Obama speaks out in favor of Net Neutrality; Ted Cruz likens it to "Obamacare"

The free market doesn't gaurantee that those 30% of americans will have more than one choice. its really expensive to be a internet company and then obama regulation makes it even more expensive. if we get rid of the fcc and all red tape, more companies might become another comcast or att. if the liberals want regulation so bad and without any respect for free market, they should move to russia or china.

as a voter who one day may become a executive of fortune 500 company i trust companies like verizon and comcast. you dont make billions if youre not smart. i trust smart business people over corrupt and power hungry politicans like elizabeth warren and eric holder.

 

You are misunderstanding net neutrality completely when you discuss things like 100mbps vs 30 or whatever your options are.

That's the big problem here. People don't actually understand how the internet works outside of their own experience.

This is a simplistic explanation, but in a nutshell, Comcast sells you internet access at 100mbps. You try to access Netflix or go to www.google.com and the website runs much slower than 100mbps. Why? Because Comcast is manually lowering the speed that you can access those services as because it is wanting them to pay up as well.

Basically they are charging you for an access speed but then charging the website/service you try to use an additional fee or they don't give you the speed you are paying for.

It's more complicated than that, but it's a way to think about it.

Here's an example. You go to the post office and pay $15 for something to be overnighted. You pay and leave. The post office then calls the person you are shipping to and says "unless you pay us an additional $15 we are going to ship this regular mail." Would that be a fair business practice? You've already paid for the mail!

Or DirecTV. I pay for HD. Should DirecTV then go to say CBS and demand an extra $100 million or they will lower the quality of CBS signal manually and only broadcast it in SD despite me paying for HD?

 

You are absolutely nuts if you think business owners are more noble or less power hungry than politicians. "Trusting" either party to look out for your best interests is dumb.

 

Imagine if Clutchfans had a bigger impact on the Houston community than it does (sorry Clutch) and during this whole CSN dispute clutchfans was protesting against CSN and calling for it to be disbanded or something.

According to some of you, Comcast should have the right to just deny access to clutchfans to users if it wants to.

 

So if there was more open and fair competition, you could choose a service that doesn't do such things. Right? The rules as they are allow these ISPs to have such control over the industry that it's very difficult for small companies who can offer different services to come into the market. A freer marker would allow you to choose which company you want. A company that wants to streamline service for Hulu, or a company that gives equal speeds to everyone.

Does net neutrality mean that those NOT streaming get slower speeds? IE does millions of people streaming videos slow down internet speeds, or does it remain the same?

No need for the faces. I am trying to be open about my misunderstanding of the issue, rather than picking a side and digging in my heels.

 

LOL, you don't need to go that far back in time, nor distance...

 

Like I said, I don't understand the issue very well...hence why I am asking questions.

If your provider chooses to slow down your internet, why can't you just switch providers to one that doesn't do that? Why can't there be free-market solutions that give companies the right to choose how to offer their services? I don't think DirectTV owes me anything than what I pay for. If I pay for HD channels, they have to deliver me HD channels. If they refuse to give me HD channels, and I have paid for them, than I cancel my service and move to someone who does.

I have a hard time believing your analogy fits, because you are paying for a service in a contract.

From what I thought I understood, the internet is slightly regulated right now, there is a basic speed and then you can get additional speeds like I paid for. I am okay with an provider restricting access, so long as I am aware of it when I sign my contract. But right now I am offered 100mbps no matter what. Should that change, I would cancel my contract. I can't find another option though because there is no competition. There is no competition because the rules are written this way.

A company can't offer you a service and then not give it to you unless another company (CBS in your analogy) doesn't pay up...wouldn't that be a breach of contract?

 

Exactly. If liberals don't like one company they can switch to a different. That is the free market. That is freedom. That is America. The govt getting involved and keeping the internet open is what they do in Europe and Russia and other socialist places. Support Ted Cruz!

 

So why is your solution to regulate it more? Why not adopt rules that foster competition? Why is this the only solution?

I just have a hard time understanding why I deserve equal access to everything? If certain things cost more to run (large streaming sites like NetFlix) why should I subsidize it if I am not using it? That's what this feels like to me. People who want fast access to NetFlix don't want to pay more...so they want us all to pay the same, so that it makes up the difference.

 

What ISPs want to do is charge you for service (say 100Mbs) but then throttle certain traffic unless those companies also pay them. So you could be paying for 100Mbs but Netflix would be throttled to 1Mbs unless they pay your ISP a fee as well or not give them an option to pay just to eliminate them as a competitor. In which case you aren't getting what you pay for.

And due to the infrastructure required to deliver high speed internet it's difficult to have many options.

 

That being said, I don't think there is much competition in many places. Which is why Republicans/Ted Cruz should be offering up an alternate solution. Same with the ACA.

 

That's not an incentive to pass regulation, that's incentive to increase competition (this is almost always done be deregulation).

 

They aren't perfect analogies because there are no perfect comparisons to the internet. I've offered a few, including the highway example.

However, your argument about just switching to someone who doesn't throttle down speed doesn't work for a few reasons.
1) You likely don't know that your access is being throttled. If Netflix isn't working well, chances are you are going to blame netflix. You have no way of knowing that they are throttling your speed. If you go to speedtest or something like that you will still register at the speed you are paying for (or close to it) because they aren't throttling there.

2) Not everyone has multiple choices. The free market hasn't produced viable competition in lots of places, in part because of collusion among the existing ISPs

To your statement about a contract issue, again, the odds that you will know that is what is happening are slim to none unless the service/website makes a big enough stink that it makes news. Netflix is a case in point. Comcast DID throttle down access to Netflxi and many Netflix subscribers were unaware and just thought Netflix didn't work as well, dropping Netflix.

Lawyers for ATT admitted before Congress that if laws changed (at the time laws were different) that they would pursue deals with websites and service providers to restrict the access of consumers to only those that were willing to pay. Think of that, you may sign up for Comcast or Uverse and get 50mbps, but you can't access youtube because they aren't paying a rights fee.

 

I don't see a problem with this, so long as it is in the contract. The rules should make it to where companies have to disclose these things, then you can choose which provider you want--the one that offers equal slower speeds to everything, or one that has a fast lane for certain services.

This is assuming there is more competition.

Why isn't the solution to make the market freer so that you CAN have options? I would agree that net neutrality beats none if all other things are equal. But why can't there be alternative solution that achieves the same goals while simultaneously fostering innovation and competition?

 

When you say "the rules should make it..." I'm assuming this means you are for regulation? LOL

So we SHOULD regulate the internet just not in the way that "Liberals" or people with "Netflix who want you to subsidize their access" have suggested?

By the way, I'm not a liberal and I don't have Netflix.

I also said at the beginning that I'm not sure I'm for turning it into a utility but I'm also not in favor of the Ted Cruz position, which by the way is not strictly a Republican/Tea Party position.

 

Which is why they should have to disclose these things. These could be rules the FCC could adopt, rather than net neutrality, while also adopting rules that help foster competition and end monopolies.

Back to my first point -- fix THIS and you have a solution, imo.

Again, transparency rules.

At the end of the day, I don't feel I am owed anything here. All of this is entertainment. I feel like people are demanding that they get better access to their entertainment, even if it costs more for others who don't necessarily need the same service.

 

Did I ever say I was opposed to all regulation? I am opposed to people demanding things they are not owed, imo. This is a service I buy. If that service company wants to change the way they run their company, and I don't like it--I will stop using that service...not demand that it be changed so I am happy.

I want a free market. I want competition. I want to choose what I buy based on what I need and I want others to do the same. I am not opposed to laws? I don't know how you got that impression. I am opposed to writing the rules so that the consumer is the only one who benefits here because, again, I don't think I am owed the internet or equal access to all sites. I don't own this material. I pay to use it.

I don't think it has anything to do with liberals or conservatives. There are plenty of conservatives who support net neutrality.

Net neutrality > no regulation changes, sure. But I would prefer regulation changes that actually allow for competition and a free market in the internet industry.

 

Ted Cruz's position is that if it comes from Obama, it's wrong. That's his entire agenda and what got him elected, so why change?

 

Out of curiosity, do you think a phone company should be able to block calls to their competitors, or reduce the quality of the call if you want to call say WalMart's Customer Service# and make it a really bad static connection unless Walmart pays them a fee? Would that be something that should be regulated or fair game?