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Comment by alextgordon | Hacker News Reader

This is not such a big deal as it would be in the US. We have a lot more competition, so "let the market sort it out" is more or less a reasonable position.

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Exactly. I can get my Internet connection from 100+ companies. In the US, as far as I've seen, it's 2 companies if you're lucky.

In the UK, the market will decide what people want from their internet connection, and customers have more than enough choice to decide what they want.

I'm glad the government is keeping out of it.

To give a real world example:

Quite a few ISPs in the UK institute bandwidth caps. Sometimes these caps can be horrendously expensive compared to the real cost of the bandwidth (i.e. high markup).

But there's also quite a few ISPs with no unreasonable bandwidth caps. I have the choice to use one of these ISPs instead (and I do).

Same deal with net neutrality. If non-neutral ISPs pop up, then you can be sure that neutral ones will too. There's no better selling point than "we're cheaper than those guys".

I think the government is right not to mess with a well functioning market when there's not even a problem yet. I'm not so keen on them trying to spin non-neutral practices into a good thing (this may just be the article sensationalising).

As a counter example, if can only get your broadband via cable, you're stuck with Virgin Media (I think) who have quite an onerous capping policy [1] unless you fork out for 50Mb fibre optic.

[1] http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-... - in particular, note the evening fair use amount: 3.5Gb

Sadly, you can't choose to get your broadband "only via cable" - Virgin still requires you to pony up for the phone line.

I'm currently paying Sky £10 a month for a landline phone that I will never use, and £11 a month for the Internet.

Virgin offer packages which don't require a BT Line. It may be that you are not cabled up suitably for such a deal (we used to pay our cable operator, now Virgin, for a telephone line which we could not get but they gave us 'free' TV which is what we actually wanted to buy).

http://shop.virginmedia.com//bundles/specials/affiliate/dual...

All other providers do require a BT line, though some people would say it's a landline phone line that you /always/ use...assuming you leave your router on.

> "All other providers do require a BT line"

Untrue. Most exchanges now have LLU which allows you to get your phone+ADSL from other providers. You may still need to get your phone line from BT, but that's not the case in many places.

The vast majority can get ADSL now. I believe coverage is 95%+

Obviously it sucks for the few exchanges that can't do ADSL. Then your only real options are 3G, satellite, or install your own dedicated line.

Good example.

As for the spin, I think it's good to give people choice. For example if people want to get a cheaper internet connection that's watered down version without 'premium' websites which cost extra, then that's fair enough.

I don't think anything like that would work well though. People expect the internet to mean 'everything' on a level playing field.

This is highly dependent on where you live. Varying wildly between exchanges.

Where I live in London I can't move for ISP's. Where my brother lives in Norfolk (the countryside) he technically has the exact same number of ADSL ISP's but only two will actually give him contracts.

Exactly. All's well (for the most part) in the major cities, but if you're not in one of them you're damned. Basically, it's BT network for sneakernet for you. Good luck finding a BT reseller that's not got bandwidth caps or some sort of shaping. (I know they exist, but there's not many of them - and if you do want those things, you'll probably need a business line).

There's lots of ISPs who have residential packages with no traffic shaping and bandwidth caps that you can't reasonably hit with non-commercial use.

I use ADSL24 and they're offering up to 90GB/month caps for 'peak' times, and no caps for off-peak: http://adsl24.co.uk/broadband/

That's a huge amount of data transfer, especially considering that if you're in a rural exchange you're probably not getting the high ends of ADSL speeds or ADSL2+ and would find streaming video and the like a frustrating experience in any case.

Are there really not that many isps over in the US?

(although thinking about it, whenever I hear about US isps it is always the same few companies (comcast comes to mind))

Here in San Francisco, we really have Comcast and Astound (a localish one). I don't know of any except those two.

Two is nice to have. I'm back to two cable providers plus DSL, but last year I had the choice of Comcast, or something slow, pricey and wireless. And that was in the Boston suburbs, not the mountains of Idaho or something.

Network infrastructure in the USA is startlingly primitive and monopolistic.

In Washington DC, the nations capital, there's only Verizon and Comcast, as far as I know.

There's RCN as well which didn't suck when I lived there. I think DC is mostly the exception.

Many U.S. cities have historically granted right of way (to run cables) to one "phone" company and one "cable" company. In my area, we have AT&T and Comcast. It's up to the cities to allow more competitors, and many are unwilling to do that (or unable, if they have long-term agreements with the existing carriers).

It's a classic case of public policy lagging behind technology, with politicians having no concern for technological progress and free market principles, unwisely entering into long-term agreements with telecom companies.

Unless I'm terribly mistaken, one of the main reasons cities entered into agreements with cable companies, etc was that the cable companies wouldn't lay down cable unless they were granted a monopoly in the area.

When I was in US (Palo Alto) I think you could get comcast or excite (Y! @home or something). Pretty sure the choice was limited to 2.

Plus…keep calm and carry on. The British are going to be slow to adopt net neutrality because they may as well just let the market sort it out until the market f*s up too badly, then they'll look at it.

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