Who Benefits?
The BBC notes that Pressure mounts on FCC over net-neutrality changes. The article is about a group of venture capitalists coming out against the proposed changes to allow ISPs to charge content providers for privileged access to their users for a price.
The big telecoms want to increase their profits, but don’t want to spend any money to do it by improving their individual networks. This isn’t about getting more money for a better service, but reducing their overall bandwidth by reserving a segment of their current bandwidth for people with the money to lease it from them.
The US already has some of the worst broadband in the developed world based on speed and costs, and this will further lower our standing. The majority of users oppose it, the largest ‘Net companies oppose it; the user groups oppose it; and now the venture capitalists have stated their opposition. The only group that supports the changes are the ISPs.
If there were any real competition in the broadband market, the large ISPs would all be shedding customers even faster. The stagnant economy is forcing people to cancel their cable and Internet connections, and any additional cost increases will accelerate the process.
May 10, 2014 4 Comments
