Comment by noetic_techy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noetic_techy | Hacker News Reader

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I totally agree. Who cares if the worst case scenario is tiered pricing, as long as their is REAL competition, a competitor can come along and say "we offer it all for one flat fee because our infrastructure is better." Boom, done. These municipal exclusion deals are the real problem.

I also think this is going to backfire and bite the telco's in the ass if they try to roll out tiers. The legislative outcry when joe schmo is affected could become so deafening that congress will be likely be forced to get up off their ass and intervene which is exactly what they don't want. If they were smart they would only go after the Netflix and Face-books of the world and leave the consumer out of it.

Can you imagine the 2020 campaign slogan of "Donald Trump ruined the internet." Ignoring this issue was stupid but I don't think they thought this through.

A rather naïve reading. People are stupid. They may even prefer the "simplicity" of tiered packages. They'll roll over.

No way, man. People hate their ISP's, and would love to be able to switch.

Ok everyone, it's been fun. See you on America Online!

I predict the first package is going to be a gamer package. Image a low latency / high bandwidth connection tuned for gaming. Lots of people would pay $10 or $15 per month for that if it would give them an advantage in gaming.

They could conceivably just demand subsidies from Google, Facebook etc. and charge customers nothing.

Then they can say to some degree of truth say that bringing net neutrality back would force them to raise prices.

I am concerned they'd go farther and use such demands to subsidize consumer rates. Then people would get complacent while losing the freedom of choice.

But going after Netflix, for instance, will result in a price increase for the consumer, no? When Netflix's costs for bandwidth go up, they are going to pass that cost on to you.

I worry the average consumer's reaction to that is going to be as follows: "All the tech nerds were worried about this net neutrality thing, but since it got revoked my Comcast bill is cheaper than ever. In completely unrelated news, those bastards at Netflix have hiked their prices again!"

Isn't this really the point? Netflix consumes a lot of resources and are the sole reason for a lot of ISP infrastructure upgrades. Why shouldn't Netflix and by proxy their subscribers be on the hook?

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