Traffic shaping and QOS are nothing new on networks and managing that traffic as it traverses the network is necessary. What will harm particularly small businesses later is when the cost of that paid prioritization rises to a point that only the largest companies can afford it. If someone wanted to complete against YouTube not only would they have to design, build and market it to convince people they offer a better platform they would have to be able to outspend the likes of Google to ensure their product was delivered as promised. That would make entry in to the online video streaming market a steep ask and unlikely that YouTube ever sees a real competitor to its platform. Now for a service like Netflix it's far smarter to partner with an ISP and place caching servers within their networks for a small fee to reduce the amount of traffic crossing across peered networks. It puts content closer to the customer, only has to deal with local QOS on the ISP's local loop and helps ensure the quality of the end user experience. Something they are already doing because the transport across certain networks was being throttled in favor of their own local video services. If you'll remember the campaign that Netflix went on to shame those networks in public for diminishing the quality of the end users service to extort money out Netflix. It's real and it happens. Just look at the uphill battle Google has fought to enter the ISP market. If a company the size of Google can't wedge their way in effectively what chance do you think someone a fraction of their net worth would have? As much as I am against the government getting into to just about anything I think it's time for another Ma' Bellesque break up of ISP territories. Too few control the only access to too many subscribers. In 2018 I should have 3 to 4 operators to choose from but I do not. Just as with water, sewer and electricity my options are limited to one. In those markets where there is only 1 choice they should be regulated like utilities until a second and third competitor enter the market place. Then return them to non-regulated entities and let them battle it out in the market place. Of course as customers we would have to agree to metered access for cost just like we do with utilities until there is competition.
Sewer. There's your apt analogy, where water and electricity didn't do the trick. In this case, though, the flow of the product is reversed. Ensuring endless amounts of competition and choice is not the way a market should work, nor does it necessarily work to the benefit of the consumer. Maybe the smart people should start working on some other shit besides games and selling stuff and delivering porn faster. Maybe we have enough internet for now. People used to have to come to my house if they wanted to steal my shit but now thanks to the internet that's all changed.
It is a little bit more then that, Verizon owns Yahoo and AOL (so think mobile, internet connection to SEO), there are a lot of commercials of T-Mobile offering free Netflix. "Just look at the uphill battle Google has fought to enter the ISP market." if you are referring to the fact that they faced the same problem/s that any other ISP had to deal with when they were stepping in the territory of another ISP - that is nothing new. TWC (now Spectrum) is/was (now sure anymore) using AT&T lines, in my area. The cost of bandwidth or total data transfer will not be covered by the content providers, but the end user. Here have 10GB of "fast" or "extra" content/media (Youtube/Netflix or whatever else) "data" for 15$/month, on top of your monthly rate for an internet connection. Netflix will be able to purchase a larger bandwidth then Hulu on Comcast for their content, that means that 4k movies will steam faster from Netflix then Hulu. However, you are going to waste your "10GB fast/base data" faster, so are you going to downgrade your Netflix app to a lower video standard? BTW CDN are already covering (for some time) the speed or "reach" issues for various online content providers. Think about online gaming, calling your friends/family that are in another country using whatever app, lots of emails, work remotely from your house & have to use online apps for work related tasks, backup your pictures online and so on vs data or bandwidth limits or extra charges from your ISP.
Senate votes to save net neutrality "The Senate voted Wednesday to preserve net neutrality, passing a measure that nullifies the FCC's decision to repeal it last December" http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/senate-votes-save-net-neutrality-article-1.3993683
This is largely symbolic... It will never pass the house, even assuming the long shot that it makes it to a vote, and if my some crazy miracle it passed the house it would still need a trump signature...
Simple, government regulations are bad for the consumer. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, tax it more.
I think the real answer is as always...it depends. It depends on which side of the cash flow you are on.
Really, today is net neutrality repeal day. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/technology/net-neutrality-repeal.html
Verizon: We won’t stop throttling the fire departments unlimited plan unless you pay triple what you pay now... even though your state is on fire and our normal policy is to not throttle during emergency situations. But who cares - we can throttle if we want to. Was throttling during emergencies and holding emergency responders hostage present before they wiped net neutrality? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...rtments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ If you don’t smoke Terryltons. Fuck you!
Throttling for the consumer of the data is there without net neutrality. You get the speed you pay for. Net neutrality deals with throttling based on where you are pulling data from. So net neutrality would be broken if they let you stream data really fast from Netflix, but really slow from Amazon video. If the fire department is hosting a web site, then that is different once again, but I don't think it is related to net neutrality, but more to the speed and volume the fire department is paying for.