Finally some good news: Obama is for Net Neutrality

[Spider]

[Professor]

But, can they really increase the bandwidth that easily?

I mean, I know that if I want to get all of the bandwidth that I want, I'd have to upgrade my modem. And, I'd have to live somewhere that has fiber optics. Both of those cost money. One is my money, and the other is the ISP money (AT&T is halting plans for fiber optic expansion - just saw a Google News story on it). If it costs money to increase the bandwidth, who is going to pay for it?

If they are unable to charge the big companies more-per-gigabyte, then they'll have to raise prices on all providers. This will kill small startups. If they refuse to raise prices on providers, then they'll raise them on consumers.

I guess that gets down to my question. Right now, they want to charge more money for things. The way they want to do it is unfair to some. But, if they are unable to do that, then who pays more? Or, does no one pay more, and services suffer?

It reminds me of income taxes. Our graduated income tax system certainly isn't "fair" to the wealthy. They pay 30% of their income to the US, while the average person may only pay 15%. So, how do you make it "fair"? Do you have a flat tax? Most agree that this, while fair in mathematical terms, is unfair in practical ones. If you lower taxes, you can no longer afford to pay for "upgrades" to roads and the like.

[Spider]

[John Galt]

the average connection speed inthe us is like 10mbps, which is number 10 in the world, and almost 3x the world average. with 254 million internet users, roughly 80% of the population, i think we're leaps and bounds above everyone else. yeah some scandinavian country with a few million population and oil bankrolls might get more % of the people hooked up but when the average of 254 million is 8, that's a lot more impressive i think. the idea that we are falling behind is preposterous, only one country has faster internet at an appreciable scale and that's south korea

[Spider]

[John Galt]

yes that's what i looked at, and only south korea had more speed at anything important of a difference. with 260 million internet users spread over half a continent, it's a bit harder to get them all at as high of speed as half a peninsula. talk of "falling behind" is garbage. and that's really for most consumers who don't need gigabit download speeds yet. at work i get that, but that's at work. they paid for that infrastructure so that's what they get. obviously i'd like google fiber but to make it seem so dire that botswana has better internet than the us or something is just silly. a few countries do, and they all have far far far far less amount of users to cater to

[The Comrade]

what galt's trying to say is that he wants america to be second best because at least it's not third.

[Professor]

Do any of the higher-ranked countries (using whatever metrics you want) have net-neutrality? Who pays for SK internet infrastructure?

[John Galt]

[John Galt]