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Trump's Pick To Be the Next Attorney General Has Opposed Net Neutrality Rules For Years (fastcompany.com)
William P. Barr, President Trump's pick to become the nation's next Attorney General, is a former chief lawyer for Verizon who has opposed net neutrality rules for more than a decade. "Barr, who served as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush from 1991-93, warned in 2006 that 'network neutrality regulations would discourage construction of high-speed internet lines that telephone and cable giants are spending tens of billions of dollars to deploy,'" reports Fast Company. From the report: Barr's appointment would be welcome news for at least three major internet service providers and a trade organization -- including Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association -- that have spent more than $600 million lobbying on Capitol Hill since 2008, according to a MapLight analysis. Their lobbying on a key issue was rewarded last December, when the Federal Communications Commission, led by another former Verizon lawyer-turned-Trump appointee, overruled popular opinion by voting to scrap rules that banned internet companies from giving preferential treatment to particular websites or charging consumers more for different types of content.
Barr's previous employment with Verizon foreshadows credibility problems similar to those faced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, also a former Verizon lawyer. Barr, however, is likely to face even more scrutiny stemming from his role as a member of WarnerMedia's board of directors. The entertainment conglomerate, which includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Group, was created in the aftermath of AT&T's 2016 purchase of Time Warner Inc. [...] Barr has argued that net neutrality rules will discourage internet service providers from investing in high-end delivery systems, such as fiber-optic networks. "Companies are going to make these kinds of investments only if they see an opportunity to earn a return that is commensurate with the risk, and only if they have the freedom to innovate, differentiate, and make commercially sensible decisions that they need to compete and win in the market," he said at a 2006 Federalist Society convention. Barr also claimed that 81 percent of the nation's roughly 40,000 zip codes have three or more choices of broadband providers. A PC Magazine study last year found that to be untrue, with only 30 percent of 20,000 zip codes having three or more broadband options.
Barr's previous employment with Verizon foreshadows credibility problems similar to those faced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, also a former Verizon lawyer. Barr, however, is likely to face even more scrutiny stemming from his role as a member of WarnerMedia's board of directors. The entertainment conglomerate, which includes HBO, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Group, was created in the aftermath of AT&T's 2016 purchase of Time Warner Inc. [...] Barr has argued that net neutrality rules will discourage internet service providers from investing in high-end delivery systems, such as fiber-optic networks. "Companies are going to make these kinds of investments only if they see an opportunity to earn a return that is commensurate with the risk, and only if they have the freedom to innovate, differentiate, and make commercially sensible decisions that they need to compete and win in the market," he said at a 2006 Federalist Society convention. Barr also claimed that 81 percent of the nation's roughly 40,000 zip codes have three or more choices of broadband providers. A PC Magazine study last year found that to be untrue, with only 30 percent of 20,000 zip codes having three or more broadband options.
ISPs are able to throttle Netflix because they have a monopoly granted to them by the local government. So even though they degrade Netflix quality, their customers cannot flee to another ISP because the local government has banned competition.
This concept is factually wrong, that is, there is no monopoly granted to ISP's. Anyone can go buy a "resellable" INTERNET feed from a carrier like Zayo, Hurricane Electric or Cogent or similar and then build out a local network from that. The cost to do so is relatively low in the grand scheme of things, especially if technologies like unlicensed wireless are used to do so. But the repealed network neutrality rules makes it harder for these small, independent, providers to be able to do so.
All that the repealed Title II-style network neutrality did was increase the amount of paperwork required to be filed with the FCC, increasing the costs for Internet providers to comply with the regulation. This was a tolerable thing for the big providers, but a very bad thing for the smallest of the providers who are desperately trying to compete with the largest carriers (Comcast, etc). The reason is that a company the size of Comcast can afford to pay the couple of full time staff needed to keep up with the record keeping requirements, but a smaller ISP just trying to provide service in a reasonably small area or even a portion of a state generally does not have the resources necessary to keep up with all of the filing requirements - even though that small ISP is generally going to be far less likely to do the 'evil' things that people thing that we need network neutrality for.
Or stated differently: The companies which most needed the regulation were the ones least affected by it.
We need to quit thinking that Internet can only be provided by the Cable company and the Phone company. There are thousands of small providers out there who are proving that it's not only possible for other to provide internet service, but that actually these smaller companies are often able to provide better service at a similar cost.