Reminder: Net Neutrality Under Siege

zitothebrave

zitothebrave

Connoisseur of Minors
I'm ending my self imposed ban because this is a political topic that's too important to not discuss.

The FCC is going to vote Wednesday on repealing Obama era net neutrality protections. What do these protections grant you? Well quite simply they grant you the ability to access the internet as you choose.

Net Neutrality benefits no one but the ISPs of this country. ANd if you don't think they'll abuse it, you're in denial because they used to all the time. Netflix used to pay a ton of money to ISPs so their service wouldn't be throttled.

Before I get some moron who was lied to by cable lobbies that this helps them in some way realize even if the companies don't take money from someone what can happen.

Comcast owns NBC/Universal who're major stake owners in Hulu. They decide they want to throttle netflix and offer people a Hulu service without internet restrictions. It's criminal, it's legal extortion.

Verizon owns home internet and cellular. They own Yahoo. Imagine they throttle google because they want people to use Yahoo so they can make more money.

Imagine someone owns a web forum service and won't let you access this site as freely as possible.

Realize everyone that we pretty much live in the golden age of the internet. Let's not give the ****ers that run our ISPs the inch they need so they can **** us. Write your senator, write your congressperson, write Trump, write the FCC. Make it known that you want freedom and not corporatist control.

Self imposed ban back on
 
Agreed. I'm no fan of big federal government, but ISPs need to be regulated like other utility providers. The DoJ pushing back against the ATT Time Warner merger has given me hope that the administration realizes this as well.
 
Our family just signed up for Fiber gigabyte Internet for $45 per month.

Apple is rumored to be releasing a new 5g phone this Fall which all the major carriers will support. Apple has also been at the forefront of data privacy with the other major tech companies following suit.

I would say the Internet is in a pretty good place these days.
 
chop2chip said:
Our family just signed up for Fiber gigabyte Internet for $45 per month.

Apple is rumored to be releasing a new 5g phone this Fall which all the major carriers will support. Apple has also been at the forefront of data privacy with the other major tech companies following suit.

I would say the Internet is in a pretty good place these days.
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Why would you say that?

Have you seen Verizon's unlimited plans?

70 bucks get you "unlimited" 4G, with throttled internet during congestion times. Access to only 480p streaming

80 bucks gets you "unlimited" 4G plus 50GB of "premium" 4G, access to 720p streaming, various other perks between the 2 plans

90 bucks gets you all the things above, but also more 4G mobile hotspot.

This is just one example.

I don't know if you know this sturg, but average internet speeds every 3 years tends to double.

https://decisiondata.org/news/analysis-us-falls-out-of-top-10-average-internet-speeds/

"The United States has fallen back out of the top 10 to 11th on average internet speeds rankings after years of ranking between 8th-10th."

Again, we're not seeing improvement, we're seeing more corporate consolidation. And if you like that like sturg does, then I'm sure you're happy. If you don't then you'll be concerned.
 
There is a book titled The Great Reversal by an economist named Thomas Philippon that looks at things like how much Americans pay for cellphone service compared to other countries. I highly recommend it.

You can find a clip from an interview he did a while back here:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/american-competition-decline

The title of his book gives a hint as to what he's found with respect to many things.
 
Krgrecw said:
This was bound to happen. Companies will offset thier loses by people not paying for cable tv with increasing internet charges.
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Which wouldn't happen if internet was treated as a utility. Which they are because of anti-competitive behavior by the telecom industry. Wherever competition is introduced service is improved and rates go down.
 
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sturg33 said:
Arent we all supposed to be dead by now?
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I would think someone who's a fan of the free market would be totally for net neutrality, but then again, you've clearly proven that you don't support a free market, you support a corporatist market, aka the Stock Market.
 
zitothebrave said:
Which wouldn't happen if internet was treated as a utility. Which they are because of anti-competitive behavior by the telecom industry. Wherever competition is introduced service is improved and rates go down.
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Our gas service here is ran on communal lines with the different companies competing for the right to sell it. I have no idea if that's how it works everywhere, but I like it. Every customer has access to several sellers, every seller has access to a huge amount of customers. It's the free market at it's best.

For internet, my options are ATT at about 15 mbps or Comcast. Comcast knows that and takes advantage of it.
 
zitothebrave said:
I would think someone who's a fan of the free market would be totally for net neutrality, but then again, you've clearly proven that you don't support a free market, you support a corporatist market, aka the Stock Market.
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We've known for quite sometime that Sturg is a fake libertarian.
 
Jaw said:
You cut off home internet service?
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cable tv

use Roku to get my mlb games

i misunderstood your post a little...didn't realize you were talking about internet...even though it says that plainly!
 
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