utiz4321

2 hours ago, afazel said:

He's not missing the point. He's either trolling this thread (and others here and there), or intentionally ignoring the point.

Neither. The point isnt correct. 

On 11/29/2017 at 7:07 AM, superbluepsd said:

You are missing the point.   Netflix will just pass along the added cost to the end user.   This isn't about added profit, its about added cost to provide product to end user.  

They can't. They are a profit maximizing firm and demand for their produce isnt perfectly inelastic. 

Just now, tybo31316 said:

 

ISPs need to keep investing and adding capacity. YouTube and Netflix also has to have a network to send out all the video feeds to the customers of the ISPs. So should ISPs pay Netflix and YouTube for all the ISPs users accessing and using Netflix and YouTube’s data services?

 

If netflix can get them to pay, yes. But they can work that out amongst themselves. The profits of the industry isnt my concern. 

3 minutes ago, JustinRP37 said:

Not at all! Deprioritization caps are there to keep the network usable by the masses! If you provided truly unlimited wireless then data speeds would be abysmal! Wireless is not a replacement for fixed connections! Wireless is limited by spectrum, so you have to have a balancing mechanism to make sure that people can have a decent experience. 

We were talking about wired. But now that you mention it what companies are most responsible for wireless data being unusable if it we're truly unlimited? Netflix, YouTube? Hmmm....... Should they flip part of the bill?

2 minutes ago, radem said:

Where did you get that 63% number from?  I have rarely seen any home with more than 3 wires attached to it.  Those wires are electric, telephone and cable.  There is no effective internet over electric lines so that leaves 2 wired internet providers at most for homes that are wired for both telephone and cable.  I live in a suburb of Chicago which is a heavily populated area and there are only 2 wired internet providers both of which have messed with internet traffic in the past.  Both of which have low caps for the speed of the connections they offer and where they promote their own content by making it exempt from caps while doing everything they can to limit access to their competitor's content.

Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing or do you not believe the evidence that ISPs effectively have monopolies and have a desire to increase their revenue while disadvantaging their competitors?  This fundamental business desire is in conflict with the open internet that has existed for the past 20 years.  As they started to put those business desires into practice, Net Neutrality was proposed to make them common carriers.  This is not about regulating the internet, it is about keeping it open.

It isnt about keeping the internet open. It is about big content asking the government to tilt the profits of an industry towards them. It is package as keeping the internet open, but that is just a marketing. 

Low caps are the way ISP make up for not being able to charge netflex for the data they use. Caps are an effect of net neutrality not solved by it. 

3 minutes ago, superbluepsd said:

Because they are not yet paying the extra price for bandwidth that would cost them more without net neutrality.

So? If the could raise prices and increase profits (your claim) they would do it now. Why wait? That doesnt make sense. 

1 hour ago, jefbal99 said:

So much competition, ha.  My only options are capped plans from mobile providers or satellite.  No wired, no wisp, no competition, no options. I live two miles out of town, in a neighborhood, but we can't get the only cable provider to run service down here.

That sounds like you chose to live in an area with limited access to broadband. Fortunately the majority of Americans did not inflict that probelm on themselves. Only 2 percent of americans are in you position. 63 percent have more than two broadband wired choices. 

4 hours ago, superbluepsd said:

Netflix isn't going to make a little less money they will just charge the consumer more for what they are already getting..

Why dont they raise prices now then? If They arent maximizing profits now? 

21 minutes ago, tybo31316 said:

 

You must be a shareholder of some of these ISPs. There’s not much competition at all. My city has basically 2 ISPs. Comcast in the city and outlying areas. Also patches of AT&T Fiber and DSL scattered throughout bits and pieces of Comcast coverage area.

 

Wireless is cannibalizing low usage customers. I know plenty of people that use there wireless plan alone. 

Have you not seen the inovation that has taken place of the last decade on the pipe side of things? Nationalize it and that ends. What is cable was nationalized in 2000? 3mbs persecond, no wireless broadband.  That is not a world I would like to live in thanks. Markets work fine. 

47 minutes ago, ingenium said:

And that's the point you're missing, there isn't competition for most ISPs. It's a monopolistic environment. It's akin to saying to switch electric or gas companies, it's not possible. That's why it needs to be regulated just like other utilities.

Honestly, I'd take it a step further and prefer the government to own the infrastructure (fiber to the home), and then lease it to companies at a reasonable cost and contract out maintenance. That's how you ensure actual competition.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

There is a ton of competition even in equal areas and there will be more if those companies are allowed to make it a two sides market. 

21 minutes ago, JustinRP37 said:

Agree to disagree. People have presented evidence of companies trying to change the internet before net neutrality. You seem to favor the internet not being treated like a utility and I respect that. However, you cannot say that companies have not tried to change the way the internet was handled before Net Neutrality. That is where people are pointing out it HAS happened (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/13/fcc-probes-netflix-isp-fight/10439635/). You can see further what is predicted in this article (http://fortune.com/2017/11/21/net-neutrality-fcc-winners-losers/). While the Verge is not my go to news source this is a decent article (https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16710450/fcc-net-neutrality-fact-sheet-is-total-nonsense). Paid fast lanes (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-quietly-drops-promise-not-to-charge-tolls-for-internet-fast-lanes/). Throttling before net neutrality (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-throttling-bittorrent-was-no-big-deal-fcc-says/). And if you do not think ISPs charge more simply because of competition in the area, I can tell you my cable bill is lower in the NYC area than my parents in CT and in-laws in Ohio merely because my building is a FiOS and Optimum building. The building down the street has higher prices for Optimum because they cannot receive FiOS.

So yes you can make the case that prices will not increase with a repeal of net neutrality, but there is evidence that this will not be the case as noted above. The costs of these paid fast lanes will ultimately come down to the consumer. If you think Netflix is going to pay huge interconnect fees WITHOUT increasing their prices to the consumer, then I have a bridge to sell you, especially if their competitors face the same fees. And again companies have been raising the price steadily of the internet over the past few years. This will likely just increase that cost on multiple fronts (content providers like Netflix) and your ISP bill with additional fees. People do not tend to switch ISPs readily, even with price increases. Again, I'm not looking to change your mind, but I do want you to at least notice why people might be nervous/upset about this change. Saying that market will handle it, is not a good argument when most people have to purchase from a monopoly. I am fully aware that you believe the markets can and will respond and I am making the case for a market inefficiency. Whether or not the repeal of net neutrality will actually change the way the internet is handled can be debated for awhile until we actually see changes. I suspect we would see changes within the year. But you cannot use the argument that because it has not been done in the past does not mean it will not in the future. Times change and the way we consume media has drastically changed over the last 5 years. 

The verge is extremelely biased on this issue. You are not getting analys from them you are getting an agenda pushed. The guy that ran the verge on 2012 said that there was only one choice for him in the election because obama promised to push net neutrality. 

Yeah, companies may try to change the way we interact with the internet but they have failed because they need to change it in a way that adds value to the consumer and no one has figure it out. 

As far as charging netflix for preferred access I am fine with that and see no reason why that shouldnt be allowed.  That is a dispute between huge companies about who gets what profits. 

Throttling bit torrent sites continues today if they think you are violating intellectual property. The internet is a dynamic place, if you make it a public utility you are going to murder that dynamism. 

And pricing is increasing now and regardless up net neutrality. You would have to show that the increase is caused by net neutrality going away. 

1 hour ago, jefbal99 said:

Take a look at Portugal....

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-portugal-internet-20171127-story.html

That is a mobile ISP and giving people extra data for certain apps isnt the same as making the internet in to pay cable.  If you read this very deceptive article if looks like in Portugal you buy a data package and then you can add extra data for certain apps. So what? That is a good deal for people who dont use those apps much and a good deal for those that do. It makes the plans more complex but look out how it compares to the US market. 

If you are on a metered plan in the US you go over your data there where to models: one you pay 10-15 dollars per gig in overages or your internet slowed down to the end of the month. In Portugal you can by extra data for 5 euros for specific apps, that sounds like a better deal for wide segments of the comsumer base. 

The fact that the only place in the entire article it is mentioned that this is for extra data for these apps is under the graphic and it is present as if you dont have access to these apps unless you pay, shows you why you have to criticle read news articles.  These things are written with agendas in mind. 

42 minutes ago, JustinRP37 said:

My hypothesis is not evidence free. I was an economics concentration in college. If you would like I can send you some papers that study these exact cases for corporations over the years. That extra $15 would be disguised as a 'fee' and most people would not change carriers over that. Plus with ISPs there is largely no place for most customers to churn to. Fees are the best way to increase prices while not changing the overall rate. That is basic marketing. Sure Verizon could have increased my price plan for video on FiOS, but that would make it seem like a price increase. By adding an RSN fee they are making the customer feel like they had no choice but to tack on the fee based on the RSNs. Another industry to look at is the airline industry. The extra fees are everywhere. I work in academia, and I can tell you most colleges have drastically slowed down tuition increases but guess what is much higher now, fees!!! That is still revenue! 

Also, there were cases already of ISPs harming the end user experience, so I don't know what you mean by that. Many people were complaining of throttling before. There are plenty of cases out there from 2012 until Net Neutrality.

I have a b.s. in economics. So what? Your arguement is evidence free. ISP could simply raise the prices now, they could add any fees they want now. What you are talking about is a price hike and they can do it now if they wanted but apparently it doesnt maximize profits. 

The issue is wheather or not they can make this a two sides market and that is simply about were the profits for the industry go and who cares, market are more than capable of figuring that out. 

1 minute ago, JustinRP37 said:

Your whole argument is flawed. I hate to say it but just because they didn't do it prior to X date means absolutely nothing in the technology sector. The technology is evolving and therefore it will and can change. Cable companies used to post profits on the video stream into the house. Over time that has dried up as more people move to a streaming sources. The pricing strategy, likewise, has to shift. The reason behind Net Neutrality was because companies were trying to change up how data was handled (and are wanting to now). I can tell you it is a lot more complicated than you are willing to give it credit for. I know many people on the insides of these companies and I can tell you the corporations would love to be able to increase their profits from data carriage. And sorry, your Netflix example does not fly. Netflix would not be the one paying the costs, that would be passed on to the consumer. Much like when you tax companies, wealthy, etc, they can typically pass the increased costs on. Netflix itself still is not that profitable. It has huge overhead costs and has been spending money at a very high rate. 

Further, when you say 'the first company that does this will hemorrhage customers like crazy', is definitely not true. Many people only have one or two choices and usually 1 is not as good as the other (DSL versus Cable). Verizon HAS been steadily increasing FiOS internet prices over the last few years, and this year even increased video prices substantially by hitting everyone with a RSN fee (which equates to a price increase). People would be forced to shut up and pay or change the way they live. Even a $15 a month increase, while not a lot to many people, the profits will increase and people will pay. Just look at the iPhone X. Many people said nobody will pay for it, yet it looks like it was an extreme hit. Hell Verizon literally took away 4k HD steaming on the cellular side and offered it back to customers as a $10 add on! 

Just because something has not happened in the past does not mean it won't happen in the future. Companies, specifically publicly traded companies, have an obligation to the shareholder, not necessarily the customer. Usually you treat the customer okay, they will stick with you, but there are many cases where this is not true. Comcast is one of the most hated companies in America, yet continues to do well financially. Being an economics major in college I can tell you companies are always looking for a way to increase their bottom line in the long run. 

 

The past is the only evidence that we have and while it is true that the future may not look like the past at least usingnit as a guide is better than just making stuff up. 

Futher let's examine your made up, evidence free hypothesis. That an extra 15 dolllar charge for access to content people want by cable companies would cause people to leave.  If it is likily that they would do this with a cost why not just raise internet pricing? I mean that is all that it is in the end and in fact it is worse. Consumer behavior is EXTREMELY hard to change companies try at the own risk and when it comes to the internet the end user experience is I get on and do what i want without obstruction from my ISP.  That is not going to change. 

Ps. The internet hasnt changed much in a year and a half years. 

4 minutes ago, tybo31316 said:

 

 

ISPs are always looking for new innovative ways to increase revenue and profits. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that it’s not. Ending Net Neutrality is going to open the flood gates for these ISPs to do whatever they want. ISPs knows there is little to No competition in most markets in America. The year is now 2017 not 2015 or prior. Anything is possible.

 

 

The first company that does this will hemerage customers like crazy. Competition means you cant do something that would so obviously piss off your consumers. And any move to package the internet that increases the end user cost isnt going to happen. Let these mega corps fight out who gets what profits, it make no never mind to me or you. 

9 minutes ago, jefbal99 said:

Do you want to be nickle and dimed for every service you want to use?

Example...

Comcast/Xfinity is your ISP, you pay say $70/month, so all the NBC Universal Streaming services are untiered, they want you to use their services, view their commercials, etc

But wait, you want ESPN GO, Fox Sports Go, NBA League Pass, MLS Live, etc then in addition to paying the provider for those services, you need yo pay Comcast an extra $5/month

Hold on, you love you social media platforms, well Twitter, Instagram, facebook, reddit, etc are going to cost you $5/month

Oh you like video streaming? Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Paramount, etc kick Comcast about $15/month, on top of paying for the services.

You might still be able to use all these services for your $70/month, but the data rates will be heavily capped or rate shaped to extort more money from you.

Couple years down the road, new ISP pops up and you switch because its the same $70 for faster speeds.  Uh oh, its not Xfinity any longer, so all those NBC Universal streaming services that have been given network priority at no cost to you, stump up $25/month to the new ISP.

As noted earlier, just because this hasn't happened, doesn't mean it won't.  Corporations a greedy and will squeeze every penny they can out of every side of a business deal to drive up stock prices.  There isn't any competition in the Wired Internet market because the infrastructure is so freaking expensive and so hard to deploy with the myraid of local government regulations.

More sand castles in the sky. It didnt have anytime before net neutrality (2015) and it wont happen now. The cable package comparison make zero sense if you think about it for just five seconds.  The internet has not had net neutrality regulations for its entire history out side of the last year and a half and no one has been able to package the internet in the way you are talking. 

5 hours ago, Trip said:

What?  They have every incentive.  If they can make video streaming from providers other than themselves so expensive that nobody uses it, that benefits them.  Innovation on the Internet threatens their profits.  And since in most places, there is no competition in the home Internet access space from anyone except another provider with its own video service (think Verizon FiOS TV versus Comcast), the market won't be able to correct this behavior.  Even if you count wireless, AT&T and Verizon now own their own streaming services and would benefit from pushing you to those as well. 

- Trip

(This comment is my own and does not necessarily reflect the view of my employer, the FCC.)

That isnt true. People have to want to go to the internet to want to pay for the ISP. the content providers are not going to be chanrge so much, nor will content providers be able to pass the cost on to consumer. Look, why would the ISP s just charge consumers more per gig so that it would be prohibatively expensive for them to stream video? That is another way the could go even in a net neutral environment, but guess what, they havent done it. Weird thing is it doesn't maximize profits. They arent going to charge the other side of the market so much that they make netflix so expensice no one would use it, that would kill their business because that is what people want to use on the internet, why they want to pay for ISPs. 

You guys are scaring youselves with fantastic outcomes that arent coming to happen and dont make sense, all to protect the profits of big content. It is going to be fine if Netflix makes a little less money.  

3 minutes ago, ingenium said:

Netflix is just an example here. Netflix may be able to afford it, but not a new entrant to the market. Look at YouTube when they first started. It prevents new players from entering the market in the future, not even necessarily in video, but anything bandwidth heavy. The logistics of paying extra to every ISP as a startup is absurd and logically insurmountable. You basically lock in the current players as the content providers going forward.

As a customer, you pay for the bandwidth, the ISP shouldn't care what it's being used for. Charge the customer what you need to to handle the costs for the level of bandwidth they subscribe to, don't try to double dip and charge the other end as well.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

You are missing the point. They are a symbiotic industry. One cant exist with out the other. ISPs have no inceitive to destroy innovation on the internet. Small companies wont be effected until they become large consumers of bandwidth, I.e. large content providers. The innovation of the internet is good for the ISP s. 

14 minutes ago, ingenium said:

Or if the ISP decides they don't want to pay more for Netflix and pull access to it, like cable and satellite providers do all the time when they have a contract/price dispute with a channel.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

If netflix doesnt want to pay? That is who they are tryinf to charge. Look, these companies are more than able of figuring out the costs and pricing for the delievery of content. The government should just let them. I dont see why the government would be better able to fihure out the proper pricing of content delivery. 

Just now, tybo31316 said:

 

 

That makes sense. I don’t like the idea of ISPs being gatekeepers. We all know that the cable cos are losing video customers to cord cutting. They may want to block the competitors offerings and promote their own.

 

 

I think there are some free speach issues that i am concerned about but that extends to platform owners like Facebook and google. I think these platforms have become so ubiquitous that i am uncomfortable with a hand full of companies having the ability to restrict access to them. But that can exist in a net neutrality environment, so that isnt a solution to the problem I am concered with. 

34 minutes ago, radem said:

I care that I can send and receive whatever traffic I want on my connection without my ISP deciding what I should be able to use.  I use my wired connection for work and for entertainment.  I transfer a lot of data and I do not want anyone messing with my traffic in any way.

The FCC has decided that with 3 nationwide wireless providers there would not be enough competition but with most areas having 2 wired ISPs or less, that the monopoly practices of the wired ISPs are just fine with them.

Why wouod the FCC have any idea what they "right" amount of wireless carriers are? Unless you consume 1 percent of the internet traffic at any given time you have little to worry about fron your ISP. ISPs do currently restrict torrenting because they can be held libel for their users actions. if that was gone, they wouldnt care. 

25 minutes ago, tybo31316 said:

 

If ISPs charge Netflix to plug into their network. Who do you think is going to pay for the additional costs that Netflix is charged?

The US consumers will.

 

It depends on the depends on the  elasticity of demand for Netflix, which I would think is rather high, meaning Netflix would pay most of the addition cost. Look, why wouldnt the ISPs just raise prices on consumers by the amount they want to extract from Netflix? The same reason, elasticities of demand. It wont raise costs to consumers, it just adjusts the distrabution of profits. 

1 minute ago, radem said:

Yes, they were starting to mess with traffic and that is why Net Neutrality was put into effect.  It started with a demand that Netflix pay your ISP to carry high speed traffic to you over the ISP interconnections without being throttled.  They also started messing with torrent traffic to keep people from using torrenting programs.  Now they have low caps on high speed connections while exempting their own content from their caps or forcing their competitors streaming products to lower bandwidth so they have an inferior product.  I have to pay $30 extra each month to so that I can go over 1TB of data download in a household were I often work from home and all our entertainment is streaming.

Net Neutrality was supposed to be about forcing ISPs to be dumb carriers and not allowing them to mess with any traffic that they carry. Without it we will continue down the path of monopoly ISPs deciding what internet traffic to pass to and from their customers and at what speed.

You are mixing up different things into the net neutrality basket. ISP were messing and are messing with torrent sites because content providers were threatening them with law suits. The part about netflix is true but why do you carw who gets what profits? 

2 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

“They basically took $140 away from me because I’m naive.”

That’s all you need to know about this person/situation. Everybody else’s responsibility but his.

Exactly that. The victim culture needs to die and die hard. You went into the store signed up for the lease, you need to educate yourself about what it was you were signing up for. If they lied to you that is fraud, if you simply didnt educate yourself that is on you. 

1 hour ago, tybo31316 said:

 

I would hate for our internet plan to looks like Cable packages.

 

They haven't at anypoint from the creation of the internet to 2015 when net neutrality went into effect.