

Tell Congress: We Stand Firm for Net Neutrality - jaytee_clone
https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=363

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grellas
Possible unintended consequences of net neutrality: eliminate the power of
carriers to control their own network traffic and watch them (maybe) shift to
a new pricing model altogether, one that shifts the cost of bandwidth hogging
to all consumers ("Carriers Eye Pay-As-You-Go Internet,"
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870381620457448...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703816204574483674228258540.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews)).

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bilbo0s
Maybe someone could tell me why Pay-As-You-Go Internet would be a bad thing. I
am genuinely confused as to why net neutrality and Pay-As-You-Go are bad.

We would have net neutrality, and with this new payment plan, you would get
all of the bandwidth that you pay for. If you want to spend lots of time
watching movies or doing voice chats while playing online games, then you
would pay for that. More importantly, your neighbor would not feel the
bandwidth pinch when you are doing these things. Neither would your neighbor
be paying for your extra bandwidth usage. This entire system seems win-win all
around. This is not my area of expertise though.

Is there someone who could tell me what I am missing?

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wmf
You're missing cognitive psychology. Due to risk aversion, people would rather
pay a higher fixed price than a lower but variable price. Odlyzko has several
papers on this topic: <http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html>

It has also been argued that setting the marginal price of Internet traffic at
zero encourages innovation, although this innovation is subsidized by the
people who don't use it.

Also, metered pricing would impose extra costs on all the people infected with
botnets or Skype supernodes since they'd have to either pay a high Internet
bill or pay the Geek Squad to disinfect their computer.

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jaytee_clone
Here's another letter that addresses to the Congress as suppose to FCC:

[https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&p...](https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=359)

