the tech companies are each many times larger in revenues and market caps than the ISP’s who have all of the infrastructure costs to bear despite the techco’s making the larger revenues and facing less regulation on their pricing etc.
we went through this on here already. its disappointing that you cannot get the pro/con side of that argument anywhere reliable.
if Netflix uses 60%+ of all bandwidth over a network infrastructure that an ISP had to spend $5B to build out then Netflix SHOULD have to cost-share.
what bothered me most about that net neutrality argument was the suggestion that these huge and wildly profitable techco’s would have to raise prices when in fact they could just lower profits to be where other mature industries are, like the ISP’s
Net neutrality wasn’t about throttling like you’re talking about…It was about dealing with related infrastructure costs and being able to pass them back to companies who suddenly become giant consumers.
Your comparison is wrong it’s more like this…You start some new company that suddenly causes the electric and water companies to massively scale their capacity at little or no cost your new company.
There isn’t barrier to entry to start a company like Netflix this stuff only comes into play when you’re doing something like accounting for 20%+ of all internet traffic lol
Google/Facebook have basically turned into what AOL was in the 90s and act as giant portals for a centralized internet. They need to be broken up as they both play in the news media space also.
Amazon is less shitty since its mostly a market place for goods and doesn’t get into social influence at the same level. Obviously local businesses and store fronts get stomped on to a point but they do also provide a lot of small vendors with the ability to sell things world wide.
So if I create a product that uses a ton of power or water and it becomes widely adopted, is it on my company to pay for the infrastructure costs to beef up the grid? Or is it on the utilities who pass those costs on to consumers in a regulated fashion? Netflix isn’t a huge consumer for ISP’s, Netflix subscribers are. Now that they’re all buying up the content providers they can easily prioritize their own content…it’s early stages but they’re starting to. Take AT&T for example since they’re my provider. I can watch as much HBO and Time Warner content as I want on my phone and it doesn’t go against my data plan, because they’re owned by AT&T. If I’m watching something else and go over my limit, I get throttled and potentially canceled. Suddenly George Oldguy that watches Fox News 24/7 streaming (he’s a rare tech-savvy old guy) starts getting throttled and threatening letters and faces the choice of either switching to CNN or doing without, even though he paid for “unlimited” data. Fox News can pay up to try to be put in the fast lane, but its up to AT&T if they want to let them do that, or let them lose viewers. Should be interesting as all content continues to shift online.
But it is…I wasn’t aware you did traffic engineering for transit ISPs lol cable companies are built on the concept of multi cast which cuts down on the amount of traffic needed to get video from some central hub to homes.
Netflix doesn’t do this and is 1:1 for traffic so Netflix puts a ton of load on residential/hub build outs…Now that same traffic travels up stream where providers have peering agreements with various large providers Level3 and the like…Now depending on where Netflix decides to connect with ISPs this maxes out connections between ISPs and again there is additional build out and on going costs.
Companies bundle services and discounts…I pay extra for prime and get my products shipped faster and for free OMGZ.
It seems your actual issue is with mobile data/unlimited plans…
It’s a very nuanced issue and only being presented one way as opinion-fodder.
There is merit to Joe’s argument in differentiating who the client is and who has sole or shared accountability for infrastructure. But those lines are still blurred at best.
I have looked at it from the perspective of when areas are due for or when the market demands an upgrade. If the techco’s who drive the usage and have the capital could reduce the pay-back period and cost share in some way then more infrastructure would be developed and faster.
For as long as they don’t cost-share in infrastructure the costs will be passed directly onto the consumer anyways (higher bills) or the infrastructure will be delayed or not built at all.
As it stands it looks like the techco’s are racing to give their capital away (netflix new programming budget for instance) to delay profits, fuel growth and avoid any responsibility for their means of distribution.
The internet was fine before everyone made net neutrality some giant hot button political debate.
Now you have people who couldn’t even begin to explain how internet traffic works trying to legislate some fix.
Cell phone data plans isn’t net neutrality and for the longest time people paid for internet service per hour(AOL, Compuserv etc) then free market ran that over and internet usage went unlimited…The same will happen with mobile once 5G takes off and the infrastructure is built out.
It’s really way more complicated then people think to go “Ok we are this giant ISP lets throttle all Netflix traffic…” the issues people usually see are transit links and shitty routing because of peering.
You’re talking about entirely different things in this conversation.
Net neutrality and monopolies
The net neutrality thing works its self out without government involvement.
The Google/Facebook thing is how much control do you want private companies to have over your internet experience including search and what you see. My guess is Facebook will MySpace its self given enough time. Facebook has reached a point where its not getting new user growth and younger generation don’t use it.
Google is pretty diverse however its already eating its self over issues like building a censored search engine for china or its involvement in AI for the military.
I would love to see Google broken up it’s never a good thing to have a single company collecting that amount of data across the board on people.
AOL at one point has 24 million dial up subs and a ton of control and look at them now.
If you want to talk about computer related issues that seriously harm the US…China hacking into US companies stealing things and nobody caring should probably be above all of these things.
Of the three Google is definitely the one I find the most potential for an antitrust case and even that’s a stretch. Like someone said, in 1981 if you wanted a home phone it came from AT&T and you had no other option. Google has become ubiquitous for internet search but if you don’t want to give all your data to a leftist SJW company you can easy go over to duckduckgo.com or a bunch of other search providers. And even though google is in a lot more than just search (email, phones, thermostats, home automation, self driving cars etc etc etc) all those other places also have plenty of competition and choice.
Information is power and google has around a 75% market share on internet search engine use. I’m not sure how that falls under antitrust when you have a choice but it’s definitely a concern when 75% of the information is being funneled to people by one company. That company hasn’t been shy about their politics either with their open resistance to Trump and their basically open door to the prior administration’s white house.
“Sorry Mr Company, you are too successful and everyone likes your business. Not enough people like your competition. Please do a worse job so others can provide a shittier service at a potentially greater cost.”
Progressives get their way, Amazon pulls out of NY:
it was a remarkable win for insurgent progressive politicians led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upset victory last year happened to occur in the district where Amazon had planned its site. Her win galvanized the party’s left flank, which mobilized against the deal.
Under the plan, within 15 years the company could occupy as much as eight million square feet of office space, including office buildings for as many as 40,000 workers.
While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project
