Dropping net neutrality will make the internet truly open. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has proposed dropping net neutrality rules. Such a move, writes Jeffrey Tucker, will serve consumers far better than the old system:
Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers.
So what are the costs to the rest of us? It meant no price reductions in internet service. It could mean the opposite. Your bills went up and there was very little competition. It also meant a slowing down in the pace of technological development due to the reduction in competition that followed the imposition of this rule. In other words, it was like all government regulation: most of the costs were unseen, and the benefits were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class.
There was an additional threat: the FCC had reclassified the internet as a public utility. It meant a blank check for government control across the board. Think of the medical marketplace, which is now entirely owned by a non-competitive cartel of industry insiders. This was the future of the internet under net neutrality.
Good riddance, then. No more government-managed control of the industry. No more price fixing. No more of the largest players using government power to protect their monopoly structure.
Isn’t it great the United States government helped those telecom companies expand using tax payer dollars? Now they are going to make pure profits from those same tax payers.
This is going to bring in profit mongering and high prices in markets that already are unserved and underserved aka the poor and folks living in rural areas. Like many of you.
that flat bill is going to become:
$19 for email, $50 for Netflix, $20 just to be able to have a line…..
sure sure they’ll make it look like it adds up to be the same the first day. but hold on… one year later with no regulations and full control of prices on PUBLICLY BUILT DATA LINES those prices will go up… and the more important and vital the service the more expensive. Trump wont care.
Why is the FCC ignoring the WILL of the people and putting the WILL of corporations first? Who does the FCC serve the people? or corporations?
Does Illinois Review support human beings or soulless corporations that only want unfettered and forced profits?
Yes, hallelujah. No more net neutrality. Now Comcast and AT&T are free to switch packets according to the hand of the free market.
It’s great that they can now decide to throttle or place a gate in front of Illinois Review. It will only be an extra $14.99/month to buy the Conservative News Package. And we’ll be thrilled because Illinois Review will have paid Comcast and AT&T the requisite $20,000 per year fee to be allowed into the CNP even though Comcast nor AT&T are IR’s ISP. If you both don’t play ball and pay up, sorry, those packets get dropped. Totally within Comcast’s rights now that Net Neutrality is dead.
Oh, while we’re on the subject, can someone articulate what “lack of competition” Net Neutrality caused? It’s not like NN blocked new entrants into the ISP world. First, MetroNet is expanding like crazy in Illinois and thankfully going to break the stupid Comcast/AT&T oligopoly (why don’t conservatives remember that free market rules break down within Natural Monopolies, which is the case for any Right-of-Way easement utility like water, electricity and yes, internet access). Let’s test the hypothesis, by the way. After NN ends, let’s see how much the cost of Internet drops. Not in Illinois, because actual competition is moving into down, but in localities where it remains the status quo. We’ll see if internet access actually gets any cheaper (hint: it won’t).
Second, NN really has little to do with the relationship between the ISP and their clients, it has to do with ISPs and the downstream providers (e.g. Netflix). NN keeps ISPs from acting like the mafia. “Gee Netflix, that’s a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if access to your customers was always breaking. We can make sure your data has a clear path as long as you pay us a little something extra.” Comcast HAS DONE THIS ALREADY! Before NN was mandated, they were screwing with Netflix because they wanted Hulu and their own VOD platforms to flourish.
Here’s the truth: Net Neutrality FOSTERS competition. It allows a level playing field for Netflix and Comcast and Hulu and Youtube. NN says that Comcast is not allowed to treat their service’s packets as special and throttle the others. And we need NN because we don’t have many choices in ISPs, and right now they’re all threatening to break the internet without NN.
Conservatives’ anti-NN propaganda is very self defeating for anyone that wants a free and open internet.
This is one conservative who wants Net Neutrality to stand particularly because I believe in free market competition.
This whole analysis is wrong. The FCC had reclassified the internet as a public utility since there are limited ISP’s and therefore the market was already distorted. Net Neutrality evens out that ISP’s have total control over most of the internet we can access.