5 ms·

Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules? Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net Neutrality?

by Torai 9y ago

sandov 9y ago
But it would make too much sense to criticize the artificial monopolies created by the state instead of complaining about ISPs!
- IntelMiner 9y ago
  "artificial monopolies created by the state" I'm sorry, what? While I'm sure you're going to beat a drum about "regulation" and "free markets" it might be worth stepping back and actually assessing the issue from a practical, rather than ideological stance Utilities naturally gravitate toward monopoly. Would you want to have multiple sewer lines running to your house, because your upstairs bathroom costs more money than downstairs with a different "provider"? Stringing up competing sets of coax cable, telephone lines or fiber optic cables is a losing proposition for the ISP's themselves Why subject yourself to competition, when you can simply carve out your own market and be "the" provider in an area? Comcast doesn't want to overlap with Time Warner, because Time Warner is the incumbent provider. Even if Comcast offered a faster internet service, they'd be building their market share from zero
  - icebraining 9y ago
    And yet, in my Western European country, I have four ISPs offering service (with their own cables) to my apartment.
    - rubatuga 9y ago
      That's inefficient. Why not just have one?
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Why not have a single lane in highways? There's a reason why I regularly measure more than what I have contracted, on independent speedtests. It's not inefficiency, it's allowance.
      - drdaeman 9y ago
        Choice. If you have only one line to your CPE, you have none. If there are multiple lines (ISPs) to chose from - you can select the best one available. As the ISPs have to actually compete for customers (assuming they don't collude to screw everyone - which is a legal problem) and any bad behavior will be punished by losing some market share, their customers will benefit from this. Also, resilency/failover. If one connection goes down, you have a backup. It may be uncommon, but for some people who rely on Internet connectivity, this is useful. Single provider just can't know best. Talking about efficiency... For efficiency's sake it may make some sense to move demarcation point a little further, to some mini-PoP in the neighborhood, but to have choice the end-users need to own their lines there, and I'm not sure it's convenient and without the drawbacks.
  - drdaeman 9y ago
    Actually, I really wonder why it doesn't work that way in the US. I worked for an ISP company that grew from a tiny startup, connecting just a few buildings, to a successful ISP that covered a significant part (almost all, I believe) of small (200K) city in Russia. I haven't really interacted much with our network builders department (worked on software, and left the company some years ago, moving to another city), but IIRC in overall it worked like this - people found our offers interesting and signed up to get their buildings/apartments connected. We chose new addresses we were able to physically reach, got the approval from the building owners and the city, and laid down the wires, extending the network's frontiers. We laid our own fiber (or, sometimes, copper) and used wireless bridges whenever we weren't able to reach otherwise. We had also leased fiber from other companies (there are companies here that have business just by providing underlying infrastructure but not offering the Internet connectivity). It's not like adding an extra fiber to an existing conduit is comparable to installing a new sewer line. In the end, having 4-5 actually different ISPs in a building - usually all with their own lines - was (still is) a norm where I had lived. Competing offerings drove prices down, and bad behavior (sans the state-mandated ones) were mostly non-existent. What's so different in the US, that even Google had failed?
    - seabird 9y ago
      The US has draconic pole attach rules in most places. Local governments and regulations on when, where, and how you're able to run cable make it borderline impossible to efficiently get it done, no matter how much or how little money you have. Things like this are not as much an issue in states like Texas that require only one permit to run cable anywhere in the state. Whether or not people would like to admit it, this is a case where we can see with our own eyes regulations are seriously hurting the ability for people to start up and compete, and is the only reason net neutrality is an issue in the first place.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  Where I live, ISPs tend to sign contracts with whoever owns apartment buildings to be the sole provider.
jackmoore 9y ago
If there was choice, but running cables and utility poles leads to a natural monopoly. Nobody has pockets deeper than Google, and even they failed to break into it.
- jackmoore 9y ago
  Personal anecdote, the past 4 places I've lived were suburbs with only one broadband provider, a couple of which had daily outages that they refused to fix because it was difficult.
izacus 9y ago
Ah, the free market dream, where any attack on consumer rights is just an excuse for new company to sprout and take the lead! Too bad that in reality that doesn't happen. Ignoring Net Neutrality is something that financially benefits ISPs especially when ignored as part of a cartel. When noone does it, noone has the incentive to implement it. Also, do you really think a new ISP can just appear, dig up new cables, wire up whole swaths of United States without being obstructed by existing ultra-rich companies lobbying in the local and federal government? (It's a rethorical question, here in my county the main Telecom used a lot of dirty tactics to make sure that the competitor had utter hell of a time trying to dig in their FTTH to compete with major telecoms obsolete copper system. The digging and building permits had to be fought on basis of every few city blocks due to bribery and friends in mayors office).
wmf 9y ago
It's generally not profitable to start new ISPs and a neutral ISP would be even less profitable than an evil one.
squeaky-clean 9y ago
My ISP choices are Comcast, tethering to my cell phone's 4G plan, or (probably, haven't looked into it) satellite internet. I can't simply move to a different ISP unless I want to give up on most things I do on the internet or move to a new apartment building.
- another-dave 9y ago
  I only realised recently that the US has that level of vendor lock-in for core infrastructure like telephone wires — huge culture shock!
caseydurfee 9y ago
Comcast is the most hated corporation in America. There's already a big competitive opportunity for non-terrible ISPs.
jryan49 9y ago
Not if there are no choices. We've already seen the ISPs not encroaching on each other's territories to not compete. It's basically a cartel.
zeep 9y ago
maybe if it wasn't a duopoly...
thomastjeffery 9y ago
The majority of Americans have only one ISP to choose from, and the majority of the market share is distributed between 6 companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox, CenturyLink, Time Warner).

Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules? Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net Neutrality?

by Torai 9y ago

Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules? Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net Neutrality?

sandov 9y ago

But it would make too much sense to criticize the artificial monopolies created by the state instead of complaining about ISPs!

IntelMiner 9y ago
"artificial monopolies created by the state" I'm sorry, what? While I'm sure you're going to beat a drum about "regulation" and "free markets" it might be worth stepping back and actually assessing the issue from a practical, rather than ideological stance Utilities naturally gravitate toward monopoly. Would you want to have multiple sewer lines running to your house, because your upstairs bathroom costs more money than downstairs with a different "provider"? Stringing up competing sets of coax cable, telephone lines or fiber optic cables is a losing proposition for the ISP's themselves Why subject yourself to competition, when you can simply carve out your own market and be "the" provider in an area? Comcast doesn't want to overlap with Time Warner, because Time Warner is the incumbent provider. Even if Comcast offered a faster internet service, they'd be building their market share from zero
- icebraining 9y ago
  And yet, in my Western European country, I have four ISPs offering service (with their own cables) to my apartment.
  - rubatuga 9y ago
    That's inefficient. Why not just have one?
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Why not have a single lane in highways? There's a reason why I regularly measure more than what I have contracted, on independent speedtests. It's not inefficiency, it's allowance.
    - drdaeman 9y ago
      Choice. If you have only one line to your CPE, you have none. If there are multiple lines (ISPs) to chose from - you can select the best one available. As the ISPs have to actually compete for customers (assuming they don't collude to screw everyone - which is a legal problem) and any bad behavior will be punished by losing some market share, their customers will benefit from this. Also, resilency/failover. If one connection goes down, you have a backup. It may be uncommon, but for some people who rely on Internet connectivity, this is useful. Single provider just can't know best. Talking about efficiency... For efficiency's sake it may make some sense to move demarcation point a little further, to some mini-PoP in the neighborhood, but to have choice the end-users need to own their lines there, and I'm not sure it's convenient and without the drawbacks.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  Actually, I really wonder why it doesn't work that way in the US. I worked for an ISP company that grew from a tiny startup, connecting just a few buildings, to a successful ISP that covered a significant part (almost all, I believe) of small (200K) city in Russia. I haven't really interacted much with our network builders department (worked on software, and left the company some years ago, moving to another city), but IIRC in overall it worked like this - people found our offers interesting and signed up to get their buildings/apartments connected. We chose new addresses we were able to physically reach, got the approval from the building owners and the city, and laid down the wires, extending the network's frontiers. We laid our own fiber (or, sometimes, copper) and used wireless bridges whenever we weren't able to reach otherwise. We had also leased fiber from other companies (there are companies here that have business just by providing underlying infrastructure but not offering the Internet connectivity). It's not like adding an extra fiber to an existing conduit is comparable to installing a new sewer line. In the end, having 4-5 actually different ISPs in a building - usually all with their own lines - was (still is) a norm where I had lived. Competing offerings drove prices down, and bad behavior (sans the state-mandated ones) were mostly non-existent. What's so different in the US, that even Google had failed?
  - seabird 9y ago
    The US has draconic pole attach rules in most places. Local governments and regulations on when, where, and how you're able to run cable make it borderline impossible to efficiently get it done, no matter how much or how little money you have. Things like this are not as much an issue in states like Texas that require only one permit to run cable anywhere in the state. Whether or not people would like to admit it, this is a case where we can see with our own eyes regulations are seriously hurting the ability for people to start up and compete, and is the only reason net neutrality is an issue in the first place.
darpa_escapee 9y ago
Where I live, ISPs tend to sign contracts with whoever owns apartment buildings to be the sole provider.

jackmoore 9y ago

If there was choice, but running cables and utility poles leads to a natural monopoly. Nobody has pockets deeper than Google, and even they failed to break into it.

jackmoore 9y ago
Personal anecdote, the past 4 places I've lived were suburbs with only one broadband provider, a couple of which had daily outages that they refused to fix because it was difficult.

izacus 9y ago

Ah, the free market dream, where any attack on consumer rights is just an excuse for new company to sprout and take the lead! Too bad that in reality that doesn't happen. Ignoring Net Neutrality is something that financially benefits ISPs especially when ignored as part of a cartel. When noone does it, noone has the incentive to implement it. Also, do you really think a new ISP can just appear, dig up new cables, wire up whole swaths of United States without being obstructed by existing ultra-rich companies lobbying in the local and federal government? (It's a rethorical question, here in my county the main Telecom used a lot of dirty tactics to make sure that the competitor had utter hell of a time trying to dig in their FTTH to compete with major telecoms obsolete copper system. The digging and building permits had to be fought on basis of every few city blocks due to bribery and friends in mayors office).

wmf 9y ago

It's generally not profitable to start new ISPs and a neutral ISP would be even less profitable than an evil one.

squeaky-clean 9y ago

My ISP choices are Comcast, tethering to my cell phone's 4G plan, or (probably, haven't looked into it) satellite internet. I can't simply move to a different ISP unless I want to give up on most things I do on the internet or move to a new apartment building.

another-dave 9y ago
I only realised recently that the US has that level of vendor lock-in for core infrastructure like telephone wires — huge culture shock!

caseydurfee 9y ago

Comcast is the most hated corporation in America. There's already a big competitive opportunity for non-terrible ISPs.

jryan49 9y ago

Not if there are no choices. We've already seen the ISPs not encroaching on each other's territories to not compete. It's basically a cartel.

zeep 9y ago

maybe if it wasn't a duopoly...

thomastjeffery 9y ago

The majority of Americans have only one ISP to choose from, and the majority of the market share is distributed between 6 companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox, CenturyLink, Time Warner).