What Obama's Net Neutrality Statement Means

[atavax]

and comcast is not only falsely claiming its Netflix's responsability to upgrade Comcast's infrastructure for Comcast to fullfill Comcast's customer's demand for Netflix. But Comcast is leveraging their customers, telling Netflix, hey, our customers don't have other options for ISPs, so if you don't pay us, they can't get a good experience. And Comcast relies on their customers not knowing that comcast is causing the poor performance a long with lack of competition to get away with it.

 

[signothorn]

ISP's got billions of dollars in tax payer money in 1996 to build out fiber, but they didn't to a large extent. They instead bought out other smaller ISP's to decrease competition so they could increase prices and cash flow. They didn't innovate in the TV space either, they allowed various less expensive streaming services to take their cable business away. Now Time Warner wants to also put data caps on your monthly uses as well, so they can charge you overage fees.

In the 80's, President Reagan broke up the telecom companies because the phone companies were much like the current ISP's, too consolidated and not enough competition because they were gouging customers. After breaking them up, those companies were forced to innovate, and most moved to becoming ISP's and wireless carriers. I think ISP's should need to compete with municipal broadband, but they are lobbying hard against it. I lean republican, but many in the party are in the pocket of ISP's politically. It's no surprise Ted Cruz just spoke out about Obama on this issue, he took a $13k political donation from them just a few months ago.

 

[ubercake]

Again, Obama saying one thing, but doing another. He appointed Wheeler the head of the FCC. Wheeler has spent his career lobbying for big cable and big wireless. Now he's in charge of the FCC. I'm not going to bet on a win for the citizens of this nation when it comes to this issue.

 

[jungleboogiemonster]

I'm amazed at how many people are defending monopolies who are buying our politicians. Instead of bashing anyone who is trying to fix the problem in ways you don't agree with, offer solutions you think are better.

 

[none12345]

There is a difference between throttling me because im near my bandwitch cap, or whatever. And throtting a specific site because they didnt pay an extra fee to be on their buddy buddy list.

A megabyte of date is a megabyte of data. It should NOT matter who it comes from. If I pay for 1 megabyte of date, at xxx speed. I should get 1 megabyte of data at xxx speed.

Note this should also be true at the server end. If they pay to transmit 1 megabyte of data at xxx speed, they should be able to transmit 1 megabyte of data at xxx speed.

If site X pays to transmit 1 megabyte in 1 second, and i pay to recieve 1 megabye in 1 second. Thats exactly what i should get, regardless of where the data comes from.

It becomes wrong when my ISP scans my data, determines i am getting data from site X, site X didnt pay their extortion fee, so they throttle it down to take 10 seconds instead. Now i get 100k/second when i paid for 1m/sec., and the site paid to deliver 1meg/sec.

 

[soldier45]

After the mess that is Obamacare, he needs to stay out of our business and forcing more regulations of things that don't need it. He needs to just go away.

 

[fcabanski]

The reality is Obama and those supporting net neutrality want two things. They want more federal government control over the Internet, and they want new taxes.

 

[jungleboogiemonster]

I'm amazed at how many people are defending monopolies who are buying our politicians. Instead of bashing anyone who is trying to fix the problem in ways you don't agree with, offer solutions you think are better.

 

[ubercake]

Seriously, these cable companies are beyond large. This gives them a ton of pull with regard to political influence (through contributions and other methods of gifting). They are using the internet backbone funded by tax dollars of the citizens to make their profits delivering content to our houses. From a pricing standpoint, they have been taking advantage of us.

Now that the content cable companies provide (through agreements with various networks) is not necessarily the content we all want to watch, they want to gain control over whose content is being delivered.

The bottom line is cable companies should be the delivery mechanism of content (utility) and not the dictators of content. This will reduce the likelihood we are force-fed biased messages from specific "premium" paid sources and allows us to have a public medium by which freedom of expression (within the law) is truly allowed.

This is definitely one of those few cases by which I agree with Obama's lip service, but like I alluded to in a previous comment, he's also the guy who appointed Wheeler the head of the FCC. Wheeler is not on the side of citizens in any argument as he lobbied for years for big cable and big wireless. All of Wheeler's buddies are running the big communications companies. Net neutrality wasn't even a hot topic until all of D.C. knew early to mid-2013 that Wheeler would likely be the Chairman appointed by Obama in November 2013. It was then that Comcast and others began flexing their muscles with the likes of Netflix. No coincidence.

 

[ubercake]

Now all of the big tech companies have voiced stances against net neutrality. My guess is the government policies will be modified to please the super corps. Net neutrality will be a one-line sentence in the history kindles.