How's your cable company?

[PC person]

Does anyone here remember the open-net coalition, headed by AOL and many other ISP's? They still have thier site up, but it's not what it used to be. They even went before Congress and got a hearing to try to get them to make Cable companies open thier lines to other ISP's.

So, what do you think? I remember on the frontiers of freedom website they had a public discussion forum on the issue. One guy argued heavily against another that it was just plain theft to make Cable companies, who have laid lines for decades, make them open them to other companies who can't compete with thier high bandwidth services. The other person brought up how phone companies are required to share thier lines and so should cable companies, but that it wouldn't justify it, just because you are plundering one that you shouldn't be able to plunder another.

Then, he went on to say that sometimes people have to be moved and public property can be taken for public use (as per the Fifth Amendment takings clause) like for example if you wanted to build a highway, or run power lines from the power plant to your town. He argued that you could just build around them, and that the laws which create natural monopolies, like for power, and cable should go and more than one of those companies should be allowed to put thier cables in the same area, thus allowing competetion

While I don't want to take someone's property away, I don't think it could be avoided in this case and some others. I don't think you could get enough people to agree to move for a highway and compensate them, not all in a straight or semi-straight line, unless it was a very screwy indirect highway. Nor do I think you could have say 3 sets of powerlines around the roadside, or cable lines or whatever, there just wouldn't be enough physical space along roadsides for them.

I say this because, yes cable companies are monopolies, I have charter right now, and don't have a choice of another. If the cable company's service and customer support is horrible(I've had some bad cases of it already) , I don't have the option to choose another cable company like comcast, adelphia, etc. Anyone else in this type of situation?

[johnwill]

Broadband providers are a monopoly, they're like power companies. Remember, you can buy your power from anyone you like, you just have to pay the local company that owns the lines for the privilege of delivering it to your house. Broadband providers should have the same restrictions.

If net neutrality is not enforced, it won't take long before the Internet looks nothing like it does today. It also won't be nearly as useful. One of the things that is so neat about the Internet is the availability of all the resources on a given topic, if we start having tiered service where you have to pay for "premium" access, a major part of the content on the Internet will suddenly require a credit card number to access it. Is that what you really want to see?

[PC person]

Originally Posted by johnwill

Broadband providers are a monopoly, they're like power companies. Remember, you can buy your power from anyone you like, you just have to pay the local company that owns the lines for the privilege of delivering it to your house. Broadband providers should have the same restrictions.

If net neutrality is not enforced, it won't take long before the Internet looks nothing like it does today. It also won't be nearly as useful. One of the things that is so neat about the Internet is the availability of all the resources on a given topic, if we start having tiered service where you have to pay for "premium" access, a major part of the content on the Internet will suddenly require a credit card number to access it. Is that what you really want to see?

What do you mean by net neutrality? And, anyone could put up a website on a topic, so you wouldn't have to pay for it, I think most people like the free access to information, so they wouldn't want to see it require a fee, but I remember back on Prodigy in 93, thier bulletin boards cost 4.25 an hour, now you can go on any PHP board, like this one for free. Why couldn't someone else offer it for free?

[Fr4665]

cause people tried to make money back then ?

look at me im in germany, everything internet wise is owned by the german telekom. they do give out their lines to ohter internet providers but usually it costs more or they like to make the lines fail ... its stupid. in the US, i had FIOS owned and maintained by verizon or i could chose comcast, owned they owned the copper lines etc. phone service was a general hook up by the city so you didnt have to pay a company rent for the lines.

[johnwill]

Originally Posted by PC person

What do you mean by net neutrality?

Wikipedia Network neutrality

[mrbizness1]

Originally Posted by PC person

I say this because, yes cable companies are monopolies, I have charter right now, and don't have a choice of another. If the cable company's service and customer support is horrible(I've had some bad cases of it already) , I don't have the option to choose another cable company like comcast, adelphia, etc. Anyone else in this type of situation?

I believe the only reason the cable companies agreed to invest in laying all the cable lines was because they had control over how they would be used.
I get tv, internet and phone through cablevision and think they have done a great job in building a reliable network and there customer service is top notch.
While you don't have the optoion of another cable company you could get tv through The Dish network, and telephone service through local companies. Wireless internet will be here also. My previous phone company, Verizon is now selling internet and TV services in addition to the phone business.
If there is money to be made there will always be some competition for it sooner or later.

[bruiser]

A lot of local governments give the cable operators a monopoly by not allowing any competition. Here, it is Insight that provides cable and Insight is the only cable company allowed to operate a cable system. It's true we can go to satellite for tv and internet, or the phone company for dsl or dialup, but I think another cable company or two in the area would make for better service and prices.

[johnwill]

I know that Verizon rolling out FiOS in our area has gotten Comcast to increase their upload and download speeds for all customers. They say it has nothing to do with the FiOS rollout, but who's kidding who?

[bruiser]

BellSouth has been trying to get cable customers to switch to their dsl service, by offering some pretty good rates. So what does Insight do? They up the d/l speeds to 10megs. Of course it had nothing to do with feeling any heat from Bell South.

[ebackhus]

Here in SA Town I can choose from many companies for service. For cable, though, I have just two choices: Time Warner and Grande Communications. Time Warner is the older one and is the company I go with now. My apartment complex also has a contract with them so I don't have a choice. Grande offers more speed for less as well. For DSL I can go with ATT or ATT. The DSL here is garbage (as I've said in other posts) and the cable is wonderful. My only complaint is that some of the contractors here are COMPLETE IDIOTS.

[PC person]

Originally Posted by johnwill

Broadband providers are a monopoly, they're like power companies. Remember, you can buy your power from anyone you like, you just have to pay the local company that owns the lines for the privilege of delivering it to your house. Broadband providers should have the same restrictions.

If net neutrality is not enforced, it won't take long before the Internet looks nothing like it does today. It also won't be nearly as useful. One of the things that is so neat about the Internet is the availability of all the resources on a given topic, if we start having tiered service where you have to pay for "premium" access, a major part of the content on the Internet will suddenly require a credit card number to access it. Is that what you really want to see?

What about phone companies having to share thier lines, you can choose a provider. DSL is only decent if you are a small distance from the central office
like some had said I could get DSL or satelitte but they would both be slower than what I have now, and take this example from the article.

For example, a perfectly neutral network would not give better service to some web sites than others, and it would likewise not favor web-surfing or blogging over online gaming or Voice over IP.

I'm a little unsure over what they mean by better service to web-sites, do they mean an ISP giving features of that web site to it's customers, but another ISP not doing so? Sorry, just it's worded a little strange for me.

Not that I support having to pay for features, but if they were fueled by customers wouldn't they look probably better/have more features, etc. Like if penny-per-page were implemented?

[johnwill]

What they're talking about is that the way large ISP's want to organize their business is to give some sites much greater bandwidth, so people that are choosing between two similar sites will most likely go to the one that doesn't have the lousy performance. Naturally, this will be the site that the ISP in question either has a stake in, or gains advertising revenue from.

[PC person]

Originally Posted by johnwill

What they're talking about is that the way large ISP's want to organize their business is to give some sites much greater bandwidth, so people that are choosing between two similar sites will most likely go to the one that doesn't have the lousy performance. Naturally, this will be the site that the ISP in question either has a stake in, or gains advertising revenue from.

How would getting to choose your cable provider promote this, if they are all shared the same lines, and you could choose one instead of another, like with phone companies?

[johnwill]

The situation is not as simple as it appears. What the major ISP's want to do is allocate bandwidth based on revenue, rather than evenly.