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Roku Has Hired a Team of Lobbyists As it Gears Up For a Net Neutrality Fight (recode.net)
Roku appears to be arming itself for the coming net neutrality war. From a report on Recode: The web video streaming and hardware company has plenty at stake as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to pull back rules that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. For Roku and others in the business, an end to the Obama-era protections could make it harder -- or, in some cases, more expensive -- to offer content or services to customers at top download speeds. That's why Roku has hired a pair of Republican lobbyists through an outside government-affairs firm, according to a federal ethics reports filed this week, specifically to focus on net neutrality. It's the first time the company has ever retained lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Many in the tech industry support the Obama-era FCC's net neutrality rules, which currently subject telecom companies to utility-style regulation. To Democrats, it's the only way to stop the likes of AT&T, Comcast, Charter or Verizon from blocking competing services or charging media companies for faster delivery of their content.
"To Democrats, it's the only way to stop the likes of AT&T, Comcast, Charter or Verizon from blocking competing services or charging media companies for faster delivery of their content." Not just to Democrats - pretty much anyone who understands networks just how evil these non-competing, money-stealing, progress-inhibiting ISP's can be.
You mean Trump, right?
I heard for eight years you can't blame the previous administration for problems.
Far better would be for Twitter, Facebook, Apple, maybe even Microsoft, to invest in Google's fiber as well as SpaceX's Sat projects. In doing so, they can then expand the projects in HUGE ways and attack the companies that remove net neutrality.
It would be cheaper and more certain than having GOPs do the right things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In this day and age, internet access is a public necessity, not a luxury. Because of this, I strongly believe ISPs should be regulated like utilities, like water, gas, and electricity.
Many proponents of net neutrality are mainly concerned about the cost of their video streaming. This puts a big demand on infrastructure and not everybody watches streaming video. I may not want to subsidizes your Game of Thrones addiction.
That is much less a net-nutrality issue and much more a monopoly issue.
Until it becomes legal for any network provider or ISP to run their own wiring through a city, you get exactly the same choice as the rest of us do - none.
It's the fault of laws that enable a single ISP to be a monopoly that are why you have no choice but to subsidize our video streaming addiction.
Fix that and you'll find those of us that want to pay more for the bandwidth to stream video will flock to an ISP that allows it, and people such as yourself who don't care about streaming video can flock to an ISP that provides less bandwidth and charges you less for it.
I don't know why people think H.265 means 4K.
I care about H.265 because I could get the same quality from less bandwidth, or better quality from the same bandwidth.
#DeleteFacebook
Your quote has no bearing at all on my point, which was that credit card interest rates have skyrocketed in the same time frame that the prime rate has been at historic lows, after passing legislation that ostensibly was to benefit the little guy. Are you denying that, or are you just trying to distract?
The net non-neutrality problem is not technical, so the solution to isn't FCC rulemaking.
The problem stems from two aspects of monopoly/cartel control of the market, so the solution is FTC, DOJ, and antitrust.
The two aspects are:
- Vertical integration of ISPs into conglomerates that make most of their money from selling "content" that can be transported over the internet. This gives them massive financial incentives to have their ISP divisions penalize services competing either with their entertainment divisions' online services on the same ISP, or their offline / on other ISPs marketing. Services competing with their own products are penalized unless they pay enough extra to more than make up for their impact on the profit from the conglomerate's own product. "No-neutrality" is one of the manifestations of this anti-competitive tie-in.
- A limited number of competitors results in monopolistic / cartel levels of pricing and service. (The FCC historically considers two providers to be "competition" - though a minimum of three, and usually four or more, competitors are necessary before market forces have good effects on either prices or service levels.) On the service-level side, the incentive is to engage in "rent-seeking" by providing as little service as necessary and charge as much extra as possible, from whichever player can be soaked, for more than a token minimum. (If they don't like it, who will they go to?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way