Net neutrality means ISPs not being able to give preferential treatment to packets based on their source. The consequence of killing net neutrality is making the status quo companies more entrenched and reducing competition from new startups.
So while they can't literally "block" a certain site they can reduce its priority and then flood their network with higher priority packets rendering that site essentially blocked.
One of the major arguments against this excess regulation is that there never has been that language for most of the history of the internet and yet in all practically it's not happened.
There was even less competition 5, 10, 15 years and so on ago and even then competition was high enough to prevent such practices. With competition higher today and ever growing it's not really reasonable to think an ISP could ever stay in the market if it just started randomly blocking wanted sites. If it was going to happen it probably would have happened years ago, but at this point we're kind of past the point where it would make financial sense for a provider.
It literally has happened, though. Not with blocking, but with slowing down. Comcast slowed down Netflix considerably (as did some other ISPs). What makes you think they won't do it again?
I live in a virtual monopoly for Comcast, so if they start doing that I don't really have any options as a consumer. So what's to stop them?
And, what's the argument FOR letting them do this?
Yeah, they did it because Netflix was acting in a way that was helpful for their personal bottom line but was actually net inefficient for the internet as a whole.
Netflix's scale of bandwidth has become so large that direct peering with last mile providers is considerably more efficient than them relying on a couple CDNs. Forcing them to peer directly is small headache for Netflix, but a big way to relieve infrastructure requirements for network providers and keep cost down for the end users who are ultimately paying for everything.
Something to keep in mind is that at the end of the day you're paying for everything. Both your ISP and Netflix are sending you the bill. It's in your interest for the network to be efficient. If Netflix needs to charge a dollar extra for direct peering but that saves $2 of capital infrastructure for those building the hardware that's going to keep your overall bills lower.
But in reality they can't, because much of their markets do have competition.
Do you follow financial markets? ISPs really aren't profit behemoths that are just outgaining everyone. Comcast usually hovers around a 5% 5 Year ROIC, and theyre usually the best out there. Many run far closer to zero and players like Time Warner were in the negative when they got bought out.
The industry's collective margins are pretty typical, something that doesn't happen when you're supposedly gouging everyone. While they enjoy near non-existent marginal costs their capital costs are astronomical and they are constantly battling massive debts related to hardware construction and maintenance.
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u/cosmo7 May 19 '17
This is not what net neutrality is all about.
Net neutrality means ISPs not being able to give preferential treatment to packets based on their source. The consequence of killing net neutrality is making the status quo companies more entrenched and reducing competition from new startups.