With the net neutrality ruling, would an ISP contract offer any protection?

[slackerinabox]

So my cable /internet's about $95 a month for 75mps up down without a contract - I could upgrade to gigabit for a grand total of $140, but with a contract. Would that contract prevent the isp from forcing me into say tiered pricing, or whatever nonesense they come up with (at least for the 2 years of the contract)?

 

[shortylickens]

I bet at least one ISP will try offering neutral internet.
Their project will fail.
They will extort websites.
Profits skyrocket.
It becomes the norm.

 

[Elixer]

So my cable /internet's about $95 a month for 75mps up down without a contract - I could upgrade to gigabit for a grand total of $140, but with a contract. Would that contract prevent the isp from forcing me into say tiered pricing, or whatever nonesense they come up with (at least for the 2 years of the contract)?

Depends on what the contract says.

 

[Paladin3]

Depends on what the contract says.

I love your sig.

 

[BoomerD]

Odds are, you'll keep your current speed, but some websites will either be blocked, throttled, or restricted to "further payment/subscription" options.

Want to watch Netflix? In addition to your Netflix subscription, you now have to pay an additional $5/month to your ISP for access...shit like that.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Great day to be Canadian. Though this is still very bad news, and will affect us, most sites are hosted in the US. Since we're not even customers of the ISPs I imagine our traffic will be defaulted to the lowest tier. Facebook, Youtube, Netflix etc is all going to be very slow. On the other hand it may open up a market for equivalent sites to startup here.

That, and it sets a precedent. Bell and Rogers are already trying to kill net neutrality here. Trudeau is FOR net neutrality, but the minute we get a conservative in office again, we're going to lose it. As much as I don't like everything Trudeau does, such as letting radical ISIS militants back into Canada and giving more to refugees than our own people, I'm glad Harper lost.

 

[gill77]

Now that everyone has just about had an aneurysm about the rollback of some government regulation, I guess we can see if this is really the end of the internet as we know it.

It is even possible that 99% of us will go on living as usual and not even notice a difference.

The time to raise a stink with regulators is if and when you actually experience an unfair practice that adversely affects you.

It will be interesting to see if this is closer to Armageddon or Y2K.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It's not so much that it's the end, it's that it will now cost you more, because they will nickel and dime you to gain access to individual sites now. The internet will now work like cable TV, where you have channel packages.

This is also very bad for internet entrepreneurs, because the base package will probably include lot of the big sites like Google and Facebook, but if someone wants to try to start a competitor then they will be in the slow lane. Internet websites that want to be included in the base package will have to pay huge bucks per month to all the major ISPs. My guess is it will be based on bandwidth. So if you want your website accessible by Verizon customers without them having to pay extra, then you have to pay Verizon, then Comcast etc. too. At least that's my guess as to how it's going to work. They already sort of do it for Netflix.

 

[renz20003]

I'll get rid of household internet

 

[highland145]

I'm not educated on this at all. My office is 10 down and 1 up. My prime video and voip phones work. Life is good, ATM.

So was there evidence of a problem before the 2015 regulations or was there a problem that we didn't know we had like Red mentioned with new businesses?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Basically the "problem" is that ISPs, who also sell TV service are losing money because people are using the internet for their content now (Netflix etc) and canceling cable. So now they'll be able to throttle competition such as Netflix (or charge extra for it) to encourage people to just keep TV service too. At least that's my understanding of it, but now that the door is open they can probably do all sorts of other stuff too to maximize profits.

Not really sure when it takes effect though. Might be a gradual thing, or maybe they flip the switch at midnight or something. Not sure.

 

[Murloc]

I'm not educated on this at all. My office is 10 down and 1 up. My prime video and voip phones work. Life is good, ATM.

So was there evidence of a problem before the 2015 regulations or was there a problem that we didn't know we had like Red mentioned with new businesses?

the issue has been shown in some EU countries, where net neutrality rules aren't all applicable to mobile data.

Zero rating is allowed on mobile. That means you can buy a packet to e.g. use video streaming or social networks or whatever else without data caps.

The problem is: which services are zero rated?

The more honest companies allow any platform to request to be entered in the package.

If this spreads, a startup will have to go through a bureaucratic process for each company in each country.

What if the service is innovative and can't be pigeonholed in one of the zero-rating categories? Tough luck.

Of course the next step is companies not being honest about it or being slow to add new services to the list, and giving incumbents an unfair advantage, or being outright scummy and forcing the companies to pay to get zero-rated.

Now in the US, all this of may happen when it comes to wired speed, or wired data caps if you have them (they basically don't exist in Europe).

Customers or companies will be leeched on, and competitivity and innovation will be hurt.

Add strong conflicts of interest between ISP and cable companies, which are often one of the same, and you have a recipe for disaster.

At the start they probably won't dare to go that far and it will be limited to backend agreements with the big companies to ensure good service or whatever.

Content delivery networks including Netflix's already have caching at ISP locations and the like, e.g. netflix open connect.

Going from netflix providing this cache infrastructure for free, to having netflix actually pay to put their servers there, to simply banning netflix from doing it so that you can instead promote either cable or the ISP's own streaming service (which will be better since netflix will be slow to load, and the ISP service will be able to provide higher resolutions as a result), is just a sequence of small steps that aren't directly noticeable to the customer, and create walled gardens instead of a single global market.

 

[highland145]

Basically the "problem" is that ISPs, who also sell TV service are losing money because people are using the internet for their content now (Netflix etc) and canceling cable. So now they'll be able to throttle competition such as Netflix (or charge extra for it) to encourage people to just keep TV service too. At least that's my understanding of it, but now that the door is open they can probably do all sorts of other stuff too to maximize profits.

Not really sure when it takes effect though. Might be a gradual thing, or maybe they flip the switch at midnight or something. Not sure.

My home cable/internet is already pounding me. 57 channels and nothing on, 25 down/5 up, $175/mo. Sure makes me want to research jail breaking a fire stick.

 

[pete6032]

Likely nothing will change because this will be stuck in court for a couple of years.

 

[highland145]

the issue has been shown in some EU countries, where net neutrality rules aren't all applicable to mobile data.

Zero rating is allowed on mobile. That means you can buy a packet to e.g. use video streaming or social networks or whatever else without data caps.

The problem is: which services are zero rated?

The more honest companies allow any platform to request to be entered in the package.

If this spreads, a startup will have to go through a bureaucratic process for each company in each country.

What if the service is innovative and can't be pigeonholed in one of the zero-rating categories? Tough luck.

Of course the next step is companies not being honest about it, and giving incumbents a fair advantage, or being outright scummy and forcing the companies to pay to get zero-rated.

Now in the US, all this of may happen when it comes to wired speed.

Customers or companies will be leeched on, and competitivity and innovation will be hurt.

Add strong conflicts of interest between ISP and cable companies, which are often one of the same, and you have a recipe for disaster.

At the start they probably won't dare to go that far and it will be limited to backend agreements with the big companies or whatever, but a few years down the road? Who knows.

A talking head on the finance channel said that Portugal is in the midst of this transition now and to watch and see.

For some reason I'm thinking that you're in Europe, right?

 

[Aikouka]

You'd have to read the fine print of the contract, but what you're getting is likely a pricing contract for a specific tier of Internet service. This means that you're likely to see any increase in cost during the duration, but of course, the company could also reduce the cost if they do across the market. (Keep in mind that the company could have stipulations that they are able to add on fees where necessary, which is a way to increase cost of a fixed-price contract.) But the thing about a pricing contract is that whether you entered into one or not, you're still under the same Terms of Service as any other user, which can include language allowing the ISP to modify aspects of the service (e.g. add data caps) without any recourse from you.

I'll be honest... I get a bit annoyed seeing a lot of the FUD spouted out about Net Neutrality. I'm certainly pro-Net Neutrality, but man... people sure act like the Internet is going to die now that the FCC voted to remove it.

 

[Murloc]

A talking head on the finance channel said that Portugal is in the midst of this transition now and to watch and see.

For some reason I'm thinking that you're in Europe, right?

Portugal was noticed first but vodafone is introducing it in all its markets which include countries like Germany and Italy.

Yeah I'm in Europe, you can probably feel it due to my non-idiomatic English.

I'll be honest... I get a bit annoyed seeing a lot of the FUD spouted out about Net Neutrality. I'm certainly pro-Net Neutrality, but man... people sure act like the Internet is going to die now that the FCC voted to remove it.

well the internet is not going to die because in the grand scheme of things, streaming movies and other high bandwidth-stuff isn't what makes the internet great, but the fair competition concerns are totally legit if the US don't want to lose their advantage in the internet stuff.

 

[highland145]

Portugal was noticed first but vodafone is introducing it in all its markets which include countries like Germany and Italy.

Yeah I'm in Europe, you can probably feel it due to my non-idiomatic English.

Effing make me look up a word....really?




Obviously, this could be months in the process but keep us posted if you can. TIA.

 

[boomerang]

I think the best prep for this would be something along the lines of what you did for Y2K. That should just about cover it.

 

[highland145]

I think the best prep for this would be something along the lines of what you did for Y2K. That should just about cover it.

lolol Those fortran coders needed work.

 

[sdifox]

You will soon receive a menu detailing surcharge per service you wish to access. And they are combos, just like tv channel packages.

 

[fenrir]

I'm not educated on this at all. My office is 10 down and 1 up. My prime video and voip phones work. Life is good, ATM.

So was there evidence of a problem before the 2015 regulations or was there a problem that we didn't know we had like Red mentioned with new businesses?

AT&T was throttling Netflix before the regulations. This was shown by several people using a VPN and getting far better speeds when accessing Netflix. Just weird how the speed got much better after the regulations....

 

[sswingle]

Even WITH net neutrality some companies were starting to pull shenanigans. ie cell phone companies saying certain video streaming services don't count against your data cap while other services do. Things like that will only get worse.

 

[gill77]

Even WITH net neutrality some companies were starting to pull shenanigans. ie cell phone companies saying certain video streaming services don't count against your data cap while other services do. Things like that will only get worse.

That is sort of my issue with the whole thing. If we could expect good governance instead of dysfunctional crony capitalism it would be a whole different story.

Net Neutrality sounds really appealing, like Switzerland or Linux, but it is like any other government regulation, a battle of big money and lobbyists. One industry bribing it's way to an upper hand against another.

I wish the bureaucrats in DC truly had you and me in mind, but if you believe that I have this bridge you may be interested in............

 

[ElFenix]

Odds are, you'll keep your current speed, but some websites will either be blocked, throttled, or restricted to "further payment/subscription" options.

Want to watch Netflix? In addition to your Netflix subscription, you now have to pay an additional $5/month to your ISP for access...shit like that.

i don't think the ISPs will be dumb enough to actually charge customers subscribers. what they'll do is say, "oh you want to access our customers subscribers? that'll be $XXX."

at least, not landline based ISPs. mobile companies might. iirc NN principles were not enforced against them prior to 2015 (and i'm really not sure about afterward) because there is far less bandwidth available over the air than through a wire.

Basically the "problem" is that ISPs, who also sell TV service are losing money because people are using the internet for their content now (Netflix etc) and canceling cable. So now they'll be able to throttle competition such as Netflix (or charge extra for it) to encourage people to just keep TV service too. At least that's my understanding of it, but now that the door is open they can probably do all sorts of other stuff too to maximize profits.

Not really sure when it takes effect though. Might be a gradual thing, or maybe they flip the switch at midnight or something. Not sure.

that is one of the real problems. your ISP happened to be either your cable company, which is used to selling you a bunch of other stuff, and now they're getting cut out, or your phone company, which figured out how to be your TV company and wants to sell you that same bunch of other stuff. so they're incentivized to toll access to their customers subscribers.