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I'm in favour of a more market based solution. If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right

I'm in favour of a more market based solution. If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This will encourage experimentation with pricing and access and would be very helpful. But where there is no meaningful competition the ISP does not get to pick winners and losers - they should be a dumb pipe that does not discriminate. Of course there isn't meaningful competition in most of the US.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This would be one thing if you're talking about them charging their own customers for such things. Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. But there is another point if we're talking about peering. Each consumer-level ISP has a hard monopoly over its own customers. There is no competition for access to those customers. If you want to reach them all, you (or your network provider) has got to come to terms with each and every one of those ISPs. And the only way you have any leverage is if you're a big fish whose services are too important for the ISP not to provide its customers high speed access to. The little fish need network neutrality or they're screwed. Regional competition between ISPs wouldn't even fix it if we had any plausible way to bring it about.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  > Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. I'm fine with letting them try because meaningful competition means consumers can go elsewhere. I hope there are some interesting business models to discover such as ISP side security filtering, ISP prioritisation of traffic, cheaper prices for consumer concessions, allowing content providers to pay for priority etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    Two things. First, I'm as up for a theoretical discussion as the next guy, but if we're going to have a serious conversation about what would happen if the regional market for internet service was highly competitive, shouldn't we have some kind of at least theoretical non-ridiculous mechanism of actually achieving that? Because "run twelve or more redundant sets of wires to every home" fails the non-ridiculousness bar, and "continue to have only one or two wires" fails the "highly competitive" test, so where does that leave us? Second, you're still not solving the problem of ISPs having monopolies over their own customers. We don't want ISPs with customer block monopolies charging content providers for prioritization -- they'll charge monopoly prices and suck every ounce of margin they can out of the already-struggling content production business. Even if we had competition between ISPs at the regional level, they would each still have a monopoly over their customers from the perspective of content distributors.
A1kmm 14y ago
Real markets are not infinitely elastic; with a finite number of players, there is always going to be a finite number of things that companies compete on, and in inefficient markets like consumer Internet services, duopolies naturally result. The definition of Internet is essentially a globally connected network that passes generic Internet protocol traffic between endpoints; if IP payloads are being inspected and manipulated, it isn't really an Internet service that is being provided, and it is misleading to sell such a service as 'Internet'. The government does have a legitimate role in regulating misleading trade practices - if someone is selling something that is not safe to eat as food, for example, then that is misleading, and it is the government's job to intervene and say they can't do that, rather than letting the market sort it out.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago

>If an ISP can show that there is meaningful competition for a customer then they can do whatever they want right up to charging more for access to particular content/services. This would be one thing if you're talking about them charging their own customers for such things. Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. But there is another point if we're talking about peering. Each consumer-level ISP has a hard monopoly over its own customers. There is no competition for access to those customers. If you want to reach them all, you (or your network provider) has got to come to terms with each and every one of those ISPs. And the only way you have any leverage is if you're a big fish whose services are too important for the ISP not to provide its customers high speed access to. The little fish need network neutrality or they're screwed. Regional competition between ISPs wouldn't even fix it if we had any plausible way to bring it about.

rogerbinns 14y ago
> Though the idea that any ISP that actually tried this in a competitive market would still have any customers left by the end of the week seems mighty suspicious. I'm fine with letting them try because meaningful competition means consumers can go elsewhere. I hope there are some interesting business models to discover such as ISP side security filtering, ISP prioritisation of traffic, cheaper prices for consumer concessions, allowing content providers to pay for priority etc.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  Two things. First, I'm as up for a theoretical discussion as the next guy, but if we're going to have a serious conversation about what would happen if the regional market for internet service was highly competitive, shouldn't we have some kind of at least theoretical non-ridiculous mechanism of actually achieving that? Because "run twelve or more redundant sets of wires to every home" fails the non-ridiculousness bar, and "continue to have only one or two wires" fails the "highly competitive" test, so where does that leave us? Second, you're still not solving the problem of ISPs having monopolies over their own customers. We don't want ISPs with customer block monopolies charging content providers for prioritization -- they'll charge monopoly prices and suck every ounce of margin they can out of the already-struggling content production business. Even if we had competition between ISPs at the regional level, they would each still have a monopoly over their customers from the perspective of content distributors.

A1kmm 14y ago

Real markets are not infinitely elastic; with a finite number of players, there is always going to be a finite number of things that companies compete on, and in inefficient markets like consumer Internet services, duopolies naturally result. The definition of Internet is essentially a globally connected network that passes generic Internet protocol traffic between endpoints; if IP payloads are being inspected and manipulated, it isn't really an Internet service that is being provided, and it is misleading to sell such a service as 'Internet'. The government does have a legitimate role in regulating misleading trade practices - if someone is selling something that is not safe to eat as food, for example, then that is misleading, and it is the government's job to intervene and say they can't do that, rather than letting the market sort it out.