The far more likely targets for bilking are the content providers: Google, Netflix, Hulu, AWS, Porn hub, etc. Comcast demands of them protection money so that their traffic gets delivered adequately. Consumers see an increase in their Netflix subscription price and blame Netflix, not Comcast. Comcast is already pretty free to raise their rates on consumers. That isn't really what this fight is about.

That's definitely going to throw out the idea that vertical integration isn't harmful and therefor anti trust shouldn't be used to block them

I mean, maybe if there is another Democrat administration?

Porn hipsters ITT.

Anything without Asia Carerra or Ashlyn Gere isn’t worth watching. If you have the right VHS tapes there is no need for the internet anyway.

Cuban has been saying this is a good thing. Is he just being a money grubbing whore or do his thoughts have merit?

Censorship is one of my worries with the NN issue. Anyone have any insight here.

He fancies himself a libertarian and I think I saw that his main argument is the government being in control of the internet is a bad thing, period.

Typical deregulation is always better BS.

I mean do you really want some monolithic consumer hating giant in charge of what you can access online? I'd much rather leave that sort of thing to Comcast.

Cuban: Not The Smartest Guy in the Room

Yeah Cubans stance is stupid for several reasons. The free market doesn't really work when the monopolies own all the infrastructure and the cost barrier for that infrastructure is absolutely insane and local governments usually don't even allow new companies to build it.

He says google would be a huge player and could shake things up, but google stopped its fiber program because the infrastructure barrier was just too much. I mean if google isn't able to enter the market profitably... what chance to other small businesses have? All the other current small ISPs simply rent the infrastructure from the monopolies, which had the wonderful benefit of the taxpayers pay for much of the infrastructure.

Google is a big investor in SpaceX, who are planning a high-speed satellite internet system (Starlink)pretty soon. The Fiber slowdown may reflect them deciding that Starlink is going to be live soon enough that building out fiber wont repay their investment. OneWeb is planning the same kind of service too.

Sweet - pretty soon I will be able to post to 2p2 from the middle of Death Valley! Utopia.

My daughter is in the middle of Death Valley right now and she's been texting me this morning. There's already reception for phone/sms anyway.

She went with the family of a friend of mine from college and I'll be heading out to join them Friday.

SpaceX's proposed satellite constellation does not have nearly enough capacity to supplant fiber is populated areas. Their service will be aimed at rural areas that are not currently served by any broadband providers. There is virtually no overlap between potential Starlink customers and Google Fiber customers. Fiber will remain king in populated areas for quite some time still.

Would be interested to read more about this. Is there somewhere you can point me? My impression had been that their ambitions were a bit grander than this.

https://arstechnica.com/information-...ed/?comments=1

From this article each satellite will have a downlink capacity of 17 to 23 Gbps. Given that a particular point on earth will have los to at most 2 or 3 satellites at once that's just not enough bandwidth to provide service anywhere with any sort of population density.

I'm sure that they have grander ambitions down the road, but version 1 of the spacex constellation is not going to be competing against comcast in cities for sure.

Furnace creek has wifi. Are you sure she's on cel?

Ashit Pie wants Comcast to be able to block bit torrent

Sucks to be one of those open source OSes like Linux that frequently use perfectly legal torrents to distribute your software. We gots ta have them OS monopolies/duopolies though.

I was able to use cell service at my in law's remote **** hole dance hall that is an hour from anything in rural Texas. Five bars, lte, and the last time I was there there was nothing at all. T-Mobile even.

Yeah most places are like that now - except places like the middle of death valley. I would be surprised if it had cel coverage now.

I think a lot of the pro-neutrality posts on facebook are really way off the mark. The most popular seems to be the scaremongering that all these ISPs are going to jack up the rates.

As far as I can tell, the current neutrality regulations aren't capping rates, so why would they wait for neutrality to be lifted to jack up the rates given most of these guys already have an effective monopoly?

Then there are the "omg they're going to unbundle everything and make you pay per website" memes. This has been the holy ****ing grail for a lot of people when it comes to TV. but now ala carte pricing is bad??? IDK, there have to be better arguments against this stuff.

Uh, with basic cable, you don't get access to literally all TV content anywhere ever. The same is not true with basic internet access. Your argument is invalid

Heh- I’m in a fantasy basketball league with be guy who did this study. Really smart guy, worked in tech for awhile before going to law school.