FCC Unveils Their Plan to Roll Back Net Neutrality

**ElNono** · 11-30-2017

Thoughts?

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232617

Already pointed it out on my previous reply. Under the assumptions made in that post, ISPs would be losing money left and right, or technologically capped, but neither is the case.

That's because while the article pretends that the cost of data to ISPs is some major expense, it actually is not, and has actually bottomed out (see here), while the price of service from ISPs have gone up yearly above the inflation rate (see here). Furthermore, a lot of these companies laid down the fiber for their TV services under le II, for accounting reasons, so they already have infrastructure and have to support it.

So, again, this has nothing to do with money or technical capacity. Sure, they're likely not making a 97% profit margin as reported a while back, but they're not losing money either. On the technical side, when they moved to digital switched cable, they basically only stream what you watch, which opened up even more bandwidth for them. Whether they're streaming a Netflix movie or a Video on Demand movie, is the same bandwidth for them, what is not is who pockets the money. They just have zero reason to remove their artificial speed barriers, since for the most part they're the only game in town.

That's another salient point completely skipped from that writeup. These aren't companies madly competing for market, and wireless is not yet at a price point where it can be considered compe ion. Compe ion is very minor in the US and mostly on big metropolis, normally relegated to monopolies or duopolies. You can see it with Comcast, they would rather spend $45 billion to buy up TWC rather than spend those $45 billion competing against them. Business is good for them, but it's only good if there's no compe ion.