Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
LOL, I'm old too.
The interesting thing is when I talk to my friends who are my age, about 90% of them either haven't heard of net neutrality or they don't know what it is or care. Of those that have heard of it, most of them aren't sure why it is a big deal.
I typically ask people if they want their phone data or internet access to start being like cable. You pay one price for general stuff. If you want access to other sites, you have to pay an additional fee. Want to play games online, another fee and so on. Another issue is that at least 30% of the people in this country only have one ISP to choose from so if that ISP started charging more/throttling etc, they can't even switch.
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Yes, but the problem is, they are not going to throttle you any more/less than now. Consumers issues will be the site that has the content they want in the future, like 4KVR will play like a herky jerky dial up connection.
So webmasters here need to worry about being able to distribute the next gen of video content without having a surcharge to stream it glitch free to the user.
If you have a lot of streams, you would be a target.
It's about how much of your content (bandwidth somewhat) can be carried on a ISP as a sum total in a instance without a surcharge.
So a site with 1000 continuous streams of 1080p may be equal to 150 4KVR streams but that is your cap (whatever number that is) and if you exceed that, your users will suffer unless you pay more. So, you suffer.
Comcast and other ISP's devised this as a way to make money on their loosing share of the content market which they own a healthy percentage of.
Their current biz model will not support just being a pipe provider. And they knew this day was coming over 12 years ago.
In fact, the top 3 ISP's own 85% of the content market. Comcast wanted to be able to charge google and others they felt were getting a free ride on their network back in 2005.
That is where the push was in to the GW bush FCC relinquishing control of the internet came from.
But the internet is not their network. They either want to 'resell' it as is or they don't.
They want to be a middle man and more. Nobody/Co should have that much power of what connects us. They should be neutral.... just a pipe.
Notice very few places do Verizon and Comcast service areas overlap with broadband... not by chance. They only way to keep some sanity in what is transforming now is to force some competition. Comcast has purchased exclusive pole rights (right away line rights) from all the local municipalities over the last 8 years. To my knowledge, this has not been challenged in court yet as monopolistic activity. It would have to be challenged by a big ISP. It just stops some other provider start-up from giving them a run for their money.
Now finally, there is a new player on the block and that is 5G wireless. But the rules allow cellular more flexibility in charging/limiting for heavy users and even fully metered service if they choose.
But that is not really competition. But it will have some impact on a lot of services for those that can afford it. And it may take 7 more years for that to roll out to 50% of the population no matter how much hyped it is now.