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OT #26 : Trapped in a glass case of emotion
- Thread starter mk6medic
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mk6medic
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It is.
mk6medic
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Do share.....
mk6medic
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You are.
BobLobLaw
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This
SixSpeeder
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Hey der mamajama.
SixSpeeder
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Do Work Son
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Here's the super basic version of net neutrality:
Say you payed a flat rate for electricity ($100/month). The power provider doesn't give a shit what you do with your kilowatt hours, you can run a TV, light bulbs, dildos, doesn't matter. You pay your bill, you power whatever devices you want.
Say you also pay a flat rate for Internet access ($100/month). The ISP shouldn't give a shit what you do with your mbps, you can watch YouTube, Netflix, stream Internet radio, doesn't matter. You pay your bill, you DL whatever bits you want.
There's a difference between the two markets: Your electricity provider really only provides electricty, they don't provide "electric products." They don't also sell, for example, batteries. What if your electricity provider also sold rechargeable batteries for cell phones, flashlights, etc and wanted you to purchase their batteries. So if you try charging your Android or iPhone without using one of their batteries they either charge you more for the kilowatt hours or throttle back the power while that device is plugged in. This is using their market advantage to deliver other services while shutting out competitors.
Remember the old Microsoft Internet Explorer lawsuit? The Justice Department (and European courts) sued Microsoft for bundling IE with Windows because users then didn't realize they could also get Netscape or AOL to compete with Microsoft's product. They ruled this unfairly used their monopoly power in the operating system market to corner the web browser market.
Well guess what? Your ISP does provide other "Internet products" they want to sell you, namely things like OnDemand movies or maybe streaming music services. If you're getting those things from other sources on the Internet then you're not buying Verizon's, AT&T's, Comcast's or other ISPs competing products so they want to throttle your Internet or charge those services more for access to your Internet connection.
Verizon did this to Netflix, they started throttling traffic from Netflix so more people would buy their OnDemand movies. I cancelled my Netflix account at one point because it was such junk, eventually Netflix paid Verizon for more bandwidth and then raised prices for new consumers to like $9 or $10 to cover the costs.
The net neutrality rules would treat ISPs like utilities (power, gas, water) because those services are allowed to have monopolies in their markets so that we don't have to have 12 different competing gas or water lines in major cities (e.g. utter logisitical chaos). Because the ISPs enjoy almost monopolistic (and at other times collusive) pricing environments, treating them like utilities would prevent them from squeezing companies who offer competing products through your Internet connection.
But there's more.
This could have more interesting effects later. The ISPs would LOVE to get you off unlimited home Internet plans like they've done with smartphone dataplans. It used to be $30/month for unlimited data with AT&T and Verizon, they now moved all new customers into tiered data plans that encourage you to go over your data limits so they can charge you more.
We will eventually see this for home Internet connections in the US as the ISPs complain their bandwidth is being hogged by competing services. If the ruling stands this may speed the ISP industry towards going to tiered data plans that will cost you more money unless you plan to ration and monitor your Internet usage.
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