FCC Releases Plan to End Net Neutrality!!

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  • Dean C.

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    This Tuesday the FCC headed by Ajit Pai (Who just so happened to formerly work for Verizon) released plans that will lower the amount of federal regulations placed on Internet Providers in regards to internet speeds and access also known as Net Neutrality. In short this would allow ISP's to treat websites and different internet content essentially as "channels" potentially forcing consumers to have to pay extra for websites such as INGO, Netflix or Amazon.

    This proposition is totally and completely unacceptable in every way, essentially allowing companies who have a virtual monopoly on Cable and Internet Service the ability to control what people are able to see and do on the internet.

    This is an incredibly important issue and I urge everyone on INGO to contact their senators and congressmen with the same tenacity we contacted them in order to move the SHARE / HPA along.


    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/technology/fcc-net-neutrality.html (article outlining the FCC proposition)

    https://www.battleforthenet.com/ (website that automatically connects you to your relevant congressmen and senators)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_V._Pai#Career (conflict of interest with the current FCC chair)


    I am sorry if this is a Dupe but this is an insanely important subject that I feel the FCC is trying to pass quickly and quietly over the holiday.
     

    hoosierdoc

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    Wait, I thought net neutrality was bad?

    talked to my brother who ran a large data networking division with Verizon in Texas, then with frontier in Ft Wayne and currrntly works for Cisco. He's rather well versed in it.

    he says net neutrality is certainly not libertarian as it forces people to do things they don't want to with their networks. He also said many major providers are contracting directly with content providers, skipping the "internet" entirely. As in Comcast would have a direct connection to Netflix and google, and their customers do not have to receive that data over standard internet routers.

    So as it things move forward it's less relavent, and it's certainly anti free market.

    Some interesting stuff: a company was inserting referral codes into customer web addresses for things like Amazon referral codes. So if you click on amazon.com and don't have a referral code in the URL, the company would add their own to your data packet and earn a referral fee from your activity

    or stripping google ad content and inserting their own adds on google's pages that you load
     
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    Kutnupe14

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    I'm torn on this. It's closer to the free market than what we currently have, but it does allow private interests to potentially dictate what it thinks people should see or hear.
     

    Dean C.

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    I'm torn on this. It's closer to the free market than what we currently have, but it does allow private interests to potentially dictate what it thinks people should see or hear.


    The idea of having to buy "packages" for internet is terrifying to myself at least. Now if there were more competition in the market maybe, but as she sits right now the "Big 4" have essentially a monopoly on service and they all have insanely bad track records for screwing over consumers. Personally I think comcast and Time Warner need a good old fashioned ATT style trust busting.
     

    hoosierdoc

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    Not if you like getting all the internet for one price and not having to buy the "premium" package to visit and use popular websites.

    hrm. Well, should i force my "likes" on the people who actually provide the content by FCC rule, or by free market? Where's that BAKe THE CAKE! Pic?

    comcast was not allowed to block bittorrent data, even though the vast majority of it is illegal file sharing. Thanks net neutrality.

    would ending net neutrality kill the kodi thieves?

    edit: yes, poor kodi thieves would be stuck with lower speeds
     
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    RugerRog

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    I dont think this is a good idea. The consumer may take it in the pooper again. I've also heard that an your ISP could throttle down content that they dont provide, whereas, today they cannot.
     

    hoosierdoc

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    I dont think this is a good idea. The consumer may take it in the pooper again. I've also heard that an your ISP could throttle down content that they dont provide, whereas, today they cannot.

    Woah, woah, woah, you mean your service can control their service? :runaway:

    as I posted above, many second and third tier providers have direct feed to streaming and content providers to serve their customers better in a congested internet frame already as it is. They do this to provide you better service and avoid internet congestion. Currently top tier providers don't care to upgrade because they don't get any increased revenue for their increased capital outlay for framework expenditure. With net neutrality gone they could. ATT stopped fiber build out in 2014 because they couldn't control what they do with their capacity.

    my brother told stories of where top tier provider router was maxed capacity, but they could upgrade it to serve more 100G cards. They said no. Just buy more lines from us. The customer offered to pay the $50,000 for the upgraded card and donate it to the top tier, and were told no. There is currently zero reason for top tier internet companies to expand their line capacity.

    that cannot continue if you expect ever increasing speeds and streaming content

    imagine a restaurant had to serve anyone who walked in and could only charge $10/plate. Are you going to find steak? Or chicken fried steak?
     

    Dean C.

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    Woah, woah, woah, you mean your service can control their service? :runaway:

    as I posted above, many second and third tier providers have direct feed to streaming and content providers to serve their customers better in a congested internet frame already as it is. They do this to provide you better service and avoid internet congestion. Currently top tier providers don't care to upgrade because they don't get any increased revenue for their increased capital outlay for framework expenditure. With net neutrality gone they could. ATT stopped fiber build out in 2014 because they couldn't control what they do with their capacity.

    my brother told stories of where top tier provider router was maxed capacity, but they could upgrade it to serve more 100G cards. They said no. Just buy more lines from us. The customer offered to pay the $50,000 for the upgraded card and donate it to the top tier, and were told no. There is currently zero reason for top tier internet companies to expand their line capacity.

    that cannot continue if you expect ever increasing speeds and streaming content

    imagine a restaurant had to serve anyone who walked in and could only charge $10/plate. Are you going to find steak? Or chicken fried steak?


    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394.html


    Telecom got 200 Billion to upgrade the nations internet and it never happened, I don't trust a thing those monopolies say or do. Again if the market were actualy competitive in any way I would be OK with less regulation, but it is a non-competitive market.
     

    npwinder

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    Woah, woah, woah, you mean your service can control their service? :runaway:

    as I posted above, many second and third tier providers have direct feed to streaming and content providers to serve their customers better in a congested internet frame already as it is. They do this to provide you better service and avoid internet congestion. Currently top tier providers don't care to upgrade because they don't get any increased revenue for their increased capital outlay for framework expenditure. With net neutrality gone they could. ATT stopped fiber build out in 2014 because they couldn't control what they do with their capacity.

    my brother told stories of where top tier provider router was maxed capacity, but they could upgrade it to serve more 100G cards. They said no. Just buy more lines from us. The customer offered to pay the $50,000 for the upgraded card and donate it to the top tier, and were told no. There is currently zero reason for top tier internet companies to expand their line capacity.

    that cannot continue if you expect ever increasing speeds and streaming content

    imagine a restaurant had to serve anyone who walked in and could only charge $10/plate. Are you going to find steak? Or chicken fried steak?

    If I pay for 100Mbps connection and 1tb of bandwidth a month, why should the ISP care what I do on the network?

    Its correct they weren't allowed to block Bit torrent sites. However, they also couldn't be sued for data that passed through their network. Do we want to risk punishing all users for the illicit activities of a few?

    Are there apps available to Kodi that allow it to be used for stealing media? yes. Kodi itself has no content. The user provides the content. Its just as easy to provide legal content as it is illegal.

    https://arstechnica.com/information...-investment-according-to-the-isps-themselves/

    Here in Kouts I have choices of Mediacom cable, Frontier, dsl or a couple wireless internet providers such as Surf wireless.

    First couple years I had frontier. Peak times my 7meg connection was getting .38 meg and unusable. Tried calling a few times and got the run around that its a neighborhood issue and theres no estimated time to resolve it.

    Finally tried out mediacom despite the terrible reviews (not that frontier is any better) Faster speeds no downtime. A year later I doubled my connection from 50 meg to 100 meg for 5 dollars more a month. Called yesterday to have them shut the wifi off the modem since I have my own router and it was giving me issues with plex. The offered to double my speed to 200 meg for another $5 a month. They even offered me a credit of $5 for 1 month to try it out. Earlier this year, Mediacom rolled out 1gbps service all across their network in Indiana and is in the process of getting across their 22 state footprint.

    While Mediacom didn't support the move to Title II they do support the principals of net neutrality.

    A good company is going to continue upgrading their network. A bad company is going to continue to ignore the issues. Net Neutrality doesn't have anything to do with that. Competition does.


    Time Warner CEO didn't donate to specific parties or candidates but seems to be a republican in interviews.

    ATT's ceo is active in the republican party.

    Comcast's Ceo has donated 76,000 to Democrats, and 13,000 to Republicans and supports Obamacare. They also own NBC, MSNBC ect,

    The CEO of Verizon donated to Hilary last year.

    Do you trust them not to censor right leaning sites or to throttle their speeds unless the site pays enough? Net Neutrality prevents that from happening.
     

    hoosierdoc

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    If I ran a flee market I'd expect to be able to kick out people trafficking illegal goods, even if I was not liable. Especially if their illegal activity is causing me to expand my services to handle the extra traffic generated by it.

    with the distributed nature of the internet I suspect you could still get to what you want. No, I'm not worried about Comcast blocking me from seeing Drudge Report.

    The teeny tiny donations by CEOs mean about nothing in the grand scheme of things.

    If FB hides posts from conservatives or stories about bad acting Dems, does that violate net neutrality, or is that just a business doing what they want in a free market?
     

    JAL

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    Here are some of the major issues:
    1. Companies like Comcast provide not only Internet service, they provide cable TV service; streaming video down their Internet side breaks their cable TV rice bowl if you can get via Netflix, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes or VUDU what you would have to pay a premium for on cable with the movie channels. Real-time streaming video is a real-time bandwidth hog. Unlike a file download which can just take a bit longer with a bit of a delay, streaming video content won't tolerate it, and will start dropping frames, or delaying what you're watching which is incredibly annoying.
    2. As already mentioned, upgrading bandwidth is expensive, very expensive. Service providers do not want to incur this cost as it bites straight out of their bottom line. Do they get to charge you more as a consequence without a consumer revolt? For those that live in the more rural areas, they had to wait eons just to get reasonable speed Internet. Just a few (very few) years ago I knew some folks in Carroll County that still had dial-up. Nobody would run cable for endless miles for less than a half-dozen subscribers at the most, and they were too far from the headframe for DSL at much faster than dial-up (speed goes down with distance).
    3. Just because you have an internet "speed" tied to your cable service doesn't mean you can demand that speed for extended periods of time. Cable bandwidth is shared by "neighborhoods" and if everyone demanded their guaranteed speed 24/7 it would gridlock immediately. The bandwidth for the "neighborhood" is based on an average demand which is much lower than the max. A household of five with kids all streaming video continuously from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and who knows what else, plus the parent doing so from Netflix, their ROKU, and other similar devices during peak demand times consumes enormous bandwidth.
    4. Packet switched networks - the Internet - are much like a freeway system - the data packets are like carloads of passengers each with their own origins and each with their own destinations all sharing the same highway system. Put too many cars on it all at the same time (too many packets of data) and it gridlocks, just like a freeway or interstate highway does. When gridlock occurs it takes quite a while for it to begin running with max throughput. Same as a gridlocked freeway. I've been around the Internet and packet switched networks for over 30 years . . . back when we used 300bps dial-up telephone modems . . . well before the World-Wide-Web (aka WWW). I've seen gridlock. It's not pretty and end users who do not understand how it works get mighty pissed about it instantly.
    It's all about control and the ISPs want to drive you to buying stuff from them, and not from anyone else such as Amazon, Netflix, Crackle, VUDU, iTunes, and anyone else selling streaming content on demand via the Internet . . . that isn't your ISP. The major ISPs are also TV content providers. They DO NOT want you streaming real-time HD video which not only consumes huge amounts of bandwidth, it also allows cutting a piece of premium subscription out of the TV side of their service as you're getting movies, sports and similar content without paying the ISP for it (on the cable TV side, or with pay per view for things like movies).

    IMHO, that's what the real battle over net neutrality is all about. Verizon, Comcast, and everyone else bundling TV and cable Internet are trying to drive out the competition from the Internet streaming video that is competing with their TV service. Drop net "neutrality" and they'll find a way to either throttle Netflix and others into annoying dribbles or charge you their own fee for using Netflix . . . on top of the Netflix subscription. They're going to get their pound of flesh from you whether you subscribe for their TV service or not!

    My brother lives in Raleigh, NC. He cut the cable TV off a long time ago. What he wants on TV comes via OTA (over the air) and he has an old lifetime service TiVo to record and time slide from a TV antenna. The rest he gets via ROKU, Netflix and similar streaming video on line. He is getting hammered by stuff from his cable Internet provider about wanting him to subscribe to TV service and by draconian reminders that there are bandwidth consumption limits. Not that he's gotten anywhere near that level of usage, but they're sending to him nevertheless. The upshot is they desperately want him to subscribe to cable TV service again and pay for a set top box rental. Why? it's more revenue for the same service drop! The added box has its own rental fee.

    John
     
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    npwinder

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    If I ran a flee market I'd expect to be able to kick out people trafficking illegal goods, even if I was not liable. Especially if their illegal activity is causing me to expand my services to handle the extra traffic generated by it.

    with the distributed nature of the internet I suspect you could still get to what you want. No, I'm not worried about Comcast blocking me from seeing Drudge Report.

    The teeny tiny donations by CEOs mean about nothing in the grand scheme of things.

    If FB hides posts from conservatives or stories about bad acting Dems, does that violate net neutrality, or is that just a business doing what they want in a free market?

    Bit torrents are not illegal. Can you use them to illegally download files? Yes. Can you use them to legally download files? yes. In fact, they got their start from scientists needing a way to send files back and forth. If I'm making a movie with someone on the other side of the country and determine that a bit torrent is the best way to send the file back and forth, should the ISP get to decide thats not allowed? I'd venture to guess that would use fewer network resources than me uploading to a 3rd party server then my partner downloading from that server as its a direct computer connection.

    Should we ban all AR-15s because someone may use them to commit a mass murder? No. because while some may use them for illegal purposes, many people use them for legal sporting purposes.

    If the ISP can determine that a customer is illegally downloading content, they can drop them as a customer much like a flee market can kick out a vendor. They should also turn it over to the authorities and allow due process. I'm pretty sure that's a standard agreement that if you're caught doing illegal things on the internet, the ISP can cut off service. and they should.

    Drudge report competes with you getting your news from MSNBC. You may need to worry about it being blocked from seeing it.


    ISP's typically have a monopoly in their area. With few exceptions comcast doesn't cross over with time warner or charter or mediacom. ATT doesn't cross over Verizon or Frontier, or Qwest.
    Most also have TV broadcasting and phone options. If they don't specifically have them, a lot of them have contract deals with other providers. Not only do they carry content from a 3rd party to their customer. They also have similar services that compete against the 3rd party. Should comcast be allowed to block access to Directtv and dish sites? Should ATT be allowed to block access to Verzion, Tmobile, and Sprint? Are anti-trust laws strong enough keep that kind of thing from happening?

    Again, if I subscribe to a service at 100mpbs and 1tb of bandwidth, why should the ISP get to decide which get website gets to load on my computer and how fast?

    Net Neutrality is a concept that all traffic should be able to travel the network freely without artificial restrictions. I would say that doesn't specifically translate to websites. If Facebook started actively hiding posts due to the companies contrary viewpoint, I would say that it is an issue because of facebook's size. Historically its been the websites owner gets say over whats put on the website. However, unlike the monopoly an ISP has for me to connect to the internet, I have other options to stay in touch with friends and family. I'm free to seek out news from other websites. I'm free to find other websites to post my opinion. Except for a very small handful of cross over areas, you dont get the with and ISP. most areas only have 2 options for the internet cable or dsl. some only have 1. If we're going to get rid of Net Neutrality, we also need to get rid of the government sanctioned monopolies. The potential number of cables running around is going to be unsightly, however, the competition will be there to help battle against the censorship.
     

    wtburnette

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    As many have stated, the battle over net neutrality is basically a battle of the ISP's and TV providers trying to end streaming services. Ending net neutrality sets things up perfectly for that to happen, with paid prioritization, low data caps and other methods waiting in the wings. Every one of these things is anti-consumer to the extreme. Cord cutting has finally been cutting into the bottom lines of companies like Comcast and this is giving them a way to fix that problem. Does anyone here want to see Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, Vudu and all the other video services either go out of business or greatly increase their prices? That's what will happen. It won't be over night, but that's exactly what is being setup.

    BTW, please don't use terms like "free market" in any posts about net neutrality unless you're pointing out that we don't have such a concept when it comes to internet service. That ended back in 96 or 98 when Title II or whatever ended and line sharing went away, or whatever happened. Before that time, if you wanted internet service, you could type your zip code into a search tool and find a dozen or more companies who would sell you internet service. Back then, there was a free market and it was working fine. You got to choose your provider based on how well they provided service, the cost of that service, how good their customer service was and more. Since that ended, there is no free market for internet service. You usually have 2 choices for internet service, which boils down to overpriced cable, or overpriced DSL. I have Comcast or AT&T as choices in my area and there is barely anything resembling competition.
     

    Kutnupe14

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    As many have stated, the battle over net neutrality is basically a battle of the ISP's and TV providers trying to end streaming services. Ending net neutrality sets things up perfectly for that to happen, with paid prioritization, low data caps and other methods waiting in the wings. Every one of these things is anti-consumer to the extreme. Cord cutting has finally been cutting into the bottom lines of companies like Comcast and this is giving them a way to fix that problem. Does anyone here want to see Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, Vudu and all the other video services either go out of business or greatly increase their prices? That's what will happen. It won't be over night, but that's exactly what is being setup.

    BTW, please don't use terms like "free market" in any posts about net neutrality unless you're pointing out that we don't have such a concept when it comes to internet service. That ended back in 96 or 98 when Title II or whatever ended and line sharing went away, or whatever happened. Before that time, if you wanted internet service, you could type your zip code into a search tool and find a dozen or more companies who would sell you internet service. Back then, there was a free market and it was working fine. You got to choose your provider based on how well they provided service, the cost of that service, how good their customer service was and more. Since that ended, there is no free market for internet service. You usually have 2 choices for internet service, which boils down to overpriced cable, or overpriced DSL. I have Comcast or AT&T as choices in my area and there is barely anything resembling competition.

    Why? It IS closer to the free market than what we currently have. I don't particularly like it either, but the govt is removing regulation, and allowing companies to follow their own policies. That's a hallmark of the far market.
     

    JAL

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    Why? It IS closer to the free market than what we currently have. I don't particularly like it either, but the govt is removing regulation, and allowing companies to follow their own policies. That's a hallmark of the far market.
    It's not a free market when a municipality grants a "franchise" to a cable company. As someone else posted, I have two landline choices for Internet:
    1. Comcast Cable
    2. ATT DSL (drinking the Internet through a straw)
    One can also go the route of satellite Internet service but that is very costly. When the local government granted the franchise, they set up a local monopoly.

    John
     

    wtburnette

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    Why? It IS closer to the free market than what we currently have. I don't particularly like it either, but the govt is removing regulation, and allowing companies to follow their own policies. That's a hallmark of the far market.

    If we had more competition, I'd agree. There are plenty of places where people only have one provider available and a few where there are none. After net neutrality is gutted, if your ISP decides to lower your bandwidth cap, throttle your connections to Netflix and other video services and cut your service into "channels" which increases the price of your service, what choice do you have? Maybe one other ISP, if you're lucky and they will likely be doing the same thing. If the market was what it should be, we would have choices and if these types of things occurred, you could just use the service of a company that doesn't have any of that BS. Sort of like buying a gun. If I want a gun with x features at x price, only made in the US, I can do that, because there are tons of companies. I can avoid all the manufacturers who don't offer the features I want, or the high price I don't want because there are many different choices. The problem is that internet service is too close to a monopoly, or in some cases a duopoly. Because of that, prices and services get fixed due to a lack of competition. In this case, I'd prefer to have government regulation in the form of consumer protections, instead of being at the mercy of the monopoly/duopoly companies.
     

    JAL

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    It helps to understand the bind cable providers have with their systems. While some very large major metro areas have been slowly going to fiber optic infrastructure, everywhere outside of them is still on coax for distribution, which has a finite bandwidth that's up against technological limits. The total bandwidth of a cable system is divided between the TV side and the Internet side (which also includes the VOIP phone service if there is any). The problem is consumer demand, and expectation, for more TV channels and greater Internet bandwidth out of a system that cannot achieve any greater bandwidth without substantial infrastructure changes.

    The QAM 256 (quadrature amplitude modulation) encoding used for cable TV has a set bandwidth requirement for each channel. This is not the ATSC over the air broadcasters use which is why you can't hook cable TV to the antenna input on your TV any more. Those who had cable TV in the analog NTSC days - before cable Internet - will remember about 130+ channels. It's still channelized much the same way. Some of those former "channels" are allocated for the Inernet service using DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) that binds multiple channels into a single bandwidth for Internet service. With digital TV, multiple digital channels you see on your set top box can be multiplexed into a single cable channel of which you no longer have visibility. The cable company decides where to carve up the "channels" between Internet and TV service.

    Two things occurred within the past few years with Comcast. The Internet side was running on DOCSIS 2.0 for the longest time. Some may recall notices from Comcast they were retiring DOCSIS 2.0 and would no longer support it. Those who owned their own DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems would be required to either buy a DOCSIS 3.0 (or 3.1) from an approved compatibility list, or rent one from Comcast. I've owned my own modems for years as it dumps the modem fee off the bill and pays itself back faster than you think (if you buy a quality modem). I got all sorts of color glossy trifolds about the nifity combo WiFi/modem stuff they would be glad to rent to me for a monthly fee. No thanks. Bought my own DOCSIS 3.x and it's a standalone. Cable modem technology evolves very slowly compared to WiFi technology. The move to DOCSIS 3.0 allowed Comcast to bundle more channels together to provide greater Internet bandwidth.

    Comcast used to have all its HDTV using 1080i (1920x1080 pixels interlaced). Within the past year or so, nearly all their cable HDTV channels have been converted to 720p (1280x720 pixels progressive), which is still technically HD but a dumbed down version of it (SDTV is still 480i - 640x480 interlaced). The only ones I'm aware of that haven't converted from 1080i to 720p are the broadcast networks that were 1080i (NBC is one of them). Why do this? The 720p requires less bandwidth than the 1080i and more HDTV channels can be multiplexed into a single "cable" channel. Comcast can squeeze more digital TV channels into fewer cable channels freeing up a few for the Internet. I call the result Horrible Definition TV. Not only was the resolution reduced, the compression of it increased dramatically by also going from MPEG2 transport streams to MPEG4 (H.264 variant) - more than the switch from MP2 to MP4 would gain alone. In other words, the basic resolution has decreased and the degradation of it from data compression has increased. I've got screen shots from downloaded TiVo recordings that show the significant degradation from highly compressed 720p.

    Some techno-babble, but for those that can at least follow it a little, it shows the crunch Comcast is feeling with consumer demand for greater Internet bandwidth and more HDTV channels out of the same diameter cable pipe. And Best Buy is wanting you to buy that 4k UHDTV. The consumer 4k UHDTV is 3840 x 2160 pixels, twice as many in each dimension, or four times as many total. Think you'll ever see 4k UHDTV from Comcast any time soon? Guess again. They've just gone the opposite direction.

    While Comcast and all the other cable providers have the same problem, the solution to relieve the bandwidth crunch on them is not dumping "net neutrality". Personally, I'd prefer fewer, better quality cable TV channels . . . in resolution, lower compression and content. They cannot continue with their bandwidth limited systems much longer . . . and they're trying to run with it until the wheels fall off.

    John
     
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    Kutnupe14

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    It's not a free market when a municipality grants a "franchise" to a cable company. As someone else posted, I have two landline choices for Internet:
    1. Comcast Cable
    2. ATT DSL (drinking the Internet through a straw)
    One can also go the route of satellite Internet service but that is very costly. When the local government granted the franchise, they set up a local monopoly.

    John

    I didn't say it was free market. I said it was closer. Which it is.
     
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