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by doesnt_know 4469 days ago
Ugh, is this even a question anywhere except in the US? The ISP should be paying for it because that is literally the service they are suppose to be providing, it's the reason consumers are giving them money.

In what other industry can you accept payment for a service and then try to make a legitimate claim that you then don't have to provide that service or maintain the infrastructure you are selling? It's fucking nuts.

When the so called "free market" fails and you have monopolies in place that are so anti-competitive and anti-consumer, then maybe it's time to go looking for another solution.

Perhaps this is the situation when it's time to look for some sort of state or government regulation. Or maybe it's the exact opposite. Perhaps these companies are in control of tight regulatory procedures that it prevents competition. I'm not overly familiar with the current system in place in the US, but whatever the current situation is, you really need to start demanding the exact opposite.

4 comments

Not to mention the fact that the ISPs got $200 billion from the gov't in order to provide said infrastructure.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...

It's really even worse than that - not just the consumer is paying, but netflex, etc. also buy bandwidth from their ISP. Comcast is refusing to allow an adequate interconnection between the the content providers' ISPs to the comcast network unless they pay a ransom.
> When the so called "free market" fails

Anyone who blames US Internet issues (or pretty much any other issue in the US) should just go and try to start a competing business and see what happens. I think you'd find that "free" is one of the last words you'd use to describe the industry.

Presently there is also a huge debate (with political discussions and petitions) about net neutrality in Germany and other European countries (mainly EU).

In 2013 there was a petition [1] to try to bind the internet providers to net neutrality.

[1] https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2013/_04/_23/Pe... (German)