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Comment by mikedilger | Hacker News Reader

I agree that the ISP monopoly problem in the US is by far the bigger problem.

The "last mile" should be owned and controlled by the government, for similar reasons why roads and power lines are. Then handfuls of ISPs would compete for the business of your household. Here in New Zealand that's exactly how it works. I can choose from at least 20 ISPs and net neutrality is a non-issue because free market competition drives the providers to give us what we want.

Thus my stance on net-neutrality is neither for nor against. I think both stances are equally bad, and the root of the problem is ISP monopoly.

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I don't understand how having free market competition solves the issue net neutrality is addressing here: what if each ISP has different deals with different internet content providers? Net neutrality prevents this kind of vertical balkanization in a way that the free market can't intrinsically address.

How so? If there's a market for net neutrality, and if there's sufficient competition, someone will provide a neutral option. It just needs to be cheap enough for a competitor to enter the market for that to happen.

The capital required to build a competing network is immense. It will never happen, and there’s way more money in getting into the existing grift.

Did you not read the part about the government owning the physical infrastructure?

I did lose track of who was arguing what, yes.

I wouldn’t be so sure... look at the cable tv market in the US. Surely there is consumer demand for clear and simple pricing and per-channel choice. And yet the free market has not provided this.

In the US, the cable tv market is subject to the exact same local monopolies as the isp market; in fact, they are often the same company.

Why stop at the ISP level? Have a system that allows the user device to negotiate a connection with whatever services are available. The service could offer bids from providers which would have to specify a service level and price point. Then have a second price auction for every unit of time (say 10 mins). The user tunes their device to get the level of service and price they want. A contract would then consist of a VPN provider who would make bids on your behalf for a fixed monthly price.

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