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What happens when Spotify emails its customers saying "sorry we can't provide service to Verizon customers anymore, they charge us too much" Some may stay and

What happens when Spotify emails its customers saying "sorry we can't provide service to Verizon customers anymore, they charge us too much" Some may stay and downgrade their service as they don't require as much bandwidth and some may leave Verizon entirely. It's not all roses for them. Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meanwhile someone creates a VPN service to get around the blockade.

yoshamano 9y ago
Netflix tried something similar a few years ago and it turned into a huge mess. https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778770/netflix-warning-members-when-service-providers-cause-bad-speeds https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778770/netflix-warning-me... https://qz.com/688033/netflix-launched-this-handy-speed-test-so-you-can-go-shame-your-internet-provider/ https://qz.com/688033/netflix-launched-this-handy-speed-test... https://bgr.com/2014/06/11/netflix-video-streaming-speed-test/ https://bgr.com/2014/06/11/netflix-video-streaming-speed-tes...
natoliniak 9y ago
> "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner. I would agree with you only if everyone had a choice of that many providers, which is not the case! In my current neighborhood in Boston I have a whopping selection of either America's favorite company Comcast (with bandwidth caps and horrible outdated infrastructure and service) or Verizon DSL (max ~3Mbs down on a good day and only when it doesn't rain). In my previous neighborhood it was only Comcast as it was too far from Verizon's DSL switch. Neither one of those companies have any incentive to improve their networks. Zero. They have a comfortable duopoly and killing net neutrality will only reaffirm their horrible exploitative positions and allow them to start turning the internet into something reminiscent of cable TV, which is their ultimate goal: full control over content providers.
awalton 9y ago
> Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner. You seem to be intentionally forgetting that these ISPs have segregated themselves such that they do not have to compete with one another. In most of the US, you get one choice of fast internet (Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner) and one choice of slow internet (whatever DSL you can find) - you may not even get satellite or dial up anymore. So, when Verizon says "Screw you Google and Netflix and Spotify", their customers don't go "hey Comcast/AT&T/Google, c'mere", they say "how much do I have to pay you to make the pain stop... for now..." (The customers of all of these horrible ISPs have been screaming the "hey [other ISP] come to my area" line for literally decades, but the ISPs don't listen because they have either agreed explicitly or implicitly not to push into one another's turf to maximize everyone's profits.) This is why we need net neutrality. If the market was competitive, it'd be a different story altogether. But it is provably not (hell, they've used the fact the markets are not competitive to try to convince the FTC to allow them to merge with other ISPs because "it would not reduce overall competition, since they do not compete in such-and-such markets"), and despite the government drowning AT&T and its many children with hundreds of billions of dollars over the past few decades to build high speed networks for everyone, they still organized their networks in such a way to maintain monopoly powers (albeit in smaller, more fragmented markets). ISPs in America do as little as possible, collecting the biggest check as possible, and use the massive profits to squeeze competitors out (like they have successfully done with Google giving up the ghost of expanding even in Mountain View California where they are headquartered and as they are scaling up to do to municipalities creating their own networks like Chattanooga). They're consistently rated as the worst businesses in America, but they are infrastructure, so we pay them anyway. And now they're learning that more profits exist in content than it does in carrying the content fairly, so they want to be the source of the content too. And that means killing net neutrality to making themselves the sole arbiters of the market.
- cmdrfred 9y ago
  I have Verizon(fiber), Comcast(coax) and AT&T(copper) where I live. Not to mention satellite and 4G internet options.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Congratulations! You're an outlier.
    - cmdrfred 9y ago
      Then use a VPN? Or is the idea they will charge high rates for all traffic (already legal by the way) thus preventing access to the majority of the internet?
      - throwanem 9y ago
        The idea is that, in the majority of markets where a single ISP has an effective monopoly, that ISP can do what it damn well please within the limit of enforceable law and regulation, and there's not a whole lot that can be done to prevent it. The idea is further that, not only does it make pragmatic sense for so favorably positioned an ISP to act aggressively in defense of that position, but such ISPs have been observed to do so, as for example with AT&T's successful defeat of the recent municipal broadband expansion bill in Tennessee. AT&T's position is that taxpayer money should not be used to fund competition with private industry, which all sounds very fine and upstanding, except that the private industry has already stifled any possibility of competition by means of the sort of monopolistic activity which US governments spent much of the early 20th century working to restrict, in order to prevent the unsavory outcomes that such activity has been observed to produce in direct proportion to the degree in which it's successfully pursued. So, sure, they can charge high rates for traffic if they want, in addition to charging more or less whatever rates they please simply to provision backhaul in the first place. They can impose a $20/month, or higher, charge for reliable access to video streamed from services other than those they themselves run. They can do whatever they're able to get away with - and in an environment of permissive and favorable legislation and no effective private competition, they get away with a hell of a lot. In case it matters, I'm really not progressive, and I understand business reasonably well - I've been in private industry my entire career, with no one doing me any favors, and if I didn't have at least a generally accurate idea of how things work, I wouldn't be able to support myself. In particular, I find the current attitude held by the federal, and many state, governments, toward small business enterprises, absurd and execrable - and I've seen the onerous burden such an attitude inflicts on people who go into business for themselves. But the current attitude toward large business is a whole 'nother matter entirely, and I see nothing of value to our polity as a whole in the results of such gross permissiveness. Expanding such permissiveness still further strikes me as very much the wrong thing to do.
aeze 9y ago
Unfortunately in many places, there isn't real competition.

yoshamano 9y ago

Netflix tried something similar a few years ago and it turned into a huge mess. https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778770/netflix-warning-members-when-service-providers-cause-bad-speeds https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778770/netflix-warning-me... https://qz.com/688033/netflix-launched-this-handy-speed-test-so-you-can-go-shame-your-internet-provider/ https://qz.com/688033/netflix-launched-this-handy-speed-test... https://bgr.com/2014/06/11/netflix-video-streaming-speed-test/ https://bgr.com/2014/06/11/netflix-video-streaming-speed-tes...

natoliniak 9y ago

> "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner. I would agree with you only if everyone had a choice of that many providers, which is not the case! In my current neighborhood in Boston I have a whopping selection of either America's favorite company Comcast (with bandwidth caps and horrible outdated infrastructure and service) or Verizon DSL (max ~3Mbs down on a good day and only when it doesn't rain). In my previous neighborhood it was only Comcast as it was too far from Verizon's DSL switch. Neither one of those companies have any incentive to improve their networks. Zero. They have a comfortable duopoly and killing net neutrality will only reaffirm their horrible exploitative positions and allow them to start turning the internet into something reminiscent of cable TV, which is their ultimate goal: full control over content providers.

awalton 9y ago

> Then Comcast, AT&T, Google or anyone else frankly begins offering "True unlimited full access internet" and eats Verizon's breakfast, lunch and dinner. You seem to be intentionally forgetting that these ISPs have segregated themselves such that they do not have to compete with one another. In most of the US, you get one choice of fast internet (Verizon or Comcast or Time Warner) and one choice of slow internet (whatever DSL you can find) - you may not even get satellite or dial up anymore. So, when Verizon says "Screw you Google and Netflix and Spotify", their customers don't go "hey Comcast/AT&T/Google, c'mere", they say "how much do I have to pay you to make the pain stop... for now..." (The customers of all of these horrible ISPs have been screaming the "hey [other ISP] come to my area" line for literally decades, but the ISPs don't listen because they have either agreed explicitly or implicitly not to push into one another's turf to maximize everyone's profits.) This is why we need net neutrality. If the market was competitive, it'd be a different story altogether. But it is provably not (hell, they've used the fact the markets are not competitive to try to convince the FTC to allow them to merge with other ISPs because "it would not reduce overall competition, since they do not compete in such-and-such markets"), and despite the government drowning AT&T and its many children with hundreds of billions of dollars over the past few decades to build high speed networks for everyone, they still organized their networks in such a way to maintain monopoly powers (albeit in smaller, more fragmented markets). ISPs in America do as little as possible, collecting the biggest check as possible, and use the massive profits to squeeze competitors out (like they have successfully done with Google giving up the ghost of expanding even in Mountain View California where they are headquartered and as they are scaling up to do to municipalities creating their own networks like Chattanooga). They're consistently rated as the worst businesses in America, but they are infrastructure, so we pay them anyway. And now they're learning that more profits exist in content than it does in carrying the content fairly, so they want to be the source of the content too. And that means killing net neutrality to making themselves the sole arbiters of the market.

cmdrfred 9y ago
I have Verizon(fiber), Comcast(coax) and AT&T(copper) where I live. Not to mention satellite and 4G internet options.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Congratulations! You're an outlier.
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    Then use a VPN? Or is the idea they will charge high rates for all traffic (already legal by the way) thus preventing access to the majority of the internet?
    - throwanem 9y ago
      The idea is that, in the majority of markets where a single ISP has an effective monopoly, that ISP can do what it damn well please within the limit of enforceable law and regulation, and there's not a whole lot that can be done to prevent it. The idea is further that, not only does it make pragmatic sense for so favorably positioned an ISP to act aggressively in defense of that position, but such ISPs have been observed to do so, as for example with AT&T's successful defeat of the recent municipal broadband expansion bill in Tennessee. AT&T's position is that taxpayer money should not be used to fund competition with private industry, which all sounds very fine and upstanding, except that the private industry has already stifled any possibility of competition by means of the sort of monopolistic activity which US governments spent much of the early 20th century working to restrict, in order to prevent the unsavory outcomes that such activity has been observed to produce in direct proportion to the degree in which it's successfully pursued. So, sure, they can charge high rates for traffic if they want, in addition to charging more or less whatever rates they please simply to provision backhaul in the first place. They can impose a $20/month, or higher, charge for reliable access to video streamed from services other than those they themselves run. They can do whatever they're able to get away with - and in an environment of permissive and favorable legislation and no effective private competition, they get away with a hell of a lot. In case it matters, I'm really not progressive, and I understand business reasonably well - I've been in private industry my entire career, with no one doing me any favors, and if I didn't have at least a generally accurate idea of how things work, I wouldn't be able to support myself. In particular, I find the current attitude held by the federal, and many state, governments, toward small business enterprises, absurd and execrable - and I've seen the onerous burden such an attitude inflicts on people who go into business for themselves. But the current attitude toward large business is a whole 'nother matter entirely, and I see nothing of value to our polity as a whole in the results of such gross permissiveness. Expanding such permissiveness still further strikes me as very much the wrong thing to do.

aeze 9y ago

Unfortunately in many places, there isn't real competition.