Federal appeals court strikes down net neutrality rules

[DontSayBanana]

• A local, smallish ISP, notices that 10% of its clients uses bittorent and other P2P protocols, but these 10% take up 95% of the bandwith, making it so that non torrent users get slow speed when trying to access a website.  Under net neutrality, the ISP can not do anything about it.  As it is now, they can throttle down the BitTorrent protocols.

Actually, this has already caused a stink.  Around 2008-2009, Comcast picked up Sandvine software to start scanning for and throttling BitTorrent traffic- it was around the same time that Comcast and Verizon were starting to pick up some massive flack for instituting bandwidth caps (really low ones, too- Verizon was trying to push something like a 200MB/month data cap).

[Neil]

• Disney, through one of its subsidiaries owns a large ISP in America.  Under net neutrality law, all content must be accessed equal.  If no net neutrality law, they could throttle down the speed for streaming content other than their own.  It's highly unlikely such a scenario would happen, because in a fair market, consumers would drop Disney's ISP in favour of another, open one.

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies that should be nationalized.

[Admiral Yi]

?

[Maximus]

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies

For ground-based ISPs this is correct. For wireless there is some competition

[The Brain]

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies

For ground-based ISPs this is correct.

What?

[DontSayBanana]

What?

The FCC has extra teeth when it comes to wireless data providers.  Verizon tried to cry "common carrier" to the courts in December, but the courts pointed out that since they're using radio spectrum, the FCC does have jurisdiction to regulate them.  It's actually probably a big chunk of why the net neutrality rules got struck, in fact.

http://www.commlawblog.com/tags/common-carrier/

[The Brain]

US ground-based ISPs are regional monopolies?

[Valmy]

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies

For ground-based ISPs this is correct. For wireless there is some competition

Then why can I choose between my cable and my phone provider for my ground based internet service?

[Neil]

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies

For ground-based ISPs this is correct. For wireless there is some competition

Then why can I choose between my cable and my phone provider for my ground based internet service?

Because you're in the minority.

[Ideologue]

There is no competition in the US for ISPs.  They are regional monopolies

For ground-based ISPs this is correct. For wireless there is some competition

Then why can I choose between my cable and my phone provider for my ground based internet service?

All of two choices?  What a radical free market it is!

Nationalize it.  And this isn't even me being a commie; like Neil said, it's like the roads being owned by private corporations.  Or banks.

[Ed Anger]

*takes a drink*

[dps]

My local phonebook lists 7 ISPs, and the ISP I use isn't even one of them, so I take the assertion that there is no competition among ISP with a huge grain of salt.

[KRonn]

Viper, thanks for the info and links on Net Neutrality. As you say though, it seems good or bad either way it goes, though I think now I'd favor Net Neutrality.

[Iormlund]

My local phonebook lists 7 ISPs, and the ISP I use isn't even one of them, so I take the assertion that there is no competition among ISP with a huge grain of salt.

How many of those own infrastructure, though? There was a time when there were dozens if not hundreds of ISPs in Spain, yet pretty much all leased the local loop from Telefónica, so actual competition was non-existent.

[MadImmortalMan]

They all lease their loops. Currently, the owners aren't allowed to deny their competitors access to the infrastructure or discriminate between them. In my experience, the guys who own them always try to sell you on the fact that the competitors are leasing from them so they have a market advantage, but they don't beat the others in price any more often than the competitors beat them.