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NET NEUTRALITY IS DEAD. LONG LIVE COMPETITION.

Are you confused about Net Neutrality (NN)? Here it is in a nutshell: Muh Netflix!

Today, officially, the Trump-era FCC has killed the Obama-era FCC regulation known as net neutrality. In 2018, through the the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, the Trump-era FC has decreed broadband once again to be an information service.



Back in 2015, through the Open Internet Order, the Obama-era FCC classifed broadband access as a telephone service. Doing so subjected Tier 3 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the firms that bring the Internet to your house, to common carrier laws and regulations. That empowered the Obama-era FCC to enforce any policy against Tier 3 ISPs.

The people who lobbied Obama for NN are the major streaming content providers like Netflix, Amazon (Prime TV), Google (YouTube TV). These firms sought to compete against TV offerings of cable broadband ISPs not by building their own networks, but rather by using politics to force ISPs to subsidize their offerings.

The gist of NN was this: ISP should be prohibited from charging major content providers for hogging Tier 3 bandwidth. Further, ISPs should be forced to let particular content providers compete against them while forcing those ISPs to eat additional costs.

Under NN, the executives of Netflix, Google, Amazon have been pushing costs their firms otherwise would incur upon all end users. They forced the executives of Tier 3 ISPs to push those costs upon all end users or lose profit. All end users have been subsidizing Google (Youtube), Netflix, Amazon and the like even if many end users do not use their services.



The bigger issue is this: Why should a firm like Comcast subsidize a firm like Netflix and compete against Netflix? Why should Comcast be forced to expand its network capacity for Netflix executives to gobble up free to them?

Before Obama's FCC NN ruling, Google had been rolling out Google Fiber in cities. That upped last mile bandwidth and forced prices to fall. After Obama's NN, Google stopped their Google Fiber expansion.

For those who had yet to be born or were too young to know about the days of dial up and DSL when there were dozens of Internet service providers, because of hyper-competition, prices for Internet access continued to drop while service and speed improved. Yet, in the era of mega ISPs, prices have continued to rise and there has been little competition in the Tier 3 arena.

Net neutrality has helped keep this system of a handful of to-the-home ISPs in place. Because of Net Neutrality, you have suffered a loss of competition for your access dollars.

If the execs of Netflix, Google and Amazon are unhappy with paying costs to Tier 3 ISPs, such firms should join forces and build out their own ISPs to compete for Internet eyeballs at the home and device.

Big Content Providers tried to win the battle of NN by spreading propaganda over throttling. They desired everyone to believe that Tier 3 ISPs would throttling your Netflix or Hulu. 

The fear of Tier 3 ISPs throttling data are overblown. There is little reason to believe that Tier 3 ISPs will throttle. Merely Tier 3 execs are going to make Netflix pay for services Netflix execs have been free riding upon for years now rather than make end users pay higher prices to eat what should be Netflix's costs.

Believe it, but many of us do not buy Netflix nor Hulu. We should not have to pay higher Internet access prices so those who buy Netflix or Hulu can pay lower prices for those services.

Execs at Netflix or Hulu either need to live with less profit or charge higher prices at the risk of losing some customers. That's the free marketing system. That is how it should work.

Tier 3 ISPs that would throttle would lose costumers since such customers would switch to those firms that guarantee no throttling.  Punishing consumers is always a dangerous game.

Wireless 5G services will be here in full rollout by 2020. If there is strong competition for last mile / cell phone data, why should anyone worry about the end of NN?  Can you imagine a future where on your smart phone, you might have a telco provider separate from your data provider? That future could happen under the Trump-era FCC.

Restoring Internet Freedom Order does not take effect until transparancy rules go into effect. The US Office of Management and Budget is the agency thta approves collection requirements.

To comment about this story or work of the True Dollar Journal, you can @ me through the Fediverse. You can find me @johngritt@freespeechextremist.com

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