But from a physics/technical standpoint, a radio only has so much capacity. How would you handle the situation, if you managed a provider, and 10 people at a bar started streaming an NBA game in HD? Somethings got to give.
It is a super straight forward model, but obviously much more expensive to provide. I imagine most users would be happy to pay 1/10 of the cost to get a service that might drop to 10% performance in the worst case, as long as it doesn't happen too frequently.
Because that is not how wireless communication works. E.g. in LTE the user is scheduled both in frequency and time. The operator has a certain frequency spectrum that gives a certain maximum transmission rate (one user getting all frequencies and time).
The scheduling happens based on (amongst other things) signal to noise ratio and priority of each user and their traffic types (voice, data, etc). The goal of the operator is to maximize the overall capacity of the network. This is beneficial for the user as well.
I think the problem in the US is the lack of competition. Not net neutrality issues. In places where this works well you just change operator if you are not happy with your current one. This way the provider is free to experiment with how to run their network and everyone benefits.
I think it's because most NN advocates have a bias that regulation is a good thing, so of course regulating ISPs will be the right way to make the internet better.
However keep in mind that it is regulators who have granted the last mile monopolies to their crony firms and who have helped prevent last mile competition.
Notably one thing the FCC has done of late is to remove restrictions on reconfiguring wires on utility poles that benefitted incumbents. Now under the new rules, an ISP who is adding lines to existing utility poles is authorized to move/modify the equipment already on the pole when doing the installation.
Previously the rules allowed incumbent firms months to schedule a technician to go out to move the equipment around, which caused many delays for new firms trying to compete.
My internet service is pretty bad (XFinity) and Net Neutrality is not the solution, the solution is more ISPs to choose from. I'd much rather have three or four fiber providers to choose from than the (bad) choice between XFinity and AT&T. There are only two choices because of regulators, not in spite of them.
A guaranteed 1 gig circuit is on the order of thousands USD month. An oversubscribed consumer fiber provider like Google Fiber is an order of magnitude cheaper because they can oversubscribe based on consumer traffic models that cover 99% of users.
Also keep in mind that your model isn't really straightforward at all. The ISP can only provide you guarantees within the lines they control. There could be any number of choke points at IXPs that mean the user can't reach site X at their guaranteed rate. So ISPs never even offer hard guarantees on connections to the wider Internet. The most you will be able to buy is dedicated circuits to their core, an IXP, some branch office, etc.
Are you okay with gyms selling more unlimited memberships than the number of machines they have?
Yes, but with a gym, you can switch if you keep seeing overcrowdedness. Not so with an ISP that has a monopoly.
Oversubscribing is a vastly preferable economic solution in this case. Everyone who can pay a small amount gets access to the network, and most of the time they get the bandwidth they need.
Selling a limited number of tickets at a massively increased price, or selling a massive number of tickets each with a dedicated data rate that was almost always idle are both strictly inferior solutions by very wide margins.
That throttling is essential to network management is undisputed. There were even carve outs in the old NN refs for it. The problem is if the “throttling” is not just limited video streams in general during peak times, but actually just limiting just certain services’ streams.
And this is the real problem.
The U.S. should require access-network sharing (at least for fixed-line, mobile seems to limitations here), like most other countries do ...
Then you wouldn't need to over-regulate how ISPs operate ... you could let the market decide.
The latter is a much better solution. You don't seem to appreciate the realities at play here.
Which also, of course, explains why throttling it all the time is not necessary and certainly not optimal.