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Originally Posted by bobman0330
There's plenty of reason to be skeptical that that's how it will play out, and personally I don't see a good case to allow ISPs to block/degrade otherwise lawful content. For other net neutrality violations, like paid prioritization/fast lanes/whatever, it's seems to me that net neutrality is likely to be harmful by disincentivizing investments in better internet
Fast lanes is literally exactly degrading other lawful content. There's nothing that's meaningfully easier or harder to deliver, and it's not like they're literally talking about building out new infrastructure to fast-lane-company consumers (which would have been legal anyway).
Once they have a network that can deliver fast-lane throughput for anything, they have a network that can deliver fast-lane throughput for everything- or at the very least equivalent throughput if the fast-lane thing isn't being used at the time, and if they're not delivering that speed, it's because they're artificially degrading other things.
Now, as far as future investments go, if this were a competitive space (which it isn't in most areas), companies would *naturally* be making better and better internet to gain or keep market share. But it's largely a monopoly or handshake duopoly, with gigantic barriers to large-scale entry, so you're right, they have minimal incentive to serve the public better without collecting bribes from large companies first because the public has nowhere else to go.
That's also why telcos are being dickheads of the highest order when it comes to trying to suppress municipal broadband- if there's another market entrant that isn't ****, they have to upgrade service to compete (which, shockingly, they can and do in areas where municipal broadband gets established). But it's far more profitable to lobby for bull**** laws so they can keep offering ****ty internet as a monopoly, so that's what they do. Your perspective has to be beyond myopic to see *net neutrality* as the suppressor of better internet and not the monopoly or near-monopoly positioning.