it. I don't, because of the 2 second latency.

So satellite is responsible for these coverage numbers? I don't buy it. In the report, satellite connections account for a mere 0.65% of all high-speed lines.

I realize that's not the same thing as coverage of zip codes. Unfortunately the report doesn't break out the number of non-satellite providers per zip code. But, it does break out the number of providers of different types reporting per state, and satellite provider numbers are either 0 or redacted across the board (because they're deanonymizingly low).

If you run numbers on the zipcode data for 2008 [1], 88% of US census tracts had 4+ providers, 75% had 5+ providers, and 60% had 6+ providers. It's just not plausible that satellite providers account for this.

[1] http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_...

Penetration of 200kbps connections is meaningless in a post-1998 world. That's not even enough to watch YouTube. Also, coverage by zip code or census tract is misleading, as large zipcodes in rural areas may count as having multiple providers, but only a small portion of the zip code actually has coverage.

In order for coverage and competition statistics to be useful, they need to keep up with modern bandwidth and latency requirements. IMO the absolute bare minimum that should be acceptable is 2mbit/s (for sub-SDTV video quality), with ping times less than 80ms. Meaningful participation in the modern digital world requires 15mbit/s or better, especially for households with more than one person.