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Net Neutrality Advocates Plan Protests For December 7 at Verizon Stores (techcrunch.com)
Jordan Crook, writing for TechCrunch: During yesterday's announcement of the upcoming vote, the FCC neglected to mention the historic 22 million comments on the issue, the majority of which were opposed to its rollback. In response, protests are being held on December 7 at Verizon retail stores across the country. The protests were organized by Demand Progress, Fight For The Future, and FreePress Action Fund. Here's what the protest organizers have to say on their event page: "Ajit Pai is clearly still working for Verizon, not the public. But he still has to answer to Congress. So we're calling on our lawmakers to do their job overseeing the FCC and speak out against Ajit Pai's plan to gut Title II net neutrality protections and give Verizon and other giant ISPs everything on their holiday wishlist.
A health care startup could pay to prioritize the traffic of its patients who are being monitored remotely: "That could be perk," he says.
"When IoT pacemakers are a thing I want mine in the fast lane and fuck you poor bitches", he says.
What do protests really accomplish?
Pai said from the get-go that public commentary would not impact his decision. He's making regulations that financially benefit him and his cronies, in direct opposition to both public welfare and public demand. It's clear that this is simply one more example of corporate hijacking of our political system -- they're just going through the motions to make it seem legitimate.
Protesting Comcast and Time Warner Customers will be rerouted through back alleys and abandoned lots until they reach Walmart, where they will be directed to the Straight Talk counter.
Check your premises.
why can't we have twitter move Donald Trumps Twitter account to a server running 56.6 Kbit connection to the internet? would that not be hard and or fitting?
If you'd actually bothered to google the issue, instead of exposing yourself to nothing but "bitching", you could answer the question for yourself.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Content will be censored and controlled at the website level (ie the Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc monopoly) rather than the ISP level.
If you'd actually bothered to google the issue/em>
I can read all sorts of works of fantasy. I want people who complain to put forth something they think is REAL amidst a storm of FUD, and then we'll see what actually plays out and see how valid your fears and concerns actually were.
I think it's pretty telling you are not willing to commit to single negative aspect of NN being repealed. Almost as if nothing bad were actually going to happen but you were unwilling to admit that.
Your actions speak louder than your (lack of) words...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is literally zero possibility that you've made it through the news cycle today without being exposed to the answer. Stop wasting bandwidth.
You paid for 100Mbps internet. But your ISP decides they don't like Hulu or Netflix. So they now charge you an extra $10 per month for both services. Want Spotify? That's another $5. Oh, people hate this? Ok. We won't charge you. We'll just limit your speeds to these services to 100kbps until each of them pay us for the privilege allow you access. Which will simply come back to you in increased subscription costs for each.
Never mind that you already paid for your 100Mb pipe. And all those services are paying for their fat pipes on to the Internet.
Most ISPs have already declared that is exactly what they want to do. And NN is the only thing stopping them.
I want people who complain to put forth something they think is REAL amidst a storm of FUD,
That's essentially trolling. If you really wanted information, you'd just go find it. What you want is to sneer at people. Good luck with that.
we'll see what actually plays out and see how valid your fears and concerns actually were.
That's already going to happen. We don't need your discount gauntlet test for that.
I think it's pretty telling you are not willing to commit to single negative aspect of NN being repealed.
I think it's pretty telling how laser focused you are at pissing on people you think are disagreeing with you. I haven't mentioned my feelings about NN in my reply to you because I don't care. The FCC will pass the measure, we'll have a couple years of ISPs trying to make as much hay out of it as possible, then a Dem admin will reverse it. It's all extremely yawnerrifc from my perspective.
Your actions speak louder than your (lack of) words...
Settle down, Beavis.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Hrmmm well lets see here for a short list of shenanigans from prior to 2015:
2005 - Madison River Communications was blocking VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.
2005 - Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
2007-2009 - AT&T was having Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.
2011 - MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except YouTube.
2011-2013, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their own wallet apps.
2012, Verizon was demanding Google block tethering apps on android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction.
2012, AT&T - tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid more money.
Oh and this:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=388863
Oh and multiple attempts to created various tierd network services.
If you can't see the very predictable trajectory that ISPs have plotted their path on, then you've been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid that's been dripping from the Republican party's nether regions.
I noticed how you dismiss all of his arguments though. Including the one about the FCC chairman, you know the one who's supposedly going to benefit from this? I also don't see how he benefits. I don't want net neutrality to go away, and it's very possible that corporate interests are taking precedence over public interests. But spouting nonsense doesn't fix that issue. Let's get to the bottom of who's really behind the push and why and talk about that. From what I can tell Verizon is the one pushing it. Protesting in their stores isn't very effective. However, a boycott would hurt them greatly if it were long term. Don't renew your contract and go with a different provider if you feel strongly about net neutrality. Hit em where it hurts.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
FTC already said when they take over regulation from the FCC, they will keep net neutrality.
The difference is the switch from title-2 to title-1 reclassification, and the Information providers control, which would also regulate Facebook/Google, etc.
Lots of fud going around has people worked up and worried, just read what FCC Chairman has been saying and google ftc net neutrality.
Way overreaction from media getting people upset.
Every time I hear people freaking out about this regulation, I want to slap them. They are worried about the wrong thing! Think of what T-Mobile and sprint do to the cell phone market. Two much smaller companies force Verizon and AT&T todo things they don't want to. This is capitalism. The problem with the ISP isn't net neutrality, but to much government iteration. The government is/has picked winners and losers. City's close out competition, Limit access to polls making cost to market very high/impossible. A truly competitive market will fix itself, but they need competition. Deregulate, make it easier for companies to reach the end user, incentives co-ops. Driving competition is the only way to ensure a stable market. Regulations just limit those who can enter the market and keep power consolidated.
Think about how fast pass works at all of the theme parks. You pay more to get to the front of the line. You can't possibly hit all the rides in one day if you don't purchase a fast pass so more and more people do it because to them it's the greatest value. But the grandmother who is poor and saves all year to take her grandkids can't afford a fast pass. So she and her kids spend most of the day standing in line watching the wealthy go to the front of the line. That is essentially what the result of net neutrality will be.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Its actually worse than that, it is the federal government telling private businesses how to build out their networks.
That means your VOIP based LTE phone calls are crappy, because someone is Netflixing Cartoons for their kids.
Look, I am all for the IDEA of NetNeutrality, but it was always fictional account of the Internet. There has always been, and always will be traffic shaping and prioritization. In fact, when there isn't, bad things happen to networks.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Without net neutrality rules, Comcast is allowed to slow down Netflix traffic to the point where it's unusable, just because they feel like it. They're allowed to tell you "use our Xfinity streaming service instead", and you're allowed to switch to their competitor (which doesn't exist in your area).
Without net neutrality rules, Comcast is allowed to charge you extra money for a not-slowed-down-Netflix, and they're allowed to charge Netflix for that same privilege.
Without net neutrality rules, Comcast can make more money by giving you shittier internet access without you being able to do anything about it.
And if you think Comcast won't pursue new ways of making more money, I applaud your optimism.
Sorry that should have been "That will essentially be the result of net neutrality going away."
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
If people want to actually get results start by:
1. Writing (hardcopy and sent by "snailmail") letters to public officials with formal-language grammar expressing displeasure and politely offering solution of law to override: district representatives for the House, state representatives for the Senate, and President
https://www.senate.gov/senator...
https://www.house.gov/represen...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/con...
2. It does not hurt to submit or virtually sign a petition here: https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
3. Make attempt to contact state level officials to make laws to override: States, under 10th Amendment are not without sovereignty in spite of Article I, Section 8. The FCC would need to take legal action against the state in order to invalidate such laws. It may be to note that Tom Wheeler lost a battle against Tennessee a few years back.
4. Where not restricted by legalized monopolies, either have local governments, or if not possible organized co-ops for internet access (a can of worms in and of itself, but then the customers and the owners will be the same).
5. If still wishing to do protests, make sure a reasonably large crowd also shows up at the the House of Representative local offices. Prominent is good, but keep everything peaceful and non-disruptive at whatever location and invite the local press.
6. If one suspects the FCC to be in the pockets of ISPs, simple discontinue all services of those providers
We don't doubt it. As a Trumpeter the list of things you are confused about is quite long to be sure.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
FTA: "Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers." https://fee.org/articles/goodb...
You're a bit confused on what net neutrality is about. It's about treating all data [b]of the same type[/b] the same. So that means treating youtube, dailymotion, netflix, and other video providers the same (including video services they themselves own). They are free to shape data of a given type if that type of data is causing trouble for their network.
So yes it theoretically prevents them from partnering with Netflix to not count their traffic against your cap while not offering the same to all other video providers but that's a good thing because it forces them to be a neutral service provider which is what they should be. They can't threaten Netflix with slowing their traffic unless they pay them money like certain ISPs have been trying. They can't sell customers faster access (or prevent access without extra payment) to Netflix but let you use their service without paying extra.
This is about making sure ISPs can't double-charge (both you and the content provider) to transmit data across their network. It's about making sure that the ISPs provide services without bias just like power, water, gas, and phone providers.
Whenever there is a massive political or PR campaign, it's not good. Yet for net neutrality it seems overwhelmingly good, yet it's still happening. You really have to stop and ask why.
Lets start with what everyone hates about the internet or is intimately connected to the internet:
Now the things we like about the internet:
Now what happens if net neutrality is removed:
So what happens next? Is that the end of the internet? Yes and no. Meshnet routers are already cheaper than cellphones. They are already being implemented in cities. There are rural networks not run by cable companies which will work with their local communities. The answer should be pretty obvious at this point: if people hate the internet enough but want the good it had back, they will build meshnets (Hell, you can already link your neighbors together for less than the cost of a monthly cable bill, on a faster connection, as a one-time hardware fee.) The only thing stopping this now is that there is no motive, people are complacent because the internet works and there's a critical mass aspect wherein not enough people are irritated with it yet.
So what happens when the removal of net neutrality inevitably makes people replace the internet with mesh networking:
But wait, because there's oh so much more:
No matter how you slice this, killing net neutrality is a good thing. It's going to be like ripping off a
Can you answer the question? (No, you can't.)
Right. It's like how laws against breaking and entering hurt us. With B&E laws people can't enter your home without your permission and slip $1000 under your pillow!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm more mad that the public's complaints were so blatantly ignored. I honestly think Vladimir Putin is listening to his public more then the FCC is listening to us.
If the IPS's take it too far I have faith in those of us in IT to be able to work around the problem. Imagine if Netflix changed their browser player to pull their data from other media players much like now bittorrents work?
They can pass any law they want, I can still setup a VPN network to somewhere that it's filtered/throttled. They can't throttle VPN's because there's too many people who use them for work. Will it hurt my ability to steam movies? Maybe. I don't bother to pirate music or movies but if they take things too far.... No government agency is as powerful as a bunch of motivated nerds.
Netflix offered free hardware in order to reduce bandwidth usage which was causing ISPs trouble because they couldn't handle the amount of traffic that users were taking up when using Netflix. Basically they offered a reasonable solution to prevent the ISP from having to expand their network (because ISPs don't want to do this apparently) which would have cost them significantly more.
Netflix had enough servers and provisioned network capacity to handle the load. The ISPs didn't have enough network capacity to handle their users usage.
He can't: Comcast cut him off of Google!
What really concerns me is how perverted the lack of NN rules can be twisted into.
I propose a simple scenario. I am a baker, and I don't want to bake a cake for your homosexual wedding, because I feel it infringes on my free speech. We've all heard about this story. Let's now twist it into what a lack of NN will do:
I'm an internet provider. My company's stance is abortion is evil. To protect my free speech, I will be blocking all sites relates to abortion, good and bad. Because that's my right. Also, because I'm a Christian company, I'm going to block all sites related to non-christian religions, because I don't want my customers subjected to that rubbish.
It's a can of worms I don't want to see opened. Protect NN. It is absolutely vital to a healthy and free internet.
This SuperKendall was posting a lot of Russian propaganda along with the 0101010101010000 guys whose 5 digit userids also got bought.
Interesting.
Admins, you might want to start paying more attention to your access logs. Get both passive VPN detection and GeoIP resolution going.
Can confirm: reading comprehension is still a difficult challenge for our 'cuck'-wielding brethren.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
How exactly does that work out? Netflic currently peers directly with Comcast and pays them some low price for transit. Before that they bought bandwidth directly from Level 3 and Cogent who tried to route that traffic onto peering connections against their agreements with ISP's
All of the issues you mentioned were resolved without NN rules in place, so obviously in the end they did not ed up being issues of any import, just stupid ideas. Even without NN rues in place all of the things you list would be stopped by today's FCC, so why does it matter NN rules were dropped?
I'm not saying ISP's will never do anything stupid, I am asking people to point out some stupid thing they will do that will actually harm people long term specific to NN rules being dropped.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
that article is a flaming ball of garbage.
"With market-based pricing finally permitted, we could see new entrants to the industry because it might make economic sense for the first time to innovate. The growing competition will lead, over the long run, to innovation and falling prices."
false. net neutrality was only passed recently, in 2015. the industry had plenty of time to 'innovate' before then.
"Net Neutrality... had the quiet support of the leading Internet service providers Comcast and Verizon."
false. Comcast and Verizon have been spending small fortunes to FIGHT net neutrality.
"Netflix, Amazon, and the rest don’t want ISPs to charge either them or their consumers for their high-bandwidth content. They would rather the ISPs themselves absorb the higher costs of such provision."
false. content providers and end users are ALREADY paying for the amount of bandwidth that they use. net neutrality is what prevents ISPs from charging ADDITIONAL fees based on the TYPE of content being supplied, or the company the content is coming from.
"Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers."
false. net neutrality ensures that upstart firms can pay the same rates for internet access and bandwidth as the big guys - all they need is standard internet connection, and they can push their content to anyone for no additional cost. in PREVENTS barriers from being erected. without net neutrality, if i wanted to start a new video streaming service. the ISPs could block or deprioritize my traffic unless i pay them additional licensing fees.
The internet will be dragged all the way back to the way ias back in 2015 - Horrors!
Ken
but smaller companies can't do this, which is what NN is all about. Netflix got special treatment
and it wasn't the ISP's as much as L3 and Cogent changing routing tables after taking on Netflix as a customer
But what about Netflix's competitors that can't afford to deploy portable data centers at ISP head-ends?
Ken
The ISPs own on demand servers were faster. Netflix said that was unfair and that they should get FREE hosting from the ISPs. The ISPs said: no you pay for rack space like everybody else.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think what you fail to understand with the OP's analogy is thinking that this will only impact the consumer, however, this will also have a huge impact on small business. Say a startup decides to competes with Netflix who has very deep pockets, all Netflix has to do is to pay the ISPs more so their service is delivered faster than the startup, effectively killing the competition. This essentially will stifle innovation and consolidate the web down to a few big players (even more than today). Either way, killing NN laws benefits no one, but the few rich corporations.
My prediction: 1) ISPs will artificially slow down all traffic, using current era technology for "fast lanes" that are actually just normal-speed lanes. 2) ISPs will then offer "fast lanes", which are really just normal-speed lanes where the artificial throttle has been lifted. Only companies with HUGE amounts of money to spend will get to use them, while all other traffic is throttled. Note that these fast lanes will not be made by buying cutting-edge hardware, just by lifting artificial limitations on existing hardware. 3) When a new streaming startup tries to deliver content to you, it goes through the legacy hardware. 4) Netflix and Hulu say "LOL! Look how slow they are! You need to stick with us!" 5) The new streaming startup goes out of business. 6) Netflix and Hulu raise their rates, because the ISPs are helping them keep their monopoly and they don't have to worry about competition. 7) Cable executives who are still butt-hurt that Hulu is leading to the demise of Cable TV force their ISP branch to charge more for the "fast lanes". Hulu and Netflix will comply and simply raise their rates again. 8) The ISP will continue to charge customers more for the limited services they offer, in the name of "investing in infrastructure", while everyone knows they do no such thing (to be fair, they are going to do this one with or without NN rules. This is just standard business procedure for ISPs.) 9) Repeat 1-8 until all independent content providers are crushed or acquired and only Amazon and Google remain, with a few outliers like /. served up a 128 kbps.
Didn't like the formatting of the first post. Sorry for the repeat, but wanted a little more readability.
/. served up a 128 kbps.
My prediction:
1) ISPs will artificially slow down all traffic, using current era technology for "fast lanes" that are actually just normal-speed lanes.
2) ISPs will then offer "fast lanes", which are really just normal-speed lanes where the artificial throttle has been lifted. Only companies with HUGE amounts of money to spend will get to use them, while all other traffic is throttled. Note that these fast lanes will not be made by buying cutting-edge hardware, just by lifting artificial limitations on existing hardware.
3) When a new streaming startup tries to deliver content to you, it goes through the legacy hardware.
4) Netflix and Hulu say "LOL! Look how slow they are! You need to stick with us!"
5) The new streaming startup goes out of business.
6) Netflix and Hulu raise their rates, because the ISPs are helping them keep their monopoly and they don't have to worry about competition.
7) Cable executives who are still butt-hurt that Hulu is leading to the demise of Cable TV force their ISP branch to charge more for the "fast lanes". Hulu and Netflix will comply and simply raise their rates again.
8) The ISP will continue to charge customers more for the limited services they offer, in the name of "investing in infrastructure", while everyone knows they do no such thing (to be fair, they are going to do this one with or without NN rules. This is just standard business procedure for ISPs.)
9) Repeat 1-8 until all independent content providers are crushed or acquired and only Amazon and Google remain, with a few outliers like
#3 should have read "When a new streaming startup tries to deliver content to you, it is throttled because they don't have the capital for a 'fast lane'. "
Even if they were 22 real million comments posted by 22 million different persons, not everyone lives close to a Verizon store and not everyone has the time to go to the protest.
I know I signed a petition to that effect through openmedia, I think, even though I'm in Canada. The reason being that if something moronic like that passes in the USA, it could spell trouble if Canada follows this insanity.
#DeleteFacebook
All you have to do is imagine what is POSSIBLE without NN to realize its a bad idea.
This idea is popular, if not a bit dramatic... https://www.intelligenteconomi...
But one big problem that sticks out in my mind is that ISPs want to enjoy the protections of Title II (the main one being no liability for information transmitted over its facilities) without having the responsibility and accountability of a Title II (common carrier) service. It's a classic case of "have your cake and eat it too" and this alone should be enough to inform even the most dimwitted fool that NN and everything that comes along with it is a good idea.
Beware of the Leopard.
There has always been, and always will be traffic shaping and prioritization. In fact, when there isn't, bad things happen to networks.
I don't really think people who advocate for NN also advocate for no traffic management on networks. Pretty much a duh comment, of course networks have to have traffic management. Comparing Apples to Oranges here bro.
NN is not about network traffic management, or shaping. It's about treating every bit without bias. Where it came from and where it's going isn't an ISP's business. They simply need to move the bits in the most efficient manner possible to their destination (ie traffic management.) Where NN comes in, is when an ISP decides to not treat your bits as equal, and give different priorities to traffic depending on source and destination, and biasing the traffic management in a way that benefits your company or your affiliates. And probably also is detrimental to your company's competitors.
Also, add on top of that, lack of NN will permit companies to sell faster speeds. And those faster speeds will be coming out of the bandwidth available to the non-special customers. Taking it to the extreme (Portugal anyone?), lack of NN can lead to slicing the internet into 'packages' you have to pay for. Want Facebook? $5/mo. Youtube? $5/mo extra. HBO? Another $5/mo please. That is lack of NN bro.
I think trying to lump proper network traffic management into the NN discussion is pretty empty and stupid. That's not even the issue here, bro.
Ok so I didn't do any research, I'm just going to ask. How is removing Title II from ISPs going to affect safe harbor and copyright infringement issues? Title II protects ISP from litigation when illegal activity is facilitated by their networks. If NN goes poof, and ISP's are no longer Title II, do they lose their protections against litigation, regarding facilitating criminal behavior?
They'll start doing what they were doing before 2015, like they did to Netflix. A major ISP (Comcast, IIRC) throttled Netflix's throughput for a few months. The issue with Netflix content appeared rather abruptly, and then after Netflix agreed to pay an undisclosed amount it magically went away - as if their pipes could suddenly, almost magically, could handle the traffic again.
There were no longer allowed to do that under the Net Neutrality rules, and with Ajit Pai saying F U to everyone not from an ISP that kind of abuse will happen again.
See, Internet packages are setup as a certain speed for a certain price. If they don't provide that speed to you, then they are not providing the service that they signed a contract for. Then it becomes a FTC issue. FCC should have nothing to do with this. How do you not see this? Are you saying that you pay for say 100mbit package, and only get 20mbit service and nobody is going to do anything about that? Think about that for a bit.
-Highdude702
Thanks for the detailed response. It will be interesting to see if that comes to pass.
However kind of the opposite thing has happened so far related to item 1 - things like T-Mobile's "Binge On" work not by getting you faster speeds for some content, but instead by lowering quality of content for any provider that supports the T-Mobile content, in return for choosing lower quality content it does not impact your data allowance.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/...
If the Republicans believe in the free market, tearing down Net Neutrality is a failure to practice what they preach. Part of a free market is ensuring competition is encouraged for the benefit of the consumer. When protecting freedoms they seem to favor corporate freedom over individual freedom about 100 to 1. That fucktard has no business making FCC policy. Hooray for regulatory capture!
I have no idea if the petition I signed was going to be delivered to the FCC or not, but I do know I signed something related to net neutrality.
#DeleteFacebook
but smaller companies can't do this, which is what NN is all about. Netflix got special treatment
and it wasn't the ISP's as much as L3 and Cogent changing routing tables after taking on Netflix as a customer
Which side are you arguing for? Why is it Netflix's problem that smaller outfits cannot afford to do the same thing? You are also going under the false assumption that all video uses the same codec with the same settings and that all streams have the same tolerances for latency.
You basically want to destroy the ability to provide streamed content in a consistent way. This is really no different than some sites using caching services like Akamai whereas others do not to service certain regions better.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Also, as others have suggested, some companies like Netflix can offer appliances that host content on the ISP side to reduce traffic outside of their network making it possible for you to get a decent stream in the first place.
Net Neutrality would destroy that. Should regional caching services like Akamai also be illegal?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Even without the NN rules in place, those things we're stopped by yesterday's FCC. The same FCC that passed the NN rules that today's FCC is trying to dismantle.
There isn't a terribly long track history to really tell us how today's FCC would have those same situations, but what they've shown so far doesn't look too promising.
Log in or piss off.
Yep, your complete moron status is confirmed.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I guess zero rating content will become illegal again, no more âoefree Netflixâ and âoeunlimited only on our music serviceâ.
Thatâ(TM)s what Obamaâ(TM)s NN actually accomplished. True technical Net Neutrality wasnâ(TM)t accomplished as you can see with the number of data caps still in place.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There was no "before net neutrality". Originally net neutrality existed as a gentlemen's agreement. Techies still had a lot of influence and everyone understood the greater good that net neutrality created and was afraid of the backlash that might happen if their company tried to break it.
As the MBAs gained more influence, they started talking about breaking net neutrality, and that's when it started to become a political issue. During this phase, net neutrality existed because companies were afraid that the government would soon regulate them (especially if they started doing un-neutral things) and they didn't want to go to the trouble of changing business plans only to be forced to change back. They at least wanted to know what the regulations would be first, and of course they lobbied heavily to try to get little or no net neutrality.
Eventually, the government did make regulations codifying net neutrality, which we are about to lose. And the companies are all ready to go with their plans to squeeze as much money as possible from all of us.
Then we're living in dictatorships, not free countries.
#DeleteFacebook
Actually that's quite common in my area. No competition. If you complain about speed, they respond it's "up to" 100mb, and 5mb is indeed a part of "up to 100mb". My choices are to continue giving them money, or live without internet, as they are the only broadband provider
try getting in contact with your local news company, and maybe some of your local government officials. if you pay for 20mbit service and you don't get 20mbit service its highly illegal, I had that issue with cox here in Las Vegas, and after a few phone calls my 150/50mbit service was actually 200/80 so they could guarantee the speed I was paying for. That's what a lot of people don't understand apparently, there are already laws in place to prevent them from doing "boogeyman scenario" everybody complains about. do some research. Learn your legal options. Don't just cry for more legislation, its rarely ever good for anybody, mainly the public.
I might have to do just that. Since they only advertise a maximum speed and not a minimum, I'm not sure how far I'll get, but it might be worth investing some time doing some research. Still, it doesn't change the scenario I suggested. Let's say your ISP offered a new service, which was only 5 Mbps. However, they promised 200 down/ 200 up from certain sites like Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, etc. And let's say it was half as expensive as your current 150 down/50 up service (which they would be able to do because it's subsidized by the companies paying for access to those fast lanes). Would you buy it? Probably depends on whether or not the sites you frequent are in the list of blessed services. I'm thinking many people would. It makes sense for them. But it still leads to the same result: all customers are pushed to those providers who had enough capital to buy the fast-lane, or who are getting it free because they are owned by the ISP's parent company. It puts a huge barrier to entry on a new startup. Small businesses cannot compete because people navigate elsewhere after a couple of seconds of waiting for loading time. Same end result: the Internet is owned by Amazon and Google. Your ISP hasn't violated their contract to you. They may even have been completely transparent about it. You welcomed the lower monthly bill, but failed to think about the long-term consequences of destroying the Internet.