Quote:
Originally Posted by ISiddiqui
Sooner actually asks an important question, which is NOT secondary in this discussion here. I tend to be on the (moderate) left sphere of things, but I can easily see why cable companies are worried about net neutrality under the current state of affairs. Netflix uses something like half of the bandwith in this country. However, it is the cable companies (mostly, fiber optic companies are coming along more and more quickly) that are under the hook for building the infrastructure to be able to support that. Netflix pays nothing for its taxing of the current infrastructure - which produces pressure on the cable companies to update said infrastructure.
So the cable companies say, Netflix pay us for your huge use of bandwith or else we'll slow you down so you don't use as much. I actually don't see that as something horrible.
The alternative, of course, if all content providers can access as much bandwith as possible, the cost is going to be passed onto the consumers. Data caps will be strictly enforced, as the phone companies have already begun to do.
So that's the tradeoff question, really. Do we want content providers to pay based on their usage (and that can be done in other ways than creating a 'fast lane' - maybe a price based on bandwith used) or do we want the consumers to pay? Now, the most economically efficient usage would probably be to have consumers pay - but do we really want that?
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Consumers always pay, if Netflix is charged the price of Netflix goes up, if data is capped the end user pays for bandwidth . The legally responsible practice is content providers pay for content and users pay for data usage. It should be illegal to sniff traffic and deliberately sabotage it or create a private preferred network, but now it is. The moral hazards are much higher this way, whereas straight up charging the customer for a bigger data pipe is more equitable and efficient. Say Netflix comes up with a brilliant traffic optimization solution tomorrow that let's them cut backbone net usage by two thirds. Problem solved world peace in our time, except now the bandwidth is throttled at the last hop from the ISP to the consumer and all that brilliance still looks like a shitty slow connection.
This pattern is bad, it lets companies with a vested interest in seeing netflix fail charge an arbitrary toll on that company. Five years later we are all joking about how anyone who is cool uses the slightly expensive comcast virtual cable service instead of lame, slow, content barren Antiquities like Netflix or hulu.
Charging netflix lets comcast get rich making netflix look bad, charging customers lets comcast get rich making itself look bad. In the second course customers will be more likely to vote for increased competition in the bandwidth market, either overturning bad state laws or taking their money to alternatives.