Verizon Claims it Will Still Charge Netflix Extra Connection Fees Regardless of what the FCC Does

[supermandroid]

From what I can tell, very few people understand that this has NOTHING to do with net neutrality. The bandwidth hogs (Netflix) and providers are simply battling over how consumers should pay for it. And that's only an issue with regard to competition keeping rates competitive.

Regardless of whether or not this is about Verizon Wireless the cellular service provider or Verizon the Internet service provider, this sounds to me like it's the epitome of what net neutrality is all about. Wikipedia defines net neutrality as "Net neutrality (also network neutrality, Internet neutrality or net equality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication." They are treating Netflix data differently, and they have threatened to pass the "extra costs" on to the subscribers. The point being is that if there is a law defining data and enforcing net neutrality, then Verizon would be breaking federal laws and subject to appropriate consequences.

 

[xeene]

Popcorn time > Netflix.

 

[kodiak799]

Wikipedia defines net neutrality as "Net neutrality (also network neutrality, Internet neutrality or net equality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication."

It's quite a bit more nuanced than that. Basic supply and demand says that someone has to provide the return on investment. It stands to reason the high-bandwidth video content and users demand more bandwidth, and more investment, and thus should pay for it. This is and always has been a debate about who/how to pay for that investment. That is not discrimination. That is not "not open". That is basic supply and demand and a rather basic pricing model not uncommon to other industries.

And the idea that all data be treated the same because "data is data" is also a bit ridiculous. A 2gig database backed-up or emailed to the cloud just doesn't demand the same bandwidth and service that hi-def movie does to stream

Net Neutrality is really charging Netflix one price and Netflix competitors another price for the same service. THAT is price discrimination and picking winners and losers. But it's perfectly rational and fair that if video traffic is 50% of your bandwidth, some combination of pricing of video content providers and their users should contribute about 50% of your revenues. If I have to add capacity ostensibly to stream higher and higher quality Netflix movies (or Hulu, or Vudu, etc), really those providers and their users should bear that cost...and the easiest way to do that is charge the premium to the providers to pass on to the user. This is Econ and Business 101, but somehow that doesn't apply to the internet.

This all really goes back to many people not understand what all the Netflix/Comcast fuss was about. Netflix had capacity bottlenecks with some of the backbone providers, and wanted a direct link to Comcast (i.e. premium service). Netflix wanted it for free. Comcast said "no, we don't offer free premium service". Netflix ultimately agreed to pay. Really everyone wins.

The issue remains about competition among IP's. The doomsday net neutrality arguments implicitly assume unfair, if not illegal, behavior from monopoly providers without competition.