How Exactly Can ISP's Justify Fighting Net Neutrality?

[Dash Lambda]

I'm not sure what the current state of this particular battle is, but I still wonder about it...

 

We all know ISP's only care about their consumer base as a money farm, we all hate them, and they don't care. They're greedy asshats. That's just the state of it.

... But, how on Earth can they seriously fight against net neutrality? They're the only ones who don't want it, and everyone else hates them for it. By the reaction they got, you'd think they were pushing for the ability integrate ground-up kittens into their cables.

They tried to change the laws so they could be even greedier, and when people found out, ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE wanted to burn them to the ground and dance in their ashes.

... And they kept fighting?

 

Did Verizon's legal department lose a company hot-dog eating contest to PR and seek revenge?

[AresKrieger]

4 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

They're the only ones who don't want it, and everyone else hates them for it.

 

The reason is obvious, they want to charge people to have priority, nothing more

[Dash Lambda]

1 minute ago, AlexTheRose said:

It’s a big parade, and everybody at the boardroom wins. The consumer, along with startups and small/medium-sized business, all get royally fucked.

 

1 minute ago, AresKrieger said:

The reason is obvious, they want to charge people to have priority, nothing more

Yeah, but... There comes a point where the PR is so bad that it's just not viable.

[AresKrieger]

Just now, Dash Lambda said:

 

Yeah, but... There comes a point where the PR is so bad that it's just not viable.

They have almost as bad PR as Hitler, and he killed millions, it's not like they can make it up to us even if they tried so they're resorting to briber.. I mean lobbying

[2FA]

10 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

 

Yeah, but... There comes a point where the PR is so bad that it's just not viable.

PR doesn't matter if you're the only option.

[Dash Lambda]

2 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

They have almost as bad PR as Hitler, and he killed millions, it's not like they can make it up to us even if they tried so they're resorting to briber.. I mean lobbying

 

2 minutes ago, AlexTheRose said:

Consumers in America (and often in other countries) are far too docile to really ever do anything to hurt these companies bottom lines in retaliation.

 

If you want to stop these companies when your government isn’t stepping in, you have to stop giving them money.

The catch with that is that they’ve made that just a little difficult for you to do

 

Remember how nobody really batted an eye as these companies swallowed up every competitor worth a damn in the country, and then proceeded to partition the country up so there was zero competition going on anywhere? This is why the US is still running on 20Mbps speeds. This is why all but a few have gigabit in the richest nation in the world.

Yeah, but they also gave amazing PR to other companies that threaten their business, like Google with their fiber network.

Consumers may be docile, but the ISP's seem to be testing the limits of what they can do without changing that.

[Joshosaurus]

20 minutes ago, AlexTheRose said:

This is why the US is still running on 20Mbps speeds.

What I would do to get 20Mbps in Aus right now.

[Donut417]

 

This will explain things a little better. This is about how all Cable and ISP think. 

[Mark77]

Its pretty simple.  Verizon has a P/E ratio in the low teens.  Google has a P/E ratio in the high 30s.  In other words, Google is capturing a much larger amount of the profit of the Internet, for very little investment made. 

 

Verizon in the long term wants to provide its investors with a good return.  Its not fundamentally fair that Verizon, who invested most of the money to make the Internet actually work (change "Verizon" for the owner of your Internet wires as appropriate -- Bell, Telus, and SaskTel in Canada for example!), makes less money than Google makes for not investing very much. 

 

So net neutrality is one of the ways that companies like Verizon feel that they can derive more revenue from the infrastructure that they own and invested in.  That's why they oppose it.  Over time, if Verizon can't earn returns that are competitive with other companies in the Internet space, like Google, they will invest less.  Prices will rise and/or infrastructure will be deficient until Verizon gets its way and can raise prices.   Charging selectively for access to network resources is one way that Verizon feels that it can increase its revenue. 

[brwainer]

5 hours ago, Donut417 said:

 

This will explain things a little better. This is about how all Cable and ISP think. 

I would like to clarify that this doesn't apply to most small ISPs - those for whom a few dozen callers is still a big deal. We have about a hundred thousand users, and 5 or more callers with the same sort of complaint is still enough to make it up to the managers and owners (and all of our managers are part owners - sadly I am not a manager or owner at this time). I guess you could generalize it a bit that the companies that aren't publically traded still have more of a reason to care about their customers. And to bring this back to Net Neutrality specifically - from the perspective of a small ISP, we want Net Neutrality just as much as any consumer or business like Netflix that provides services. The big ISPs, whom we have to buy bandwidth from in order to get to "the internet", would love to charge us more  than is rationally fair in order for our customers to get the same quality of service that their direct customers do.

[Dash Lambda]

7 hours ago, brwainer said:

I would like to clarify that this doesn't apply to most small ISPs - those for whom a few dozen callers is still a big deal. We have about a hundred thousand users, and 5 or more callers with the same sort of complaint is still enough to make it up to the managers and owners (and all of our managers are part owners - sadly I am not a manager or owner at this time). I guess you could generalize it a bit that the companies that aren't publically traded still have more of a reason to care about their customers. And to bring this back to Net Neutrality specifically - from the perspective of a small ISP, we want Net Neutrality just as much as any consumer or business like Netflix that provides services. The big ISPs, whom we have to buy bandwidth from in order to get to "the internet", would love to charge us more  than is rationally fair in order for our customers to get the same quality of service that their direct customers do.

Huh, I didn't know we actually had 'small' ISP's.

[Donut417]

11 hours ago, Mark77 said:

Its pretty simple.  Verizon has a P/E ratio in the low teens.  Google has a P/E ratio in the high 30s.  In other words, Google is capturing a much larger amount of the profit of the Internet, for very little investment made. 

 

Verizon in the long term wants to provide its investors with a good return.  Its not fundamentally fair that Verizon, who invested most of the money to make the Internet actually work (change "Verizon" for the owner of your Internet wires as appropriate -- Bell, Telus, and SaskTel in Canada for example!), makes less money than Google makes for not investing very much. 

 

So net neutrality is one of the ways that companies like Verizon feel that they can derive more revenue from the infrastructure that they own and invested in.  That's why they oppose it.  Over time, if Verizon can't earn returns that are competitive with other companies in the Internet space, like Google, they will invest less.  Prices will rise and/or infrastructure will be deficient until Verizon gets its way and can raise prices.   Charging selectively for access to network resources is one way that Verizon feels that it can increase its revenue. 

Which is the reason they are selling off markets and investing in to their wireless network. They see the future as LTE and 5G. Because of low caps and hefty overages. I have a feeling Verizon will sell off all of its wired network with in the next few years and focus more on wireless where there is more profit to be made. 

[Remixt]

Just now, Donut417 said:

Which is the reason they are selling off markets and investing in to their wireless network. They see the future as LTE and 5G. Because of low caps and hefty overages. I have a feeling Verizon will sell off all of its wired network with in the next few years and focus more on wireless where there is more profit to be made. 

There seriously needs to be a mass exodus. Government regulation of internet service providers needs to become a thing, because its obvious that without any sort of higher authority ISP's will walk all over consumers. Considering the average person actually needs the internet to live a decent life these days, internet should be a basic civil right.

[Dash Lambda]

1 hour ago, Remixt said:

There seriously needs to be a mass exodus. Government regulation of internet service providers needs to become a thing, because its obvious that without any sort of higher authority ISP's will walk all over consumers. Considering the average person actually needs the internet to live a decent life these days, internet should be a basic civil right.

I hope that, when or if our government actually does something, they don't go a little too overboard. I dislike the idea of uniformly slow government-issue internet access as much as I dislike the idea of a screw-the-consumers monopoly.

[Remixt]

4 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

I hope that, when or if our government actually does something, they don't go a little too overboard. I dislike the idea of uniformly slow government-issue internet access as much as I dislike the idea of a screw-the-consumers monopoly.

I definitely don't want them actually providing the service. (Except maybe free wifi within a certain radius of any government establishment.) But I do want them to stop sitting on the sidelines allowing companies to set data caps and throttle specific traffic (such as netflix).

[Mark77]

2 hours ago, Remixt said:

There seriously needs to be a mass exodus. Government regulation of internet service providers needs to become a thing, because its obvious that without any sort of higher authority ISP's will walk all over consumers. Considering the average person actually needs the internet to live a decent life these days, internet should be a basic civil right.

Basic civil right or not, Internet costs a lot of money to install.  They're replacing the copper with fiber where I live, and they figure around $10,000 - $12,000 per household.  If you figure out just the payments on that over the next 20-30 years, at a reasonable rate of interest, that's $40-$50/month just to pay for the investment in the network up-front.  Plus there's the day-to-day operational costs, maintenance, profit, and endpoint upgrade costs that have to be covered as well. 

 

This is where the bulk of the investment happens.   People speak with vitriol of their wireline carrier, and some of the criticism is well deserved, but they've forked out nearly all of the money up-front to make "it" happen. 

[Remixt]

Just now, Mark77 said:

Basic civil right or not, Internet costs a lot of money to install.  They're replacing the copper with fiber where I live, and they figure around $10,000 - $12,000 per household.  If you figure out just the payments on that over the next 20-30 years, at a reasonable rate of interest, that's $40-$50/month just to pay for the investment in the network up-front.  Plus there's the day-to-day operational costs, maintenance, profit, and endpoint upgrade costs that have to be covered as well. 

 

This is where the bulk of the investment happens.   People speak with vitriol of their wireline carrier, but they've forked out nearly all of the money up-front to make "it" happen. 

I don't care what it costs, what I care about is the deception and overall shitty customer appreciation/care. I'm actually happy with my current ISP, but they are a small company (for now). I pay $100 a month for a 500 Mbit speed with no data caps or throttling.

[Mark77]

1 minute ago, Remixt said:

I don't care what it costs, what I care about is the deception and overall shitty customer appreciation/care. I'm actually happy with my current ISP, but they are a small company (for now). I pay $100 a month for a 500 Mbit speed with no data caps or throttling.

 

Would you pay $150 if you were guaranteed much better customer service?  I mean, maybe that's what the wireline carriers should be doing -- offering "premium" packages that are not only more bandwidth, but also better support.  Kind of like flying business class on flights, where you not only get the better seat and the free alcohol, but you also get to use special check-ins and get onto the plane first if you want.

[Remixt]

Just now, Mark77 said:

 

Would you pay $150 if you were guaranteed much better customer service?  I mean, maybe that's what the wireline carriers should be doing -- offering "premium" packages that are not only more bandwidth, but also better support.  Kind of like flying business class on flights, where you not only get the better seat and the free alcohol, but you also get to use special check-ins and get onto the plane first if you want.

Probably not. However, people shouldn't have to pay for honest answers and fluent English speakers.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Remixt said:

I don't care what it costs, what I care about is the deception and overall shitty customer appreciation/care. I'm actually happy with my current ISP, but they are a small company (for now). I pay $100 a month for a 500 Mbit speed with no data caps or throttling.

So was Media One before Comcast bought them and they became our ISP. The fact is, more people cant get those speeds for that price. Its at least like $80 to get 75/10 from Comcast in my area. And the fact Comcast is the only option, ATT cant even provide 6Mbps DSL in our area, even though they technically serve it. You are fouturnate my friend. My buddy just got 600/40 internet for a price like yours. I hope your having fun without those data caps, because they are coming. Because if ATT and Comcast can get away with it, sure as shit any company can get away with it. It just a matter of time. Id love to have that kind of service, Im not sure what Id do with 500Mbps but Id find something to do with it. 

 

5 hours ago, Mark77 said:

 

Would you pay $150 if you were guaranteed much better customer service?  I mean, maybe that's what the wireline carriers should be doing -- offering "premium" packages that are not only more bandwidth, but also better support.  Kind of like flying business class on flights, where you not only get the better seat and the free alcohol, but you also get to use special check-ins and get onto the plane first if you want.

You shouldnt have to pay for better customer service. If communities had more than 1 or 2 ISP's then the story would  be different. Customer Service and network quality is why I left sprint and move to T Mobile. Best decision I have ever made. Company's like Comcast dont have to have good customer service if they are the only provider in the area. These company's know the score and know there is nothing we can do about it. So they provided the shittiest customer service experience ever. It just like we got bad service at our favorite Bob Evan's. My mom sent a complaint to corporate and if we have another one, we wont go back. BUT, there are shit loads of restaurants. So we have a choice.

 

Which is why the government needs to get involved. Allow municipal fiber, have the DOJ break up all the ISP's and Cable Co's. Outlaw Caps, unless the ISP's want to be treated like a utility like DTE energy.