A discussion of who pays isn't really relevant today. The rise of video streaming services has already happened, upgrades have already happened. Maybe it would be interesting historical analysis to know "Who did pay at the time?" And compare that to the general laws of supply and demand: As demand increases and supply remains constant, the price to consumers goes up. I believe the case can be made that Netflix and perhaps other video services did already pay for those upgrades. So supply and demand didn't apply to bandwidth, and it would be interesting to examine why.
The net won't fall over, and for most it won't even be any different. It's just another erosion factor. Another setup for companies to be anti-competitive. Example: Verizon (who already has been shady) launched their own video-on-demand service. If these changes happen, what are the chances that they throttle other video services but send their own down the pipe full blast? Nearly 100%. And if particularly egregious in their throttling, they might be sued for it too. But they will still do it because the short term benefit is too tempting for your typical executive to pass up.
Ting is awesome. They have great promise in the ISP segment, but are beholden to the pace at which municipalities can get things done. AFAIK, they require the municipality to own their local fiber and then they will manage the internet service over it, including customer service. I do hope it becomes more common. But I also hope that municipal governments don't try to manage their own internet. One of the many things that governments are hopelessly inefficient at (and have no incentive to do well) is customer service.
Ting's mobile service is much more generally applicable, and of course it provides mobile internet as well (over common mobile carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint). I think their net neutrality / privacy stances will encourage some people to switch to them. But I don't think they do it for that reason. I really think they are just trying to do the right thing for customers.
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A discussion of who pays isn't really relevant today. The rise of video streaming services has already happened, upgrades have already happened. Maybe it would be interesting historical analysis to know "Who did pay at the time?" And compare that to the general laws of supply and demand: As demand increases and supply remains constant, the price to consumers goes up. I believe the case can be made that Netflix and perhaps other video services did already pay for those upgrades. So supply and demand didn't apply to bandwidth, and it would be interesting to examine why.
The net won't fall over, and for most it won't even be any different. It's just another erosion factor. Another setup for companies to be anti-competitive. Example: Verizon (who already has been shady) launched their own video-on-demand service. If these changes happen, what are the chances that they throttle other video services but send their own down the pipe full blast? Nearly 100%. And if particularly egregious in their throttling, they might be sued for it too. But they will still do it because the short term benefit is too tempting for your typical executive to pass up.
Ting is awesome. They have great promise in the ISP segment, but are beholden to the pace at which municipalities can get things done. AFAIK, they require the municipality to own their local fiber and then they will manage the internet service over it, including customer service. I do hope it becomes more common. But I also hope that municipal governments don't try to manage their own internet. One of the many things that governments are hopelessly inefficient at (and have no incentive to do well) is customer service.
Ting's mobile service is much more generally applicable, and of course it provides mobile internet as well (over common mobile carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint). I think their net neutrality / privacy stances will encourage some people to switch to them. But I don't think they do it for that reason. I really think they are just trying to do the right thing for customers.