Net neutrality

**HKGuns** · 12-15-17, 09:17

Originally Posted by Renegade

Not gonna touch outside the US, but most of the US companies own or have interest in cable TV players. ATT, comcast, Time Warner, etc.

The entire industry is merging and the lines between carrier and provider are disappearing.

The old days when MCI or ATT ran the backbone and Prodigy Compuserve, etc connected you to the internet are gone.

My Several hundred Million $$ budget says otherwise, those companies are getting a lot of that money. The big players provide peering and International connectivity and that is where their money is made.

Your home ISP connection is small potatoes and small bandwidth.

"The Geeks" didn't decide all packets are created equal. "The Geeks" didn't know better at the time of creation and the technology wasn't there to do anything different. When "the geeks" discovered things worked better by differentiation of packets, they developed a new technology to improve things.

You won't win this argument with me, so please, just let it be........

ETA: I was one of the "geeks" involved with the development of Quality Of Service and Traffic shaping for the internet among other things.

**Doc Safari** · 12-15-17, 09:19

So, if I'm putting two and two together properly, the end of net neutrality could stifle the trend toward "cutting the cable" because how the providers can charge extra for popular content?

**Renegade** · 12-15-17, 09:24

Originally Posted by HKGuns

My Several hundred Million $$ budget says otherwise, those companies are getting a lot of that money. The big players provide peering and International connectivity and that is where their money is made.

Your home ISP connection is small potatoes and small bandwidth.

Not talking about mom & pop ISP.

ATT is $163B company
Verizon is $126B company
Comcast is a $50B company
TimeWarner is $28B company
etc

There is no money in backbone services, is is all in owning content. This why the carriers have all been moving to buy content providers. And google, Facebook, netflix, Twitter, are still on the table to be bought.

**Firefly** · 12-15-17, 09:30

If shit gets expensive, drop it.

When I had cable and they jacked up the price, I'd threaten to drop it. They'd lower the price to keep me in "the family"

They practically begged me for real when I was totally done.

I have a healthy dvd collection of films I like and now just stream films for like 2 dollars at my own damn house away from sorry ass people.

They have retro channels I can get on antennae.

If people try to throttle me or jack a price then I will drop it. Enough people drop they will want their business.

Like I already dropped Netflix anyways because all the movies were lame or things I have seen. Their originals are sad (except for Siege at Jadotville, that was badass).

And when they dumped X Files then I was done. I saw em all first run and the show still comes on midnights some weekends on normal TV but dumpimg them was it for me.

Can track down complete collection on blu ray. Its gotten cheaper.

Naw.....aint skeered

**tb-av** · 12-15-17, 09:39

Originally Posted by Renegade

1) Because they have not been allowed to till yesterday.

2) Well with no nNN, you just put a whole lot of trust in them.

3) There was nothing to trust with the govt, they just said "treat all packets equal" and do what you want.

1) But there is no incentive for them to block my content. That's like saying the power company would want to turn my power on an off. Ideally they want everyone's power on and they want me to fire up every device I own.

2) No, there is no additional trust. If I am standing in a room alone and am told, in a few minutes at least one murderer will enter the room with me. I don't shift trust around the room. Person A enters. Person B enters, Person C enters. Person B says Person A is a murderer. Well that's nice but I still don't trust any of you.

3) They can't likely say, we would eventually like to have full control over the Internet with politically like minded people in charge. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc.
Have you got a HAM license? Is it Tech, Gen or Extra? The tiered system the .gov imposes. What if I'm not smart enough to pass the Extra exam? You are now more equal than me with your Extra license. Let's all get together and buy an M4C Broadcast TV Network, how much will that cost? I guess not much since .gov controls the spectrum and they are all about equality?

I totally get what you and kwelz are saying I just don't think it's all going to be wine and roses. If NN is equality could someone really compete with say Google at this point? I don't see how. However, if it's deregulated, isn't the door more open than closed? How will things change with quantum computing? Will Fiber go the way of Copper? Aren't we going wireless?

As to a monopoly. Have you ever noticed that the price of "X" is the same from Verizon or Comcast? The price of "Y" is the same from BestBuy or Walmart.

If Comcast is told through NN that their profits will be going down. What will they do. Well they will do what every business does. Scale back. But you say it's too expensive for anyone else to enter the game. Ok, but that opens the door to lease bandwidth unencumbered. Ok now it's Me--miniISP--Comcast. Somebody has to get paid. I still pay $1 but miniISP now gets .75 and Comcast gets .25 whereas before Comcast got $1.

To me it all just seems like a political shell game. Google has been shown to have search results that were tailored to their desired results. All these people are in it for themselves and their ideals and every day to someone, "X" corporation is the evil one.

So with all that don't you at least think that through Congress, We The People, should vote on it. Not allow it to be an FCC decision? Would you feel the same about say a BATF ruling? Practically everyone here will say get rid of BATF, but the FCC is good to go even though they have facilitated for us the Broadcast environment we live in.

I'm open to being educated and re-educated on the matter, but when the .gov/FCC says 'hey we got this', I tend to think... here we go again. I honestly wish there was unlimited Internet access everywhere in the USA. Not that I need it but becasue there would be more people out there with new ideas and such. I can pick up a phone and call a friend who remembers when there was no TV.... I -almost- remember that. Microsoft ( the same people that want NN call it MicroShaft, M$, the devil, etc. ) just introduced their quantum computing developer kit. To say we can't have more and that things will get worse, just seems counter intuitive to me. I just see this as natural emerging rumblings and in no way OMG they are going to block M4C.

**skywalkrNCSU** · 12-15-17, 09:47

You don’t see how they would have incentive to throttle content? Netflix is eating into their profits at a rapid pace and now they can make Netflix less appealing or make you pay more to have it the same as you did before. That’s just one example but to pretend like they have no incentive to change things now that they have the ability is crazy. A companies motive is to grow and increase profits, the FCC just gift wrapped them a way to do just that purely at the expense of the consumer.

**Whiskey_Bravo** · 12-15-17, 09:55

Was Netflix around in 2015? Were they throttling and charging more for Netflix bandwidth usage then? I watched a lot more Netflix streaming then than I do now so just wondering. 2015 wasn't the 90s when the internet was new.

**Renegade** · 12-15-17, 10:06

Originally Posted by tb-av

1) But there is no incentive for them to block my content. That's like saying the power company would want to turn my power on an off. Ideally they want everyone's power on and they want me to fire up every device I own.

Of course there is. If Time Warner is your provider and since they own CNN, they have an incentive to get you to watch CNN and not Fox or someone else.

These relationships exist all over business. Try ordering Pepsi in a McDonald’s for example.