Binge On! - And So This is Net Neutrality?

Fri Nov 20 17:46:01 UTC 2015

It's not. And that's the point.

This proposal, and ones similar, stifle growth of applications. If there 
are additional (artificial) burdens for operating in a field it becomes 
harder to get into. Because it's harder to get into, fewer operators 
compete. [Note, we just reduced open competition, one tenet of Net 
Neutrality]  Because there are fewer operators there will be less 
competition. Less competition increases prices and fewer customers take 
the service. Because few people use the application, the network 
operator has no incentive to support the application well.  [Note, we 
just reduced the freedom to run applications] Because the network 
doesn't support the application well, few people use the application. 
It's circular and it slows growth.

Just because there may be inherent challenges to offering an application 
(bandwidth, for example), doesn't mean that adding another one (per 
application bandwidth caps) is desirable.

Josh Reynolds wrote on 11/20/2015 11:29 AM:
> How much medical imaging and video conference and online backup is
> done over cell networks? Those are very high bandwidth tasks that
> would quickly suck up a data cap. Until LTE came along, doing that was
> often hit/miss as far as the reliability of the connection and the
> speed.
>
> In an area with LTE, there are often better connectivity options. In
> an area without LTE, well, how much medical imaging and data backup is
> done over those 3G and satellite connections?
>
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net> wrote:
>> Considering T-Mobile's proposal is intended to favor streaming music and
>> video services, I think it clearly violates net neutrality which is intended
>> to not only promote competition in existing applications, but also in new
>> (possibly undeveloped) applications. This proposal simply entrenches
>> streaming video/music by artificially reducing the cost to operators in
>> these fields while leaving costs the same for operators in other fields -
>> medical imaging, video conferencing, online backup, etc. I believe the sum
>> affect is a reduction in competition and growth of the internet as a whole,
>> the antithesis to the spirit of net neutrality.