FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Departure Is Death Knell For Net Neutrality

ianken said:
Get ready for the "Comcast Blast Streaming Package," only $29.95 to access your favorite streaming services! For twelve months, then the price goes to $49.95. This can be waived if you use the Netflix app on your X1 set top box.

It's going to be a shit show. You think Comcast and Time Warner suck balls now? The ball sucking has just begun! ROFL.

I'm to cynical to see any other outcome.
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Because this is exactly how Internet services worked before "Net Neutrality" /s
They could have done this before the FCC rulings, but didn't. They had a financial incentive to do it before the FCC ruling, but didn't. The thoughts of doing this were highly publicized for years before the FCC ruling, but not a single ISP even attempted anything like this!

While Net Neutrality may be ok in theory, reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is exactly the wrong way to enforce it. If the Internet is a public utility, this opens the door for all sorts of government regulation that will kill the Internet as the medium for the free flow of information and ideas. Thus if the previous FCC ruling for "Net Neutrality" is reversed, it should be welcomed as a good thing by Net Neutrality proponents, so it can be done correctly.
 
I -STRONGLY- suggest anyone who thinks Net Neutrality isn't important go read up on the Robber Barrons of the late 1800s/early 1900s. Captains of Industry only continue to be industrious until they've hit peak market saturation, then they turn all of their focus on suppressing competition. This has almost without question been the case in almost every category of industry.

The cable companies enjoyed a near monopoly for a long time, until satellite stepped in. And prices were good, competition increased, quality of service increased, cable companies were forced to branch into using their preexisting coax lines for ISP service. Now, the ISPs and the TV providers are combining, again. And they're looking to monopolize both your content, and your delivery. Back door deals will become common place. Places where ATT has an advantage, Comcast will politely bow out, and vice versa. They'll then be free to exponentially increase charges on both the content providers and the customer's access. There will be zero reason to increase quality to the consumer, there will be zero effective competition. Even Google has struggled to make inroads on these bastions of ISP dominance. This is going to go from bad to worse, and we'll all be forced to not only pay $100/mo for our garbage 10mb line, but then an extra transmission fee for our Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, PSN......oh, unless you decide to also pay for their "Deluxe Digital Cable" which you wouldn't want otherwise.

Free market only works when the players are playing by the same rules. Remove Net Neutrality and Comcast becomes the dickhead you play Monopoly with who says F-it, flips the board over, takes all the money out of the bank, and claims they won.

jardows said:
Because this is exactly how Internet services worked before "Net Neutrality" /s
They could have done this before the FCC rulings, but didn't. They had a financial incentive to do it before the FCC ruling, but didn't. The thoughts of doing this were highly publicized for years before the FCC ruling, but not a single ISP even attempted anything like this!

While Net Neutrality may be ok in theory, reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is exactly the wrong way to enforce it. If the Internet is a public utility, this opens the door for all sorts of government regulation that will kill the Internet as the medium for the free flow of information and ideas. Thus if the previous FCC ruling for "Net Neutrality" is reversed, it should be welcomed as a good thing by Net Neutrality proponents, so it can be done correctly.
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Well, one, I assure you, this was either being done behind the scenes or in process of roll-out...I have friends who are/were engineers at cable/ISP providers who were working on just such solutions but were on hold pending the outcome of the legislation.
Two, we've seen telecom mergers happen since the ruling that make abuse of the system FAR more likely and easier to enact.
 
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westrock2000 said:
As an ISP, if you have 5 websites that account for say 80% of you total traffic, why do those limited sites get to bind up the bandwidth with no consequence? As an ISP, if you have to choose between 20 households watching Netflix with no interruptions, or 300 households visiting Twitter with no interuptions, which do you choose? Why does every router have a Quality of Service mechanism in it? Why should a video game or video stream get preferred treatment of a text website?
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BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE PAY FOR! If they can't deliver the bandwidth, then that is THEIR FAULT for promising something they can't deliver after they accepted OUR payment.
 
westrock2000 said:
Did I mention ACA? It's a great example I will admit.

You must have insurance to drive a car on public roads?

Many (most?) businesses are required to take out insurance for employees.

And of course most financial institutes require it for loans on automotive and housing, which affects most people in this country ( I realize this isn't "government").

Don't get so worked up.
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There's a difference between drivers insurance and health insurance.

1. Driving is optional. And if you do drive, you put OTHERS at risk. So you have to do the responsible thing and pay up. I got hit by someone who had no insurance. He was on the hook for over $25,000. Good thing I had "No insurance" coverage on my policy or I would have sued his ass.

2. If you don't get health insurance, the only thing you are affecting is your OWN health. There is no collateral damage if YOU get cancer or have a stroke, or a bad accident.
 
jardows said:
Because this is exactly how Internet services worked before "Net Neutrality" /s
They could have done this before the FCC rulings, but didn't. They had a financial incentive to do it before the FCC ruling, but didn't. The thoughts of doing this were highly publicized for years before the FCC ruling, but not a single ISP even attempted anything like this!
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They are already doing this even with Net Neutrality. They just present it differently. They give you all-you-can-eat free bandwidth to their chosen services, and anything else comes out of your quota -- which of course is small and restrictive.

Oh look at this: https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/verizon-plan/ Verizon allows you to watch NFL for free, but anything else you have to pay for.
 
DocSavage said:
It's a lot cheaper and easier for an isp to add backbone connections than it is to add highway lanes. I think it took Comcast less than two weeks to add capacity last time Netflix paid them off.
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The cost is irrelevant. The point is that there is precedence for paying for preferential treatment.

DigitalGriffin said:
BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE PAY FOR! If they can't deliver the bandwidth, then that is THEIR FAULT for promising something they can't deliver after they accepted OUR payment.
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You paid for "up to X bandwidth", not "guaranteed bandwidth". That is the way the language has always been.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
There's a difference between drivers insurance and health insurance.

1. Driving is optional. And if you do drive, you put OTHERS at risk. So you have to do the responsible thing and pay up. I got hit by someone who had no insurance. He was on the hook for over $25,000. Good thing I had "No insurance" coverage on my policy or I would have sued his ass.

2. If you don't get health insurance, the only thing you are affecting is your OWN health. There is no collateral damage if YOU get cancer or have a stroke, or a bad accident.
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Yeah that would be true (#2) if we got rid of all common decency and let you die quietly with no access whatsoever like going to the ER.
 
This wouldn't be as big of a deal if we actually had a choice in ISPs....most markets are served by a single company, giving you really any other opportunity to move to someone else if your tired of your ISP's BS.
 
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Really tired of posting this ( and the worse part is the new government is not even in power yet)
 
Uvaman2 said:
Yeah that would be true (#2) if we got rid of all common decency and let you die quietly with no access whatsoever like going to the ER.
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Look my wife is a specialist in this area working the medical field for 20 years. She has been on countless committees at the state and federal level trying to change health care. I was often drafted into those task with her, listening to her observations and data on health care and those able to pay.

So here's what happens: (And I'll keep it simple as this is a very VERY COMPLEX ISSUE)

An ER or doctor can not turn away a patient for emergency services regardless of the ability to pay. Those who are DIRT POOR are already covered by medicaid. But they need to sign up for it before big bills hit. If you can't afford to pay then the hospital eats that cost. But they try to offset that with cost shifting onto people like me who are covered up the wazoo. But if you don't have medicaid, and you don't pay for insurance or work out a payment plan with the hospital, then you deserve to go broke...just like that dummy that totaled our car and put us in the ER who didn't have insurance.

You know what ER's are going broke the most? If you look at a map of Emergency rooms closing shop because they went broke, you would see they are all along border. Care to guess who their biggest clients are? Numbers are a @#$%@#$. It takes money to run the best health care system in the world. Yeah this makes me a cold hard ass. But if no one pays, then there will be no system in the first place.

Nothing personal but MOST of the uninsured own stupidity for not planning for high risk expensive items like I mentioned above. How many buy houses bigger than they need? How many make car payments instead of driving jelopes? How many have credit card debt? How many have $700 phones they replace every 2 years with $100/month plans. How many have cable subscriptions over $100? How many waste money smoking 2 cartons or more a month? All of that would more than pay for health insurance. Is your health worth less than having a big house, watching the Kardashians, or a new car which will hit half value within 1 year?

I put a ton away. Do you know how?
Monthly house payment <20% of income
Car payment: None...ever
Credit card payment: None...ever
Phones: $25/month on republic wireless. Basic phone is over 4 years old.
Cable: $50/month data only + $10/netflix + Free AOTA

That said ACA is a failure. Rates are going up 20% this past year. The average deductible for a family is over $13,000, and the average premium over $10,000. It didn't make anything affordable. You COULD get catastrophic care plans for things like stroke and cancer for $6,000/year before ACA. Not anymore.
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
Look my wife is a specialist in this area working the medical field for 20 years. She has been on countless committees at the state and federal level trying to change health care. I was often drafted into those task with her, listening to her observations and data on health care and those able to pay.

So here's what happens: (And I'll keep it simple as this is a very VERY COMPLEX ISSUE)

An ER or doctor can not turn away a patient for emergency services regardless of the ability to pay. Those who are DIRT POOR are already covered by medicaid. But they need to sign up for it before big bills hit. If you can't afford to pay then the hospital eats that cost. But they try to offset that with cost shifting onto people like me who are covered up the wazoo. But if you don't have medicaid, and you don't pay for insurance or work out a payment plan with the hospital, then you deserve to go broke...just like that dummy that totaled our car and put us in the ER who didn't have insurance.

You know what ER's are going broke the most? If you look at a map of Emergency rooms closing shop because they went broke, you would see they are all along border. Care to guess who their biggest clients are? Numbers are a @#$%@#$. It takes money to run the best health care system in the world. Yeah this makes me a cold hard ass. But if no one pays, then there will be no system in the first place.

Nothing personal but MOST of the uninsured own stupidity for not planning for high risk expensive items like I mentioned above. How many buy houses bigger than they need? How many make car payments instead of driving jelopes? How many have credit card debt? How many have $700 phones they replace every 2 years with $100/month plans. How many have cable subscriptions over $100? How many waste money smoking 2 cartons or more a month? All of that would more than pay for health insurance. Is your health worth less than having a big house, watching the Kardashians, or a new car which will hit half value within 1 year?

I put a ton away. Do you know how?
Monthly house payment <20% of income
Car payment: None...ever
Credit card payment: None...ever
Phones: $25/month on republic wireless. Basic phone is over 4 years old.
Cable: $50/month data only + $10/netflix + Free AOTA

That said ACA is a failure. Rates are going up 20% this past year. The average deductible for a family is over $13,000, and the average premium over $10,000. It didn't make anything affordable. You COULD get catastrophic care plans for things like stroke and cancer for $6,000/year before ACA. Not anymore.
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Sooo, let them die on the cheap?
Another solution would be socialize the whole thing.
Very much contrary to the ISP stuff, which would definitely be open up the flood gates to competition, might even cure the pesky neutrality stuff too, since that would be open to competition on the other end too (content providers).
 
Uvaman2 said:
Sooo, let them die on the cheap?
Another solution would be socialize the whole thing.
Very much contrary to the ISP stuff, which would definitely be open up the flood gates to competition, might even cure the pesky neutrality stuff too, since that would be open to competition on the other end too (content providers).
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Well you could get cheap health care. I heard Cuba has a great one. *smirks*

Basically socialized health care is a failure as well. In England they had "unacceptable emergency room wait times" So you know what they did? Hospitals made people wait in ambulances for hours just so they would have better numbers to make them look better. But if you want to look much closer to home as to what socialized healthcare does, look at the VA and the scandals they have. We have the BEST health care in the world in the USA BAR NONE. I didn't say we have the best health, but we have the best health care when you look at the average hospital and the kind of care you can get. If you don't believe me, google "Best hospitals in the world" Want to take a guess what percentage of them have USA flags by their name? Good hospitals TAKE MONEY.
 
GT98 said:
This wouldn't be as big of a deal if we actually had a choice in ISPs....most markets are served by a single company, giving you really any other opportunity to move to someone else if your tired of your ISP's BS.
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And the fact is, maybe this is an industry where free market competition isn't the best solution.

For example, does it really make sense for ten different companies to run fiber to all the houses in my neighborhood? Seems hugely wasteful and inefficient.

So perhaps we need to rethink how we handle wired internet connectivity... and perhaps still leave it free-market, but regulated the way was done with Texas and electricity. You don't need ten independent power grids, just one, but you can purchase your electricity from anyone on the grid, and the big guys wiring new neighborhoods and the like do so with cost reimbursed so there is no risk or downside to ensuring everyone is hooked up.

So something like powertochoose.com with ISPs would be a great solution where I own my own modem, and can just shop from 30 different ISPs with internet packages of my choosing and just one fiber connection to my home.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Well you could get cheap health care. I heard Cuba has a great one. *smirks*

Basically socialized health care is a failure as well. In England they had "unacceptable emergency room wait times" So you know what they did? Hospitals made people wait in ambulances for hours just so they would have better numbers to make them look better. But if you want to look much closer to home as to what socialized healthcare does, look at the VA and the scandals they have. We have the BEST health care in the world in the USA BAR NONE. I didn't say we have the best health, but we have the best health care when you look at the average hospital and the kind of care you can get. If you don't believe me, google "Best hospitals in the world" Want to take a guess what percentage of them have USA flags by their name? Good hospitals TAKE MONEY.
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So its good health insurance went up then, ACA working fine in maintaining our top care I assume.
Socialized can be made to work our bodies break, and as a society we should provide decent care for all.
Same with the ISP, other countries make free market work there, I don't know the complexities, I am sure there are many, but it can work.. I am sure we could make it work too.
 
Ducman69 said:
And the fact is, maybe this is an industry where free market competition isn't the best solution.

For example, does it really make sense for ten different companies to run fiber to all the houses in my neighborhood? Seems hugely wasteful and inefficient.

So perhaps we need to rethink how we handle wired internet connectivity... and perhaps still leave it free-market, but regulated the way was done with Texas and electricity. You don't need ten independent power grids, just one, but you can purchase your electricity from anyone on the grid, and the big guys wiring new neighborhoods and the like do so with cost reimbursed so there is no risk or downside to ensuring everyone is hooked up.

So something like powertochoose.com with ISPs would be a great solution where I own my own modem, and can just shop from 30 different ISPs with internet packages of my choosing and just one fiber connection to my home.
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Sounds like a really good solution to me. But it's a bit more complicated than that. The data itself, 1 MB to 40TB essentially cost the same. The data is essentially free once the hardware is in place. What makes it expensive is the hardware that allows that bandwidth. They could all tap into the same cable line and it would be cheap there, but providing a backbone would get expensive. So are you going to regulate the cost of infrastructure? (Which would defeat the purpose of line sharing ISP's as most of the cost goes to the infrastructure company) Or are you going to force the ISP's to provide their own backbone to tap into the cable. (Which is expensive and requires lots of zoning approvals so on and so on that created this mess in the first place.)

This is in contrast to utilities which must PRODUCE electricity over and over (the bulk of the cost) even though the network of power-lines is in place (minimal cost).

I'm open to ideas on how to solve that.
 
Uvaman2 said:
Socialized can be made to work
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Every example so far has failed or doesn't live up to the level of care you receive in the USA. I mean have you been in some foreign hospitals? Some of them can be quite scary. I've seen hospitals in Europe that still use group rooms where 20 or more people are stuffed in the same room side by side. I won't even get into health care in Africa. That doesn't mean you won't find top notch trauma, cancer, and rehab hospitals in Europe. But they are fewer and further between.

And if the VA is any indicator of being "forced to work" then we are doomed! Now some people go down to places like Ecuador or Panama for surgery because it's so much cheaper there. About 1/3 the cost here. Well that works because they have a different pay scale. $50,000 to them is BIG MONEY. But you still aren't receiving the level of care there that you are here.

As the old axiom goes: You get what you pay for.
 
spydermonkey said:
I'm fairly certain we don't have the best healthcare in the world. In fact, I'm pretty sure we don't even rank in the top 10. France is number one on most lists I've found.
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Umm no.
http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/world

Wow look at all those USA flags...This is not the only website that measures these stats and agrees with them.

Sadly we don't have the best health in the world, which is a different metric. The happiest people are the Danes and the healthiest (based on longevity) are the Japanese I believe.

Here's another case in point: Man with perforated ulcer. You could get that taken care of at just about any hospital here. Well a man in Vietnam had to fly to Bangkok to get the required surgery. Cost $80,000+

Look who has the most technologically advanced hospitals:

http://www.topmastersinhealthcare.com/30-most-technologically-advanced-hospitals-in-the-world/

Look who has some of the most architecturally modern and beautiful hospitals in the world (how modern a hospital appears is a large deciding influence at where mothers and cancer patients chose their hospital believe it or not)

http://www.healthcarebusinesstech.com/the-25-most-beautiful-hospital-designs-in-the-world/
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
Umm no.
http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/world

Wow look at all those USA flags...This is not the only website that measures these stats and agrees with them.

Sadly we don't have the best health in the world, which is a different metric. The happiest people are the Danes and the healthiest (based on longevity) are the Japanese I believe.
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That's a really bad page to use, because that site is specifically ranking hospitals based solely on their web pages + papers produced (sourced via google scholar). Quality of care was not even factored for the ranking.


http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/Methodology

Size (S). Number of pages recovered from four engines: Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead. For each engine, results are log-normalised to 1 for the highest value. Then for each domain, maximum and minimum results are excluded and every institution is assigned a rank according to the combined sum.
Visibility (V). The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search, Live Search and Exalead. For each engine, results are log-normalised to 1 for the highest value and then combined to generate the rank.
Rich Files (R). After evaluation of their relevance to academic and publication activities and considering the volume of the different file formats, the following were selected: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). These data were extracted using Google and merging the results for each filetype after log-normalising in the same way as described before.
Scholar (Sc). Google Scholar provides the number of papers and citations for each academic domain. These results from the Scholar database represent papers, reports and other academic items.
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Neb said:
That's a really bad page to use, because that site is specifically ranking hospitals based solely on their web pages + papers produced (sourced via google scholar). Quality of care was not even factored for the ranking.
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You are right research is not the only metric. But I have seen plenty of other rankings which rank based on their ability to treat. Trauma level, staff to patient ratio, medical hardware (CAT, PET, MRI, etc...) qualifications of doctors, and the types of surgery they provide (ie: heart, cancer, neurosurgery) We consistently rank at the top. And I added two links above which help prove this.

Do the google and tell me I'm wrong. I could provide you professional trade magazines with the real meat and potatoes, but they cost money to access.

Even in countries like Sweden where health care is largely subsidized, they still have plenty of private care hospitals which you pay a crap load of money to go to to get better care.

Quality care cost money.
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
You are right research is not the only metric. But I have seen plenty of other rankings which rank based on their ability to treat. Trauma level, staff to patient ratio, medical hardware (CAT, PET, MRI, etc...) qualifications of doctors, and the types of surgery they provide (ie: heart, cancer, neurosurgery) We consistently rank at the top. And I added two links above which help prove this.

Do the google and tell me I'm wrong. I could provide you professional trade magazines with the real meat and potatoes, but they cost money to access.

Quality care cost money.
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I just wanted to point out that it's not a valid link to show that stateside hospitals perform well. That site gives 50% of it's rating to web links, 20% to size of the web page, 15% to attachment files, and 15% to Google Scholar references. It literally gives no weight to hospital performance.

Your new page link that you edited in (http://www.topmastersinhealthcare.com/) doesn't look too great either, it provides no info on methodology and honestly looks like a spam page.

Honestly I don't really have a fight with you on the topic, I'm just saying you need to provide valid sources to back up your claim. When you link a site that doesn't even rank hospitals based on quality of care and point to it to say that American hospitals are the best...it doesn't look good.
 
How the F did this thread turn in to Obamacare? Stop it! Stop it right now!

For those of you who think Net Neutrality is a bad idea, Stop it! Stop it right now!
 
westrock2000 said:
Tier'ed service. You use more, you pay more. You pay for "up to" 60Mb/s. And what if you wanted gigabit? Could you pay for that?
Now we are back to packets being treated differently.
Why does netflix get to bypass choke points, but Liveleak doesn't?
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Does Live Leak have an appliance to put on site which they're willing to pay rent in the building and for the electricity and what not? If not, then what's your point? And again, They already have these on site.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
There's a difference between drivers insurance and health insurance.

1. Driving is optional. And if you do drive, you put OTHERS at risk. So you have to do the responsible thing and pay up. I got hit by someone who had no insurance. He was on the hook for over $25,000. Good thing I had "No insurance" coverage on my policy or I would have sued his ass.

2. If you don't get health insurance, the only thing you are affecting is your OWN health. There is no collateral damage if YOU get cancer or have a stroke, or a bad accident.
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Not to get off topic, but 2 is not true. If you don't have insurance, you can just pop on over to the ER and get treatment...and since said person probably doesn't have money to pay for it, the hospital is stuck holding the bill, which is passed on to everyone else by way of higher prices, which increases premiums on those with insurance.
 
Tsumi said:
The cost is irrelevant. The point is that there is precedence for paying for preferential treatment.
You paid for "up to X bandwidth", not "guaranteed bandwidth". That is the way the language has always been.
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The point is that the ISPs artificially choked Netflix until they paid them money not to choke them. This isn't really a bandwidth issue. It's just ISPs forcing content providers to pay them to deliver the content that I"m paying to get. If I can't stream at 7Mbps with my 60 Mbps pipe, then what's the point? The reason Comcast (or Cox or TWC) should do it, is because they're in teh business of providing me with service and if they're fucking with the content providers, they're fucking with me.

Unfortunately, I have no leverage, because I have no alternative. I can't remember the last time I had 2 providers available. My folks are lucky in that htey have access to Cox and Municipal fiber (and Cox went from sucking ass to being pretty good as soon as they had competition).
 
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Ducman69 said:
And the fact is, maybe this is an industry where free market competition isn't the best solution.

For example, does it really make sense for ten different companies to run fiber to all the houses in my neighborhood? Seems hugely wasteful and inefficient.

So perhaps we need to rethink how we handle wired internet connectivity... and perhaps still leave it free-market, but regulated the way was done with Texas and electricity. You don't need ten independent power grids, just one, but you can purchase your electricity from anyone on the grid, and the big guys wiring new neighborhoods and the like do so with cost reimbursed so there is no risk or downside to ensuring everyone is hooked up.

So something like powertochoose.com with ISPs would be a great solution where I own my own modem, and can just shop from 30 different ISPs with internet packages of my choosing and just one fiber connection to my home.
Click to expand...
Yup and and low and behold, TX has really cheap electricity. I use Green mountain (which buys carbon offsets if it's not from a renewable source) and it's always competitive (and possibly the cheapest provider for me). I don't know if it'd work everywhere, but it clearly works in TX.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Umm no.
http://hospitals.webometrics.info/en/world

Wow look at all those USA flags...This is not the only website that measures these stats and agrees with them.

Sadly we don't have the best health in the world, which is a different metric. The happiest people are the Danes and the healthiest (based on longevity) are the Japanese I believe.

Here's another case in point: Man with perforated ulcer. You could get that taken care of at just about any hospital here. Well a man in Vietnam had to fly to Bangkok to get the required surgery. Cost $80,000+

Look who has the most technologically advanced hospitals:

http://www.topmastersinhealthcare.com/30-most-technologically-advanced-hospitals-in-the-world/

Look who has some of the most architecturally modern and beautiful hospitals in the world (how modern a hospital appears is a large deciding influence at where mothers and cancer patients chose their hospital believe it or not)

http://www.healthcarebusinesstech.com/the-25-most-beautiful-hospital-designs-in-the-world/
Click to expand...
The best description I've heard of it, is we have first world health care quality and a third world delivery system.
 
Neb said:
Honestly I don't really have a fight with you on the topic, I'm just saying you need to provide valid sources to back up your claim.
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That is a valid point. But to provide sources I would have to get you references to professional trade rags which cost money. My wife serving as a volunteer on state and federal committees as well as being a therapist had access to this information. They cover things like transplant success rates cancer survivor rates infection rates along with the stats previously listed. These global stats are vital because hospitals/doctors look at them and go "why do they have a better survival rate?"

The list of metrics goes on and on and on. Each time the USA is near the top or at the top.

Anyway this is all off topic. So I'll shut up here. My apologies for the thread jacking
 
Those free appliances aren't free for the ISP. They have rack space, power, and thermal costs to operate. As far as competition in the market, look to the local government to fix that. They are the ones making the deals to give exclusive access to one provider.

As far as big service companies versus smaller ones, the volume of data scales with the volume of users. A startup can provide the same quality of service to a smaller user base because they are using less total bandwidth, so I don't see how having a dedicated service for high-capacity services is an issue. I don't see anyone here talking about interconnection agreements, which could be one of the biggest bottlenecks. If ISP A has an agreement with one backbone company, and ISP B has an agreement with another, then any connection between those two ISPs will be slower, due to routing, than if they were on the same backbone.

From what I understand of the Comcast/Netflix issue, Comcast's connection to that backbone was saturated, and they needed to add equipment to open up more bandwidth. Since Netflix was asking for more bandwidth, Comcast was asking them to pay for the additional service connection. I see it like the electric service to your home or business: you can only get so many amps out of one meter, so if you need more electricity, you need more meters, and you have to pay for that extra service to be installed.
 
Oreoscrumbs said:
Those free appliances aren't free for the ISP. They have rack space, power, and thermal costs to operate. As far as competition in the market, look to the local government to fix that. They are the ones making the deals to give exclusive access to one provider.

As far as big service companies versus smaller ones, the volume of data scales with the volume of users. A startup can provide the same quality of service to a smaller user base because they are using less total bandwidth, so I don't see how having a dedicated service for high-capacity services is an issue. I don't see anyone here talking about interconnection agreements, which could be one of the biggest bottlenecks. If ISP A has an agreement with one backbone company, and ISP B has an agreement with another, then any connection between those two ISPs will be slower, due to routing, than if they were on the same backbone.

From what I understand of the Comcast/Netflix issue, Comcast's connection to that backbone was saturated, and they needed to add equipment to open up more bandwidth. Since Netflix was asking for more bandwidth, Comcast was asking them to pay for the additional service connection. I see it like the electric service to your home or business: you can only get so many amps out of one meter, so if you need more electricity, you need more meters, and you have to pay for that extra service to be installed.
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Assuming it was the same as Verizon's issue (and I think it was), it was a red herring as the hardware costs are apparently trivial. L3 disccused it in a blog entry a couple of years ago: http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/
 
DigitalGriffin said:
That said ACA is a failure. Rates are going up 20% this past year. The average deductible for a family is over $13,000, and the average premium over $10,000. It didn't make anything affordable. You COULD get catastrophic care plans for things like stroke and cancer for $6,000/year before ACA. Not anymore.
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Not to get off topic, but there is a fair amount of misunderstanding about the ACA

Insurance rates have been rising year after year since long before the ACA. Hillary actually tried to push "Hilarycare" or something in the 90s to try and combat this (she's been a strong advocate for improvement health care for a long long time), and if we're honest that's pretty brave/possessing foresight.

Anyway:

What ACA has done is slow the rate of insurance rate hikes. That is to say, that projections show that rates would have risen even higher and faster than they are now without the ACA. So whatever you say you CAN'T get because of the ACA, it's probable that you would have been able to get even less for your money at this time if ACA was never passed. In this regard, the ACA is doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

Another thing I learned is that each state can opt in to certain level of participation of the ACA. So your premiums can vary widely depending on what state you live in. Which is a large reason why some people have higher premiums

This is kinda like arguing with people that complain that Obama has made the debt larger than ever due to record deficits. Simply a failure to comprehend the difference between debt and deficit.
 
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