Net Neutrality
So I’ve been quiet for a long while on this blog, sorry for that, just haven’t had any real content to post!
Recently net neutrality has been in the news (again) – I’ve linked a really good video that summarizes whats going on. Here on the Tek Syndicate – if the whole thing is too long watch from about 10:00 in on until you lose interest.
The reality is Verizon, Comcast, ATT, T-Mobile, etc ALL want to limit *your* access to the internet and then charge you more to remove those limits. You’re already getting hit and don’t even know it. Verizon, ATT, and Comcast are all trying to force content providers like Youtube, Netflix, Steam, Amazon Video, etc, to pay them an additional direct fee to keep their data from not getting counted on the data caps they’re placing (back) onto your broadband. The court opinion fails to understand that when the current state of affairs was decided there were THOUSANDS of ISPs, each locality generally had one, or more, and you could actually choose as you were using dial-up. Now you have no choice, if you’re LUCKY you’ll have a cable ISP, a wireline ISP, and a wireless ISP to choose from. In my area outside of Seattle you can choose between Comcast and CenturyLink. Comcast offers “up to” something like 50mbit down and 5mbit up. CenturyLink only offers 1.5mbit down, and I kind of doubt they can deliver that based on what I’ve seen of the POTS/Copper infra here in this neighborhood. So really for modern broadband I have Comcast as a choice, and nowhere else to go. The Court opinion assumes (very incorrectly) that you can readily and easily switch ISPs. I can’t and I’m in a major metro. In rural america the situation is worse and better….worse because you probably have no choices, but better because whomever your choice is they are much more likely to want to actually provide top quality service to their customers rather than just make as much money as possible.
ATT, Verizon, Comcast, TWC, T-Mobile, all want their internet access to look like the cable company pricing tiers. $20/mo for “internet” but if you want unlimited youtube that will $1.95/mo extra. Oh you want Amazon Video? We’re going to collect $5/mo for that…etc etc etc. Right now they’re already attempting to extract the money from the content providers. If this ruling sticks, they’ll be able to also be more obvious about charging consumers too.
Data is NOT this expensive, period. It does cost quite a lot more to get the 99.99% and higher reliability that content providers (Youtube, Amazon, etc) need for connectivity but the best effort service that we’re paying for as consumers, is NOT worth what we’re paying, and they want to charge us more!