They can up to a point, but when prices get too high, then it becomes attractive for other last-mile carriers to come in (like fixed wireless). So even an entrenched monopoly can't abuse its power too far.
It's very burdensome when the alternative is accepting a pile of money in kickbacks and post-public-service stock options and employment in exchange for ignoring public demand.
I'm not an expert by any means but I imagine that, if anything, there would be increased technical difficulty in the throttling/blocking solutions that they want to introduce since that requires more logic than just giving people access to the Internet. That being said, they more than likely have all the infrastructure for monitoring/blocking/throttling/etc in place already and are just waiting for a green light to turn things on.
There is a burden, yes, because you've got to ensure that traffic to external networks is not unduly impeded. That means that as you expand your infrastructure, you've got to expand your interconnections to other ISPs. Additionally, if your competition expands, you may need to expand just to keep up. It's could make investment in infrastructure more expensive since you can't just grow; you've also got to upgrade. It the big players will feel like they need to create infrastructure that will be used by the little players, and the little players may feel like .
Of course, the above has to happen anyways because faster networks is one of the best ways to reduce costs and attract more customers. So the real issue is that if you don't do it, you'll get FCC regulators knocking on your door.
Here's what the FCC said Net Neutrality is in the FCC Open Internet Order (2010):
1. Transparency: Consumers and innovators have a right to know the basic performance characteristics of their Internet access and how their network is being managed;
2. No Blocking: This includes a right to send and receive lawful traffic, prohibits the blocking of lawful content, apps, services and the connection of non-harmful devices to the network;
3. Level Playing Field: Consumers and innovators have a right to a level playing field. This means a ban on unreasonable content discrimination. There is no approval for so-called "pay for priority" arrangements involving fast lanes for some companies but not others;
4. Network Management: This is an allowance for broadband providers to engage in reasonable network management. These rules don't forbid providers from offering subscribers tiers of services or charging based on bandwidth consumed;
5. Mobile: The provisions adopted today do not apply as strongly to mobile devices, though some provisions do apply. Of those that do are the broadly applicable rules requiring transparency for mobile broadband providers and prohibiting them from blocking websites and certain competitive applications;
6. Vigilance: The order creates an Open Internet Advisory Committee to assist the Commission in monitoring the state of Internet openness and the effects of the rules.
Interestingly, one of the chief arguments against Net Neutrality has been that it could allow regulatory capture. That's rather hilarious, given what's happened with this FCC chairman.
From a technical standpoint it’s far easier to be net neutral than throttle traffic which takes processing power, energy, and programmer time to do so. This is entirely about the ISPs making yet more money.
Just imagining life as an ISP in a network neutral world…
What do you need to have in place if someone alleges you are not neutral? Your accuser might present well collected evidence that Hulu performance to your customers is worse than Netflix's performance. You will then claim "but we didn't do it, it is just the luck of the draw on how we choose to buy interconnect bandwidth". Is that good enough to protect you? How can you prove you didn't choose the interconnects to screw Hulu?
So there is a burden. If there is no requirement, even if you never take money to slow down someone's competitor, you are relieved of this burden.
It's generally hard to prove a negative, but for this topic simply not having a DPI machine on your network resolves most of the question - route the packet and be done. The remaining constructive hazard is easily analyzed by whether specific links are habitually overwhelmed or not - private peering and edge cache boxen are optimizations, with the service yardstick still being the generic full Internet routes.
I think the problem stems from ISPs also in large part being the telecommunications platforms. The internet is impeding their ability to sell TV channels and telephone subscriptions, so they are trying to wring that money from their internet businesses.
BGP peering is expensive. It's especially expensive when you have $encrypted_internet_video_provider which is almost entirely unidirectional data flow with zero caching possible. $encrypted_internet_video_provider wants the FCC, which has debatable authority on the matter, to instruct ISPs to pay for the bill of accepting that bandwidth on the networks ISPs own. In the case of cable company ISPs, bearing that cost to the benefit of a direct competitor.
If $encrypted_internet_video_provider wants to dictate how traffic is routed on a network, perhaps they should buy their own network.
As an example, Apple has over $200Billion stashed away in overseas accounts avoiding taxes. They could just buy Comcast, which has a market cap of $181Billion. Then it's their network, and they can run it however they see fit.
I bet Apple would rather have Comcast deal with the messy business of handling customer support for millions of boomers who can't "program" their VCR, while Apple siphons all the profits from online video streaming. That sounds a lot cheaper to owning and operating the networks themselves.
You've left out that the ISPs are being paid by their customers, for receiving the data from $encrypted_internet_video_provider on the customer's behalf!
If the ISPs don't want to be in the business of carrying data, then the answer is very simple - get out of the business and give back all that infrastructure that was built out with public resources!
You get that now. What $encrypted_internet_video_provider wants is a special fast lane directly into the ISPs' networks... at the ISPs expense, of course. Small time video hosting service will enter through the regular lanes. The fast lane will belong to the big boys. It's the opposite of the 'level playing field' argument that $encrypted_internet_video_provider is making. NN all basically comes down to who pays for the fast lane. $encrypted_internet_video_provider says, "Net neutrality! You pay half." ISP says, "It's a fast lane that only you use, and all the traffic is in one direction. You want it, you pay for it."
> Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge said that the FCC/FTC plan will not protect consumers from ISPs.
> “Not only is the FCC eliminating basic net neutrality rules, but it’s joining forces with the FTC to say it will only act when a broadband provider is deceiving the public,” Public Knowledge VP Chris Lewis said. “This gives free rein to broadband providers to block or throttle your broadband service as long as they inform you of it.”
There are literally zero pro-consumer reasons to repeal net neutrality. It will only make the rich guys richer.
What's wrong with rich guys becoming richer? Isn't that the entire process of capitalism? Someone else will come along and topple the monopoly right? If the ISPs cause problems for the consumer there will be a large amount backlash so much so that nobody is going to want to use the ISP. Woops there goes another monopoly.
Most everyone here is a capitalist I'm quite sure of it. You can try refuting your capitalist roots but any one person could say the same of yourself,
"Why does that really rich overpaid programmer get all of that money. Let's repeal 'profession neutrality' and take his means to make money away."
What are you going to say in response?
Nothing wrong with rich guys getting richer. There is a huge problem when it's happening because they've corrupted the government to help them at the expense of consumers, and to preserve their monopoly. It's called regulatory capture, and it's the opposite of free market capitalism.
They have a physical monopoly in this case with access to the wires. A startup can't just roll out their own network everywhere, even with unlimited capital, due to the legal rights needed to lay that cable. You also can't choose to not use them anymore as they have become an integral part of society. Many things you used to do in person can only be done on the internet now. At this point there is no functional difference between paying protection money to a gang or paying the ISPs. Your business will be trashed, your own personal livelihood can be destroyed due to lack of internet access, and the government will back up the isp if you fight it in any way.
That is why it's bad that all this does is make the rich richer.
Google fiber is a perfect example. Google for gods sakes couldn’t make an entry. They tried! Google! And barely got into a handful of cities and a very small portion of those cities to boot. If google can’t become a competitor no one else stands a chance in hell. That’s just the reality. Maybe wireless tech will change that but I’m not holding my breath. Even with MM wave stuff.
This type of unrestrained capitalism creates monopolies that become unbreakable.
When the cost of entry is so high that laying cables is prohibitively expensive, it's almost impossible to compete with large cable companies to break their hold. Look at how much Google has struggled to roll out Fiber, due to all the complicated laws surrounding where and how you can lay these lines down in cities.
By forcing ISP's to maintain the fast lane, you could ensure that they would compete on fair terms, rather than just squeeze money from other corporations.
I have reduced commenting on HN because I get downvoted.
But not only I am a proud capitalist I do support Mr. Pai's stance on this particular issue. I think people on HN are getting swayed by the word "net neutrality" too much are not looking at the actual rules. Putting government in charge of what should flow on a wire is strictly worse than letting your ISPs decide it. Secondly, there is no evidence that letting ISPs have that freedom is actually a license to make more money. The ISPs and other companies might come up with interesting new services which we today do not know about but might take for granted in future.
I'm already unhappy with my ISP; they constantly raise prices without raising service, and I don't reach even 20% of the speed that I'm paying for. Looking for another ISP: Hmm. Well, I could go mobile (surely they won't have a problem with a couple hundred GB a month in bandwidth!) Or there's satellite (same issue, plus horrendous latency). Guess I'm stuck with the cable company.
Let's hope for the future that someone new comes in. Looks up local regulations...the city gave that company exclusive franchise rights. Great.
Something thought of at the spur of the moment. I'm pretty sure no such thing as profession neutrality exists. But if it did and it were being repealed it would most likely be a big deal.
Because it happens by doing something that negatively affects the rest of us. If they were getting richer by something that benefitted the rest of us too, that'd be fine.
When will America wake up and realize that it is living with a government bought and paid for. It is an oligarchy, plain and simple. Screw the consumer, wanna repair something in America, I hope you have a degree in electrical engineering and are good at micro soldering. Are you sick, want healthcare, hah, good luck if you’re poor. Wanna lodge a complaint against somebody, file charges for a crime? First thing police will do is ask the address and then they’ll go...hmm, that’s the rich neighborhood, excuse me ma’am we need more evidence that a crime was actually committed, if it’s a poor neighborhood they’ll just go shoot somebody or lock them up for good. This is America, the Idiocracy for rent. I’m being sarcastic, but at this point, you know what, when I watch the news it seems quite true.
You still forgot about the bail system, or a law system where everyone with deep enough pockets can sue anyone else for a sum that's impossible to defend for - or civil forfeiture, where law enforcement can take someone's money just like that if they have "reason to believe it was used in conjunction of a crime" and let them have to disprove it. Without money and against the word of two police officers of course.
After which you'll go to a private prison and stay there forever because you're now a bad guy and make lots of profit for the prison company, with 50+% margins on all money going in and nowhere else to go.
It's all an exercise in capitalism running amok.
The US got what they went for: The best government money can buy.
I totally agree. How does this relate to the FCC chairman? Like Trump, his public statements are lies. Debating about lies is fruitless. We need to focus on on the task at hand: removing Trump and his gang from power as quickly as possible.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted, but I generally agree.
This is why I propose the best solution is to take away the majority of both parties, and force them to shape up. The problem is education and media have already been, well I don't know how to say this very diplomatically, infiltrated and subverted, so that the main avenues open to educating and informing the people of what is going on are specifically not used for such.
This is why they want the internet next. TPTB finally began to recognize the internet for the anarchistic freedom of thought bastion by design it is, and have determined it is a threat to their oligarchical, neo-fuedal, inverted totalitarian plans.
As for the FCC chair position, lets get to root-cause analysis. The problem is that politics are so controlled by donors that presidents appoint to cabinet those who they are told to by their mega-donors. This happened with Obama and citigroup[1], I'm sure something similar happened with Bush, and it has happened with Trump. This isn't a Trump only problem.(so be wary of those who would claim the solution is to get rid of Trump) The political parties themselves, and the donors that corrupt them (largely K-street) are a root cause problem.
What they should have said was "FCC explains how net neutrality will be protected without Title II"
I know it's not a popular opinion around HN, but I'm not a huge fan of Title II.
EDIT
====
IMHO, better alternatives are having the FTC require 100% transparency on all information disclosures (how they use your traffic data), 100% transparency on network management practices, and 100% disclosure of agreements with content producers. Personally, I'd rather have all of that than Title II.
Yes, it keeps NN agreements fair, but it also prevents expansion.
However, the ISP's are not to be trusted. They are not benevolent, and have already tried to mess up the internet for everyone.
I hope that the follow up to this is congressional rules (that are not so easily repealed) about broadband and how it must reach X amount of speed by Y date.
"Yes, it keeps NN agreements fair, but it also prevents expansion."
I've not seen any reason why this is, other than ISP greed. Phone companies were regulated under Title II, but I've not heard anyone complain about that.
All businesses complain about regulation when they could have no regulation. I honestly don't care. What I'm saying is I'm not hearing any actual complaints regarding Title II, and not something that doesn't boil down to, "It's haaaaaard. I don't wannna dooooo it" whining from ISPs.
There's the greed of wanting more marketshare and more customers, which is just fine. Then there's the greed on display here, which is just wanting more money per customer without doing anything. Take care not to conflate the two, and treat them the same.
> IMHO, better alternatives are having the FTC require 100% transparency on all information disclosures (how they use your traffic data), 100% transparency on network management practices, and 100% disclosure of agreements with content producers.
What does that solve? An ISP that is forthright about how it screws over its customers is still screwing over its customers.
(And please, no vapid "but other ISPs can offer better service and win" arguments. No, they can't. There is no healthy market competition in ISP-land, and there isn't going to be.)
In the immediate term, I'll grant you, not a lot. But these regulations stay around forever. When we regulated the crap out of Bank transfers we ended up with ACH. At the time, it was revolutionary.
But in the year 2017, we still can't transfer money instantly without credit checks being involved.
The internet has thrived thus far as a free market. While I agree 'something' should be done to preserve the competitive nature, I don't think Title II is the answer.
Also, as any EULA shows us, it's not that hard to hide in plain sight, as most people won't read those disclosures and they'll be such a fire hose of information, that it will still require people to reveal this info and get people motivated to do anything about it, if they can.
I'm not saying those aren't valuable (I think we should have them), and I agree that premature regulation can choke future growth, but I think we would need some fundamental regulation to actually prevent the worst fears.
Maybe exclusivity limits on ISPs that lay the groundwork so they can recoup costs, and even collect some rent, but still allow others to compete on that groundwork.
I'm sure this had all been debated ad nauseum, and there will always be some reason why any decent idea will be argued against. But I think if we can try to find some way align ISPs and customers incentives, it'd be far better than the current situation.
EULA's are not what I'm talking about. If I get a bill for $5 from my wireless provider because I went over the messaging limit, I want to know when those messages were sent. ISPs should be held to the same standard. If I go over some limit and I'm throttled, I want to know when.
> The internet has thrived thus far as a free market.
Nope. The internet (or rather, providing internet access) is not now, and has never been, a free market. Ever.
Monopolist ISPs have been tacitly constrained by the FCC for at least 20 years. They don't do crazy anti-consumer stuff, and the FCC leaves them alone. Verizon comes along in 2014 after many years of this compromise, and says screw this: we're gonna do what we want, and we'll get the courts on our side and say the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate us in this way under Title I. And, well... it worked. The courts agreed. Verizon, however, thought it would be politically untenable to classify ISPs under Title II. But the FCC didn't flinch and did it anyway. So we have strong net neutrality regulation as of 2015 because Verizon pushed too hard and forced the FCC to do something. But in reality, we had a "gentleman's agreement" of net neutrality much, much longer than that.
Radio spectrum is a scarce resource. The allowance to dig up roadsides is not (and should not be!) granted to everyone. I can't just start up an ISP company tomorrow and meaningfully compete with Comcast or Verizon. And that's not entirely bad. We can't let any random person broadcast on random radio frequencies and interfere with everyone else. We can't let any random person come up and dig up the ground and lay cables and fiber whenever they feel like it. That would be incredibly disruptive and wouldn't be in the public interest.
So we have very little competition in last-mile internet service. And that can be ok, if we regulate it properly.
But are we? Do we have a perfect system to compensate for that? Hell no. Far from it. It's actually pretty terrible. But things like net neutrality are the only things keeping last-mile internet from turning into a minefield of anti-consumer, anti-competitive behavior.
If there's another system that can give us more competition in the ISP space, then by all means, let's pursue it. But anything like that will take years to come into being, and until that happens, we need the current regulation in place.
> While I agree 'something' should be done to preserve the competitive nature
Two things:
1) What should be done, then? If you have no actual concrete ideas, then what are you actually arguing? Let's just throw everything in the toilet and hope it sorts itself out?
2) There is no competitive nature. There never has been, and unless we do something incredibly novel, there won't be. We tried the idea of requiring the incumbents to allow RAND access to their infra, but it didn't work. What else?
Seriously, if you have actual, concrete ideas, please make them known. If you don't... why are you arguing against something that has proven to work, however imperfectly, and replacing with... nothing?
53 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadThere is a burden, yes, because you've got to ensure that traffic to external networks is not unduly impeded. That means that as you expand your infrastructure, you've got to expand your interconnections to other ISPs. Additionally, if your competition expands, you may need to expand just to keep up. It's could make investment in infrastructure more expensive since you can't just grow; you've also got to upgrade. It the big players will feel like they need to create infrastructure that will be used by the little players, and the little players may feel like .
Of course, the above has to happen anyways because faster networks is one of the best ways to reduce costs and attract more customers. So the real issue is that if you don't do it, you'll get FCC regulators knocking on your door.
Here's what the FCC said Net Neutrality is in the FCC Open Internet Order (2010):
1. Transparency: Consumers and innovators have a right to know the basic performance characteristics of their Internet access and how their network is being managed;
2. No Blocking: This includes a right to send and receive lawful traffic, prohibits the blocking of lawful content, apps, services and the connection of non-harmful devices to the network;
3. Level Playing Field: Consumers and innovators have a right to a level playing field. This means a ban on unreasonable content discrimination. There is no approval for so-called "pay for priority" arrangements involving fast lanes for some companies but not others;
4. Network Management: This is an allowance for broadband providers to engage in reasonable network management. These rules don't forbid providers from offering subscribers tiers of services or charging based on bandwidth consumed;
5. Mobile: The provisions adopted today do not apply as strongly to mobile devices, though some provisions do apply. Of those that do are the broadly applicable rules requiring transparency for mobile broadband providers and prohibiting them from blocking websites and certain competitive applications;
6. Vigilance: The order creates an Open Internet Advisory Committee to assist the Commission in monitoring the state of Internet openness and the effects of the rules.
Interestingly, one of the chief arguments against Net Neutrality has been that it could allow regulatory capture. That's rather hilarious, given what's happened with this FCC chairman.
What do you need to have in place if someone alleges you are not neutral? Your accuser might present well collected evidence that Hulu performance to your customers is worse than Netflix's performance. You will then claim "but we didn't do it, it is just the luck of the draw on how we choose to buy interconnect bandwidth". Is that good enough to protect you? How can you prove you didn't choose the interconnects to screw Hulu?
So there is a burden. If there is no requirement, even if you never take money to slow down someone's competitor, you are relieved of this burden.
There's a lot of revenue in charging both sides for connectivity, so it doesn't matter which is "easier", only what is more profitable.
If $encrypted_internet_video_provider wants to dictate how traffic is routed on a network, perhaps they should buy their own network.
As an example, Apple has over $200Billion stashed away in overseas accounts avoiding taxes. They could just buy Comcast, which has a market cap of $181Billion. Then it's their network, and they can run it however they see fit.
I bet Apple would rather have Comcast deal with the messy business of handling customer support for millions of boomers who can't "program" their VCR, while Apple siphons all the profits from online video streaming. That sounds a lot cheaper to owning and operating the networks themselves.
If the ISPs don't want to be in the business of carrying data, then the answer is very simple - get out of the business and give back all that infrastructure that was built out with public resources!
> Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge said that the FCC/FTC plan will not protect consumers from ISPs.
> “Not only is the FCC eliminating basic net neutrality rules, but it’s joining forces with the FTC to say it will only act when a broadband provider is deceiving the public,” Public Knowledge VP Chris Lewis said. “This gives free rein to broadband providers to block or throttle your broadband service as long as they inform you of it.”
There are literally zero pro-consumer reasons to repeal net neutrality. It will only make the rich guys richer.
Most everyone here is a capitalist I'm quite sure of it. You can try refuting your capitalist roots but any one person could say the same of yourself, "Why does that really rich overpaid programmer get all of that money. Let's repeal 'profession neutrality' and take his means to make money away." What are you going to say in response?
That is why it's bad that all this does is make the rich richer.
When the cost of entry is so high that laying cables is prohibitively expensive, it's almost impossible to compete with large cable companies to break their hold. Look at how much Google has struggled to roll out Fiber, due to all the complicated laws surrounding where and how you can lay these lines down in cities.
By forcing ISP's to maintain the fast lane, you could ensure that they would compete on fair terms, rather than just squeeze money from other corporations.
But not only I am a proud capitalist I do support Mr. Pai's stance on this particular issue. I think people on HN are getting swayed by the word "net neutrality" too much are not looking at the actual rules. Putting government in charge of what should flow on a wire is strictly worse than letting your ISPs decide it. Secondly, there is no evidence that letting ISPs have that freedom is actually a license to make more money. The ISPs and other companies might come up with interesting new services which we today do not know about but might take for granted in future.
Let's hope for the future that someone new comes in. Looks up local regulations...the city gave that company exclusive franchise rights. Great.
> Woops there goes another monopoly.
I can dream, I guess.
What even...?
Because it happens by doing something that negatively affects the rest of us. If they were getting richer by something that benefitted the rest of us too, that'd be fine.
After which you'll go to a private prison and stay there forever because you're now a bad guy and make lots of profit for the prison company, with 50+% margins on all money going in and nowhere else to go.
It's all an exercise in capitalism running amok.
The US got what they went for: The best government money can buy.
This is why I propose the best solution is to take away the majority of both parties, and force them to shape up. The problem is education and media have already been, well I don't know how to say this very diplomatically, infiltrated and subverted, so that the main avenues open to educating and informing the people of what is going on are specifically not used for such.
This is why they want the internet next. TPTB finally began to recognize the internet for the anarchistic freedom of thought bastion by design it is, and have determined it is a threat to their oligarchical, neo-fuedal, inverted totalitarian plans.
As for the FCC chair position, lets get to root-cause analysis. The problem is that politics are so controlled by donors that presidents appoint to cabinet those who they are told to by their mega-donors. This happened with Obama and citigroup[1], I'm sure something similar happened with Bush, and it has happened with Trump. This isn't a Trump only problem.(so be wary of those who would claim the solution is to get rid of Trump) The political parties themselves, and the donors that corrupt them (largely K-street) are a root cause problem.
1: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3560
I know it's not a popular opinion around HN, but I'm not a huge fan of Title II.
EDIT ====
IMHO, better alternatives are having the FTC require 100% transparency on all information disclosures (how they use your traffic data), 100% transparency on network management practices, and 100% disclosure of agreements with content producers. Personally, I'd rather have all of that than Title II.
Yes, it keeps NN agreements fair, but it also prevents expansion.
However, the ISP's are not to be trusted. They are not benevolent, and have already tried to mess up the internet for everyone.
I hope that the follow up to this is congressional rules (that are not so easily repealed) about broadband and how it must reach X amount of speed by Y date.
I've not seen any reason why this is, other than ISP greed. Phone companies were regulated under Title II, but I've not heard anyone complain about that.
There is so much red tape that's added simply by being classified under Title II.
What does that solve? An ISP that is forthright about how it screws over its customers is still screwing over its customers.
(And please, no vapid "but other ISPs can offer better service and win" arguments. No, they can't. There is no healthy market competition in ISP-land, and there isn't going to be.)
But in the year 2017, we still can't transfer money instantly without credit checks being involved.
The internet has thrived thus far as a free market. While I agree 'something' should be done to preserve the competitive nature, I don't think Title II is the answer.
I'm not saying those aren't valuable (I think we should have them), and I agree that premature regulation can choke future growth, but I think we would need some fundamental regulation to actually prevent the worst fears. Maybe exclusivity limits on ISPs that lay the groundwork so they can recoup costs, and even collect some rent, but still allow others to compete on that groundwork.
I'm sure this had all been debated ad nauseum, and there will always be some reason why any decent idea will be argued against. But I think if we can try to find some way align ISPs and customers incentives, it'd be far better than the current situation.
Nope. The internet (or rather, providing internet access) is not now, and has never been, a free market. Ever.
Monopolist ISPs have been tacitly constrained by the FCC for at least 20 years. They don't do crazy anti-consumer stuff, and the FCC leaves them alone. Verizon comes along in 2014 after many years of this compromise, and says screw this: we're gonna do what we want, and we'll get the courts on our side and say the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate us in this way under Title I. And, well... it worked. The courts agreed. Verizon, however, thought it would be politically untenable to classify ISPs under Title II. But the FCC didn't flinch and did it anyway. So we have strong net neutrality regulation as of 2015 because Verizon pushed too hard and forced the FCC to do something. But in reality, we had a "gentleman's agreement" of net neutrality much, much longer than that.
Radio spectrum is a scarce resource. The allowance to dig up roadsides is not (and should not be!) granted to everyone. I can't just start up an ISP company tomorrow and meaningfully compete with Comcast or Verizon. And that's not entirely bad. We can't let any random person broadcast on random radio frequencies and interfere with everyone else. We can't let any random person come up and dig up the ground and lay cables and fiber whenever they feel like it. That would be incredibly disruptive and wouldn't be in the public interest.
So we have very little competition in last-mile internet service. And that can be ok, if we regulate it properly.
But are we? Do we have a perfect system to compensate for that? Hell no. Far from it. It's actually pretty terrible. But things like net neutrality are the only things keeping last-mile internet from turning into a minefield of anti-consumer, anti-competitive behavior.
If there's another system that can give us more competition in the ISP space, then by all means, let's pursue it. But anything like that will take years to come into being, and until that happens, we need the current regulation in place.
> While I agree 'something' should be done to preserve the competitive nature
Two things:
1) What should be done, then? If you have no actual concrete ideas, then what are you actually arguing? Let's just throw everything in the toilet and hope it sorts itself out?
2) There is no competitive nature. There never has been, and unless we do something incredibly novel, there won't be. We tried the idea of requiring the incumbents to allow RAND access to their infra, but it didn't work. What else?
Seriously, if you have actual, concrete ideas, please make them known. If you don't... why are you arguing against something that has proven to work, however imperfectly, and replacing with... nothing?