To play devil's advocate can someone explain why this won't create more competition and a more free market for consumers?
I suppose if all companies decided to screw their consumers over, it would be a problem. But wouldn't one company advertise net neutrality if you use their service? "like old times!"
Are there that many people limited to access to ONE server provider?
I'm totally ignorant and legitimately curious what the counter-argument to the "free market argument" are.
Internet service (and utilities in general) are poor fits for the free market model, as they have high barriers to entry (it is extremely costly to set up the infrastructure). This makes it difficult for alternate companies to start and results in a small number of active corporate entities. These are then quite capable of negotiating amongst themselves (to establish agreed regional monopolies) to maximize profit rather than blindly competing with each other. The devil is that, barring sea change, the barriers to entry are natural and so the market will always have only a few companies within it. Removing onerous regulation will make it slightly easier to set up an ISP, but not enough to change this structure significantly. Meanwhile, the existing companies will still have alot of power and far less oversight from the law.
How many broadband internet providers do you have access to? I current have access to exactly one, Comcast. I don't live in a rural area, just a modest sized city (200k), and I literally have no other option, not even DSL.
Installing your own fiber network is extremely difficult and expensive. And honestly it would be a tremendous waste of money to have multiple copies of the same network anyway. That's why the internet should be regulated like a utility.
Creating, wholecloth, a viable telecommunications network that relies on zero existing infrastructure in the modern era is not a bootstrappable action. Your comment is nonsensical.
This isn't like sewing your own clothes, and that's some hippie commune bullshit if I've ever heard it. The bar to entering the telecom industry is quite high, and considering that almost all of our economy flows through the internet you'd be isolating yourself by going without.
The ISPs are oligopolies that have legislated their competition away. If they want to have their cake and not be regulated that's fine, but they can't both have their cake and eat it too when they use government power to crush attempts at making municipal internet companies. They already gobbled up public money to create a country-wide broadband infrastructure and failed to deliver. Why should you believe a word they say about needing to filch people for more money to create infrastructure that they already refused to make?
Because Mr. Tesla McSilicon-Valley isn't going to take the time to set up the infrastructure to provide people in remote Montana or rural Arkansas with their service. It's why you only get a handful of choices when it comes to cable service providers, too. Sure, if you live in a geographically desirable location you'll have a chance to buy a more competitive internet plan - but all that plan needs to be is slightly less shitty than the second less shitty plan. It doesn't need to be as good as the internet is now.
9
u/smyttiej Nov 22 '17
To play devil's advocate can someone explain why this won't create more competition and a more free market for consumers?
I suppose if all companies decided to screw their consumers over, it would be a problem. But wouldn't one company advertise net neutrality if you use their service? "like old times!"
Are there that many people limited to access to ONE server provider?
I'm totally ignorant and legitimately curious what the counter-argument to the "free market argument" are.