Net Neutrality (It's important folks)

Here’s the deal, we can’t fear the future for the sake of fear. Those who are against any sort of regulations or changes to Net Neutrality are going to paint a picture of doom and gloom, but the fact is, we don’t know what is going to happen.

Look folks, we already pay for services that offer premium content for those who pay the most. While not available for everybody, those living in big cities, you usually have access to several tiers of data speeds, and with the more money you spend the more value you are able to get out of your speeds. I know for Cox, because I’m on one of their highest plans, I get access one free high end router every two years.

Do you pay for Xbox Live and Playstation Plus? Guess what, again you get benefits for your subscriptions that others who don’t subscribe don’t.

Either way it isn’t the end of the world, nor should it be treated as such.

At the end of the day, it is the consumer ultimately decides what they will pay for. Anything that promotes competition can’t be a bad thing, especially when companies are competing for your wallet.

Just look at your cell phone bill. I talk to people all the time who have plans from 10 years ago. Guess what, they are paying sometimes double for less than what most people are paying for today! Why? The prices have dropped.

It’s not as black and white as some want to paint it.

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Last warning; stay on topic and off of politics.

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The cogs are turning again.

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Here is a quick meme that summarizes why it’s important:

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If what many fear comes to pass, and ISPs start selling internet packages where you can only see certain sites or they steer you to sites they own or have deals with by slowing down other sites, I wonder how Ajit Pai will be remembered. I wonder if he’ll have an actual legacy of being the affable tech nerd / corrupt scumbag that crawled out of the ISPs pockets to give them exactly what they wanted at the expense of hundreds of millions of people.

Or if this is just a sky is falling scenario and none of that bad stuff comes to pass and less regulations on ISPs winds up being a good thing. Or perhaps when the next administration comes in, they simply reinstate many of the prior Obama era regulations.

I’ll be curious how this all plays out.

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All I know is i dont like the sound of packages and certain websites or speeds. That sounds like a major hassle!

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free market is a wonderful thing

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I admit, my crystal ball has been broken for a while but I just don’t see what the fuss is about. We never had packages or throttling of certain providers or blocking of websites in all the years before the FCC decided the Internet was a telephone service. I can’t really see how existing anti trust protections aren’t adequate for this sort of thing. But I don’t know for sure.

I do know that it was the FCC and government regulators who created the cable monopoly, and almost prevented telephone companies from being able to provide tv service through fiber optic networks in order to protect those cable monopolies. I also know that without “net neutrality” regulation my internet speeds have gone up and up while my costs have not.

But frankly I don’t want to get dragged into another discussion on the topic.

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Well, here’s an example from how it is in New Zealand where they don’t have Net Neutrality:




This could be the reality in the US as well, should they take away the Net Neutrality.

These are mobile plans. We already have exactly this in the US and they are completely unaffected by the net neutrality discussion going in. Just to repeat - we have this already. Fascinatingly, while the mobile carriers are already clearly under the purview if the FCC they have allowed these sorts of plans!- mostly in the form of pay for data plans that don’t count streaming from preferred sites against your data total.

And, by the way, your view on this from denmark is so motivated because…?

EDIT: this is exactly why I’m so wary about this topic. People are forwarding stuff like this around which is patently untrue and not related to the current discussion (from foreign countries no less) telling everyone to write their congressman. I can’t figure out who would be so motivated to do this besides people with vested monetary interests.

You pay to go on facebook and youtube?

In Denmark, you pay for the provider. Streaming services like Netflix and such have their own subscriptions, but we don’t pay the provider to be able to use Netflix.

Youtube, facebook etc, is all free of charge. I don’t have to pay to go on certain sites, unless the very sites have a certain subscription to be able to use their service, such as Netflix.

…yeah that would be bad.

If we did this… foreign countries would be motivated to do the same basically.

Sorry for the double post, but this is worth talking about. ISPs may or may not start selling packages. But plenty of other companies already do this. CBS is charging people to stream Star Trek Discovery. An HBO subscription is required for streaming Game of Thrones. A Netflix subscription is required for Stranger Things and an Amazon Prime subscription is required for Man in the High Castle. Disney is pulling out of Netflix to set up their own streaming service. So we already live in this world. You are already seeing cable plus internet bundles that offer reduced subscriptions to some of these services etc.

The reality is if we aren’t willing to sit through commercials that pay for tv, 1980s style then alternative methods for making money will appear along the value chain.

Aijit Pai will not be remembered at all, one way or the other.

No, we use our data plan to do it. This New Zealand plan is to avoid using your mobile data while you access social media. If using your mobile data counts as “paying” to access Facebook then heck yes we pay.

I think what people fear is to have that on ALL internet access, and not just on mobile data. Like, also when using your computer, that you’d have to pay to go on certain sites. That’s a possible future without Net Neutrality.

Not actually true. The New Zealand option is completely different. You don’t have to pay for it. You can still use youtube and facebook without paying. It just uses data like normal. You can pay some money to use these sites without having to worry about data. If the US does this, I would use it.

Ah, fair enough.
My point above still stands though, about what people fear what could happen and what is a possible future should the Net Neutrality be taken away.

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The actual fight, as far a I understand it, was that ISPs were asking Netflix to pay to support infrastructure since Netflix is using huge percentages of the bandwidth in the US at certain hours of the day. Netflix doesn’t want to pay. Fair enough but this fight is none of my business. The bandwidth costs money to maintain. Whether I’m paying my ISP to maintain it or whether part of my Netflix subscription is going to maintain it really doesn’t matter to me. Woe to the service provider that blocks Netflix. I would drop them instantly and so would everyone else.

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I always hear the name “Comcast” when someone talks about these things and bad internet providers. Do you have some good options besides those, who would not start doing such scummy things?

Epb