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NYTimes Editorial Board: The FCC Wants To Let Telecoms Cash In on the Internet (nytimes.com)
The New York Times' Editorial Board writes: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to let Comcast, Verizon and other broadband companies turn the internet into a latter-day version of cable TV, in which they decide what customers can watch and how much they pay for that content. That's essentially what would happen under the proposal by the chairman, Ajit Pai, to abandon the commission's network neutrality rules, which prevent telecom companies from interfering with how their customers use the internet. Net neutrality prevents those companies from having companies like Amazon pay a fee to get their content delivered more quickly than their rivals', and from having the firms throttle other services and websites, even blocking customer access to, say, Netflix or an online newspaper. Under Mr. Pai's proposal, telecom companies would effectively be allowed to sell you a basic internet plan that might include only limited access to Google and email. For Facebook and Twitter you might need a slightly more expensive deluxe plan. The premium plan might include access to Netflix and Amazon. Oh, and by the way, media businesses eager to gain more users could pay broadband companies to be included in their enhanced basic or deluxe plans. Further reading: Associated Press fact check: Net-neutrality claims leave out key context; The death of the Internet.
It seems to me that the last-mile providers are trying to charge three time for their service:
First, when you buy internet access you're paying for access at 50/mbps (or whatever speed I want). It seems like this should give you access to the pipe at that speed.
Second, the content providers are paying thousands (millions?) of dollars for their "upload" access. They are contracting with Level 3, or buying their own fiber to provide their content.
And now thirdly, the ISPs want to charge the content providers additional fees to deliver their content (initially, it will be fees for "faster", next it will be fees for "not slowing it down" and finally, the fee will be for "delivery").
The water utility analogy (sorry, no cars), is that if you first bought water from a water supplier (not your local utility), then the local water company charged you for a pipe that could deliver 100 gallons per hour, then the utility charged you for delivering the water that you've bought from the supplier, and finally, the local utility charged the company that supplied the water a fee for delivering it.
Prior to the rules being adopted, some two years back, had ISP's actually done this thing you fear?
Yes they had and there is proof. They didn't charge their subscribers they extorted money from companies wanting to get to their subscribers. "It would be a shame if everyone of our internet subscribers constantly got **buffering** screens when trying to stream content from your site. If you pay us a % of your revenue we'll make sure that doesn't happen."
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
When Comcast started charging Netflix for content to be delivered to Netflix customers who already pay both Comcast and Netflix to wat cg Netflix content.
That's what changed. Sips want to charge content providers for delivering content. You want to use Facebook that's extra. You want to use AMAZON over Wal-Mart that's extra for this isp. Want to visit foxnew.com instead of msnbc.com. That's going to cost Comcast customers extra. Comcast owns manic so all of their content doesn't count againistt you. But fox is extra.
That is exactly what Obama prevented. But morons don't seem to realize the difference between content providers and distribution
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Unless you wanted to use facetime over your AT&T data plan.
As far as I can see AT&T did exactly what they say they won't do now, in 2012.
Hey, we've given capitalism a fair shake all over the world, and *every time* the same sorts of problems arise, the only variation is in how aggressively anti-capitalistic sentiment fights back.
Contrast with communism, which has never actually been tried at the national scale, and yet gets blackwashed with the abuses of the authoritarians that rose to power fraudulently claiming the banner.
Capitalism at least earned virtually every black mark against it on its own merits.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.