| > Sure, but that indicates a need for competition, not net neutrality. > If the market was sufficiently competitive, then Comcast wouldn't be the gatekeeper. > My solution is to increase competition, actually. > Competition will spring up overnight. You keep saying this, but I don't think you understand: 1) That businesses like this do not spring up overnight, even in the figurative sense. 2) The incumbent ISPs lobby to reduce competition (often getting laws on the books to make it illegal for municipalities to offer internet access), and are largely very successful at it. 3) Rural areas basically get fucked, because there won't be enough money in new competition. 4) In the meantime, we have nothing to protect customers. Let's say you're right, and we can somehow increase competition. No, it's not going to happen overnight. What's going to protect customers in the meantime, after current net neutrality regulation is rolled back? Nothing. Removing regulation that has been obsoleted by other measures is fine and the right thing to do, but there's nothing to replace it right now that will have the same effect. > For example, the FCC could do what Canada does and require ISPs to sell Internet access at fixed wholesale rates to resellers. So why is this kind of "anti-free-market" regulation ok, while net neutrality rules aren't? (Also, we tried this. Most smaller players that took advantage of it failed because, while the Comcasts of the US were required to _provide_ access, there wasn't really a way to require that they provide it easily, or provide good service and reliability with it. And I believe this ended up getting repealed due to... you guessed it, lobbying efforts from the incumbents.) I'm just really getting tired of all this "increase competition" rhetoric coming from people who seem to think they live in a fantasy world where it's easy, or even possible, to get these sorts of things done, especially in the current political climate. |