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Republicans are about to ‘Benghazi all over again’ on net neutrality
- actsasbuffoon 12y ago> Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner, traveled to New York, where he met with hedge funds and Wall Street analysts to warn that the FCC's proposed rules could lead to the regulation of the prices that Internet providers charge consumers This may curb the future profits of internet service providers, which could dissuade people from investing in ISPs. That said, it opens a lot of avenues for companies that do business over the internet, which will generate vastly more money for investors than the ISPs ever would have. There have been many news stories about ISPs essentially extorting video service providers like Netflix and YouTube. Netflix and Google have deep enough pockets to pay the ransom, but many video-based or otherwise bandwidth-intensive startups don't. I imagine tech companies will be pretty unified in campaigning for net neutrality. It'll be interesting to see which side the finance community falls on.
- tzs 12y agoThere is no reason to believe that these rules will lead to price regulation. As Wheeler pointed out, they are almost identical to the regulations for cellular voice, which have been in place for ~20 years, and there has been no price regulation there.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 12y agoI feel like price regulation would in turn make ISPs more attractive to older investors (who often times have more money to invest, btw). As you get older you would want to reduce risk in your portfolio, so with predictable profits that price regulation would bring you can see why that would make it attractive.