The issue is that any service with a very limited demand elasticity simply functions poorly as a "free market" service. See also: current US healthcare issues. Internet service is extremely expensive to build out since it requires so much infrastructure, unlike the days where standard phone lines were providing the service. So a company like Google that wants to disrupt the market a little is all well and good, but in the end they're not solving the problem - even if they're successful in their endeavor, they either become the behemoth they're trying to disrupt, or they succeed in improving the quality of service a bit... but they do not create a competitive marketplace. Their entrance into the market does not cause the infrastructure to be any more affordable for upstart companies, and internet has become such a fundamental necessity to exist in a modern society that there's only so much that pricing affects demand. That's why city-built networks are probably a better answer.
QFT. Telecom companies pour money into these politicians' campaigns. Supreme Court is too damn old to understand how the Internet works. In 2014 if you really think the Internet isn't a public good, you don't understand it. Same as power, water, gas.
You're actually more right than you realize. It's not just about lobbying, but good ol' boy chronism. The chairman that wrote the bill was appointed by Obama and was the chief lobbyist for one of the big providers that benefits from it (I want to say Comcast). Which, (not so) coincidentally, gave some very generous contributions to his reelection campaign.These politicians are not that clueless, they know exactly what they're doing. And I guarantee you that once that dude is done with the FCC, he's going to get a fat salary from an IP. P.S. If you're interested in some productive from-your-house activism, I volunteer with a group that's trying to fix the issue of money in politics. PM me if you're interested.
And because I'm not bumping old threads, just because. Verizon actually used Title II to save a fuckton of money to build out new fiber networks. That ISPs (including Verizon) and Republicans claiming that reclassifying broadband under Title II would stifle growth and innovation is patently absurd. Source.
This is a great thing. For once, it seems the FCC did the right thing. Now I just can't wait until it gets struck down by some bullshit add-on clause to a motorcycle helmet law or something.
Well if Obama's fur it, I'm agin' it. Im as clueless on this as a Supreme Court Judge. When will they stop harassing torrent sites so I can download Better Call Saul?
Sensu stricto, they aren't public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous). They're natural monopolies, which are even worse in private hands. Not sure I trust the FCC, but I trust VZ, CMCSA, and T even less. Count me in as a friend of municipal broadband like they have in Chattanooga. I think that makes me, to use an old phrase, a "gas and water socialist" and I'm OK with that.
I am a free market advocate and strongly believe in Capitalism. I have mixed emotions about net equality - I believe in it in principle, but any time you get the government involved at some point its going to get ugly. We already have too many mandates in our lives. Why not let the markets prevail? If an internet provider gets too carried away with throttling content won't they lose market share?
The government already got involved when they forked over billions (with a "b") of dollars to pay for those companies to build out infrastructure for the public good. Which they didn't. Now they're trying to reap rewards on that infrastructure that they didn't pay for, at the expense of the public.
They can't lose market share... in many places there is no other ISP to choose from. Either you get you internet from the company throttling it or you don't get internet.
There is no free market for the last mile. The cost of negotiating the right of ways for the wire, and the cost of laying down the cable, prohibit any new entrants to that market, once the first one is established. See above. For a large portion of the country, there is one choice for broadband. Don't like it? You have the freedom to go without. We had the same problems with gas, water, and power in the early 1900's. There's only a need for one pipe, and whoever got there first could exploit it relentlessly. As a thought experiment: You're an exec at AT&T. The opposite of net neutrality (whatever that's called) passed. Do you do the hard work of actually expanding bandwidth capacity, or do you sit on your ass, shake down the content providers, and cash a large bonus for doing nothing? I know which I'd choose.
Excuse my ignorance - but where were these billions spent by the us government? Certainly not in my neck of East Coast woods. I'm not trying to be contrary - I truly want to understand.
Take a look at the current Google Fibre and Other ISP battles going on right now. In every market that Google Fibre is open and offering insane speeds/data at great prices, the "big" ISP's have created similar packages to try and retain their existing customers. They're not doing that in any of the other markets where Google Fibre doesn't exist. The only thing that motivates them is the potential loss of revenue. Which is their whole reason for fighting Net Neutrality in the first place... they saw a huge revenue stream they could exploit due to their relative monopoly and were looking forward to exploiting it. Fuck them.
If you're up for a long read, this is quite interesting. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadban ... s/61BF.pdf
The solution to the local and state monopoly problem is not the feds. (There are other FCC problems.) Congress and the federal government are not in the business of solving problems. 5 years from now when this non-problem hasn't improved at all, do not be surprised. To expand just a bit in an edit, the FCC has no interest in improving the internet situation, which is not as bad as some people think. It's not even in their interest to improve it. They want to control it, for political or nefarious reasons. So expect nothing good to come of this, and at least you won't be disappointed.
These comments actually support my free market view - the market will drive what is needed. If higher speed infrastructure is available the the other ISP's have to do things to continue to compete. Why do we need government intervention?
Free markets don't work where there is no competition and the service in question has very little elasticity of demand (which I said earlier in the thread - see also: medical care). It's extremely expensive to build out the infrastructure to carry the traffic, so it's not something that upstarts can feasibly replicate, meaning that competition is kept low (see also: the rest of the regulated industries like water, electricity, etc.). And since internet access has become a staple of modern society, it's hard to say "this heavy handed ISP sucks, I'd rather not get online." If the infrastructure was already sitting there and the choice of ISP was mostly around features and traffic delivery, it'd be easy. But it's not: choosing the ISP is also choosing the infrastructure, and the only people who can afford to build the infrastructure are the biggest companies that are very similar to each other.