
Why Concerns About Net Neutrality Are Overblown - gerbilly
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/net-neutrality-overblown-concerns.html
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doke01
If it didn't matter, why is there such a big push to kill net neutrality. It
matters. They want to do something they aren't allowed to do today, and doing
something they aren't allowed to do today means its not in the interests of
the Internet as a whole. Don't let this propaganda fool you.

~~~
RyanShook
I am mostly indifferent to the net neutrality arguments. Not sticking my head
in the sand, I just feel that most of the traffic discrimination everyone is
worried about is already happening. The internet was always designed as a
government/corporate hybrid and discrimination based on size, importance, etc
is already happening on a daily basis. See Free Basics by Facebook for a very
clear example: [https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-
internet...](https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-internet-
org/)

~~~
simplify
If it's already happening then we should enforce NN laws, not repeal them.

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luma
This OpEd is written by Ken Engelhart[1], former VP of regulatory affairs at
Rogers Communication in Canada. He spent most of his professional life
lobbying the Canadian government on behalf of their near-monopoly cable and
wireless provider. I'm confident that the new FCC regulations are very much in
line with what he would like to see in Canada, and not at all in line with the
public's own interests.

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-
engelhart-591a204/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-engelhart-591a204/)

~~~
Avernar
Which is why I found this part hilarious: "And there’s still competition: Some
markets may have just one cable provider, but phone companies offer
increasingly comparable internet access — so if the cable provider slowed down
or blocked some sites, the phone company could soak up the affected customers
simply by promising not to do so."

As bad as Rogers is, Bell Canada is much worse with regards to NN. And both
would like nothing better than than to prevent all the other ISPs from being
able to lease the last mile from them.

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simplify
The best reason to dismiss this article as propaganda is it does not give a
reason _why_ repealing Net Neutrality is _good_. All it says is "trust me, it
won't be that bad". Garbage.

~~~
vvanders
Yeah, even more so since the author works in the industry that would benefit.

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vvanders
"All these awful things have happened in the past but _trust_ us, it's not
going to happen in the future"

Bullshit.

Also, competition? Please.

I _need_ 25mbit+ to do my job, if you think phone companies are offering a
viable alternative I've got a bridge to sell you.

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ChrisArgyle
The author was a former VP at Rogers Communications, Inc, a Canadian ISP.

[https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-
engelhart-591a204](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-engelhart-591a204)

------
fhood
"Some markets may have just one cable provider, but phone companies offer
increasingly comparable internet access"

No, they don't. Not at all. I am by some miracle grandfathered into an almost
affordable unlimited data plan, and even it gets throttled after a certain
limit.

~~~
hackeraccount
What affect would net neutrality have on increasing competition? I am deeply
skeptical that it would have a good impact and strongly suspect that any
regulation created would be designed to reduce competition.

See airline regulation which did a lot of things and had a lot of goals but
ended up being used by the industry to keep new players out of the market
place.

~~~
dragonwriter
Net neutrality would preserve content for online services by preventing ISPs
from acting as service gatekeepers; it would have minimal effect on ISP
competition, which itself was minimal even before the effort at general
regulation rather than slapping-down individual egregious violations in the
pre-2010 case-by-case regime.

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shkkmo
> These incidents are troubling for anyone who wants on open, neutral
> internet. But keep two things in mind. First, these are rare examples, for a
> reason: The public blowback was fierce, scaring other providers from
> following suit. Second, blocking competitors to protect your own services is
> anticompetitive conduct that might well be stopped by antitrust laws without
> any need for network neutrality regulations.

Except BOTH examples provided were not stopped by antitrust regulations or
public blow back, but by the authority of the FCC to enforce net neutrality.

> I know that it simply is not in service providers’ interests to throttle
> access to what consumers want to see.

Which is why they've been fighting so hard to have the ability to do it...

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craigsmansion
I think that if at this point one does not understand the importance of net
neutrality, one either is simply not capable of understanding it, or simply
wishes not to understand it.

There's nothing left that has not been explained in detail and any sort of
argument with someone who claims to understand the matter is futile: they
either can not or will not understand.

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2bitencryption
from the article:

> The good news is that we will soon have a real-world experiment to show who
> is right and who is wrong. The United States will get rid of its rules, and
> the European Union and Canada will keep their stringent regulations. In two
> years, will the American internet be slower, less innovative and split into
> two tiers, leaving Canadians to enjoy their fast and neutral net?

Isn't this already happening, even with NN?

The big players in the US have already shown they don't care at all about
competing and are perfectly content giving the US substandard service compared
to much of the rest of the world.

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hawkice
I've listened to interviews with Ajit Pai since the announcement, and I agree
with both the headline and the overwhelming majority of the content of this.
Once you hear the plan going forward, it sounds pretty reasonable, and I've
spoken with people who want to start niche ISPs (in this case, trying to take
advantage of a local government-funded fiber expansion that is sitting idle)
-- the ask-for-permission-in-advance model of regulation is stopping literally
everyone in the local market (although only some of that is federal -- some is
local to the county).

~~~
client4
As an actual rural independent FTTH provider, I can say you're wrong. It's
incredibly hard to go against the incumbent duopoly of cable/telco, and they
will most certainly abuse their market power. Though in a sad way it works in
my favor, I've had a number of new customers sign up because they don't want
their internet throttled. BigCableCo _will_ create 200 Gb packages and they
_will_ exclude their service while counting Netflix. Regular people do deserve
access to a free, open, and unmetered Internet. I'm _super_ small and still
offer par and faster speeds than the cable company in my area. I'm not losing
money because someone is streaming two netflix streams instead of one.

~~~
Spooky23
Thanks for posting... you touch on something that isn’t ever spoken about. The
advocates for getting rid of nn regulation always speak in generalities and
concepts like attorneys.

I have the perspective of having worked for a large institution that is in
effect a large ISP. Our network delivery costs are nothing in the scheme of
things, and where we own fiber the marginal cost of scaling our network
capacity 100x a decade ago was actually below zero as we replaced more
expensive, more labor intensive equipment.

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PunchTornado
So this guys says let them do it and see what happens? And then what? This is
the most moronic article I ever read on nytimes. I hope the paper got good
money publishing this propaganda.

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LeoJiWoo
I don't think it is wise to trust monopolies who have a history of doing the
wrong thing.

