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Comment by lmroz | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Senate voted on an older version of net neutrality in 2011 with a resolution introduced by former republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (a resolution of disapproval of the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2010). It was a party line vote, 48-52, with republicans (the minority caucus in the Senate at that time) voting against the order and democrats voting in support of the order.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-joint-re...

Also in 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives had a disapproval vote which passed 240-179, since republicans were in the majority at that time. All but 2 republicans voted to disapprove the FCC order, while all but 6 democrats voted in support of the order.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-joint-res...

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The problem isn't net neutrality, it's lack of competition among ISPs. Normally, I would agree with them - regulating the internet is not the way to spur innovation. But with an ISP monopoly or duopoly in most markets, either more competition (my preferred solution) or regulation is needed. As we've seen with phone service (if you're old enough to remember), regulation will give us reliable but expensive service, and competition will give us cheap, reliable, and feature-filled service.

"competition will give us cheap, reliable, and feature-filled service". Really, I would love to see the evidence that this would be the case.

Competition lowers costs in most industries, especially in markets with a low barrier to entry. In 1956, fridge would have cost the equivalent of $3000[1]. Now, it's down to a few hundred of dollars, completely because competition spurred the creation of technological and manufacturing advances, driving the price down.

The issue here is that some industries, particularly industries with a high barrier to entry and low returns due to existing competition, are incredibly difficult to enter. The internet service provider industry happens to be one of those industries that form monopolies.

[1] http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/50selectrical.html

What's your proposal for increasing competition?

Allowing any company access to the last mile would be a start. They just pay rent to the line owner, just like it was back in the mid 90s.

Net Neutrality and competition are two completely separate issues.

Not really. In a competitive market, ISPs couldn't pull the kind of anti-consumer shenanigans that NN is meant to prevent, but wouldn't be hamstrung from reducing costs by forced compliance to regulations. The closest analogy that I can think of was Ma Bell, followed by the breakup of ma bell, followed by open access to long distance lines. The best and cheapest long distance service came after the regulations were lifted and true competition was established.

Nobody benefits without net neutrality except the telecoms. It shouldn't be allowed.

Okay, but they are also doing nothing about the monopolies.

So put another way, whichever party in power is against net neutrality, and whichever isn’t is for it?

No - republicans in both chambers voted against net neutrality, and democrats in both chambers voted for net neutrality. The resolution of disapproval of net neutrality only passed in the House because there was a republican majority in the House at that time. It failed in the Senate because there was a democrat majority in the Senate at that time.

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