ISPs already do incredibly unpopular things, but it doesn't hurt their bottom line because their customers don't have other provider options. What are they going to do, go without internet?
Comcast is one of the most hated companies in the US, but you wouldn't know it by looking at their stock price. The free market is not a solution here.
That's not the problem. The problem is that this is not a free market. The ISPs have effective control of the federal government and many state governments, and use that control to block competition from e.g. municipal ISPs. If the free market were actually allowed to operate, it would very likely solve the problem.
I didn't say the free market is a problem. I'm not a communist; I like the free market and I agree with your comment.
However, like you said, it's not a free market and it won't be for the foreseeable future. Fantasizing about that changing isn't a solution either. At the moment, government regulations are the best tools we have to protect consumers.
Have they pissed off the entire tech industry and attempted to fundamentally change how the internet works?
Having poor customer service, high fees, etc seems like a far cry from completely changing how internet billing works and whitelisting websites/throttling the entire internet.
What is the "entire tech industry" really going to do when the ISPs decide to fundamentally change how the Internet works? It seems like access to consumers, which the ISPs control, is pretty important for a large segment of the tech industry.
But first the ISPs have to actually do the things that we were warned they would do if the FCC scraped these laws. No ISP has yet announced or even proposed any specific future changes.
I'm not even sure what being "wrong" here will look like in practical terms:
- Are average home broadband internet plans going to have their internet filtered unless they pay more for 'unlimited'? With TV-style "grouped" packages?
- What websites (tech companies) will be included in these hypothetical filtered packages?
- Will they (Netflix/Disney/Facebook/Google/etc) let the ISPs include their brand(s) in marketing these new non-neutral plans? Will they let the ISP include their website in any throttled package in technical terms?
- Will ISPs be launching the new plans perfectly in sync with other ISP companies, for the 80% of Americans who have more than one ISP option, so they won't hemorrhage customers to competitors when they completely revamp their billing? Will they grandfather existing users?
...there are far too many questions to properly give you a answer about how the industry will respond.
When/if that actually becomes a reality then it will be easier to guess how the trillion dollar industry will react and if the ISP customers will sit idly by with no recourse... at the moment I'm confident there will be plenty to do to make business/life for Comcast/ATT shareholders uncomfortable if they ever were dumb enough to mess with how the internet works for the average American.
Three days and no answer to my questions? This is the third time I've posed these questions on HN/Reddit and not a single 'activist' has given me an answer.
That's exactly why I'm not buying this idea that these FCC policies were what's stopping ISPs from disrupting 'net neutrality'.
If you actually dig into the details it doesn't make much sense and is extremely risky. Yet I seem to be one of the very few who is actually challenging this stuff on rational grounds rather than "herr derr I support republican policies and want to be a contrarian".
The reality is that not every situation calls for government intervention. Especially extremely hypothetical situations which have never even been tried in the market place.
This is equivalent to regulatory "pre-crime" enforcement...
In the past, people getting really mad at ISPs has not changed anything. I don't see any reason to believe that people getting really really REALLY mad is going to change anything either. There's no mechanism for it to.
Customers "being mad" at ISPs is hardly what I'm saying is stopping them. It's merely a minor part of the problem. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926116
The customers revolting is not a matter of influencing Comcast/ATT/etc, it's a matter of influencing Google/Apple/HBO+Disney/Netflix etc etc etc.
People love to trivialise this counter-point as merely "oh ISPs dont have competition therefore the market can't fight this problem", which is incredibly reductive and misses the forest for the trees.
ISPs already do incredibly unpopular things, but it doesn't hurt their bottom line because their customers don't have other provider options. What are they going to do, go without internet?
Comcast is one of the most hated companies in the US, but you wouldn't know it by looking at their stock price. The free market is not a solution here.