
Netflix and Net Neutrality - shawndumas
http://www.marco.org/2014/02/27/netflix-and-net-neutrality
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lnlyplnt
I really have to disagree with marco on this one. Infrastructure investment
isn't free, and in order to align incentives toward more investment and not
less, we need to start implementing metered usage. This would lower the cost
of internet access for 95% of people by limited the subsidy to the top 5% of
bandwidth consumers.

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couradical
The issue I have with metered usage is that in the data world, last-mile is
relatively expensive to rent, and even more so to build, which artificially
limits carrier choice. You're already seeing some of the effects of this - as
an example, Verizon's FiOS rollout, they've stopped the rollout in many
locations because they can't pay for the physical infrastructure, so many
customers are locked in to their current carrier (even when they want FiOS).
It's not like wireless where you can simply switch carriers so data pricing
stays reasonably honest.

With that being said, you have less incentive for data caps/metered pricing
following the mobile model where pricing is kept reasonable by carrier
choice/number portability. As backbone increases, there's no reason for
Comcast/TW Cable/RCN/etc. to increase the data tiers/lower cost per Mbps, so I
believe you'd see costs creep upwards as data consumption grows.

