It's also due (perhaps more) to the nature of television. The content producers due to copyright hold almost all the strings, and benefit from a small choice of delivery providers to bid against each other for exclusivity. The delivery providers also benefit from acquiring content producers (or otherwise delivering "original content" themselves). Content for television that people want to watch (in competition with other content currently available) is expensive which also has an effect on a price floor even if exclusivity deals can't be made. Content can only be watched one way, or at best a handful of ways depending on if the producer spent effort making it 3D-enhanced or whatever.
Meanwhile setting up a site is cheap and comparably much easier, and can even be free or profitable in many situations for many audience sizes and site types and levels of effort. Pretty much anyone can do it, even children and teenagers, and reach arbitrary audience sizes. Content is often cheaply produced, and when it's text, cheaply delivered. Content is furthermore produced by people who don't have a share in the server itself, i.e. interactive users, and those users aren't required to exclusively post their content in one location, nor are they required to continue producing content at any given location. There are many sites in competition to host user content for free so that individuals don't even have to go through the hassle of setting up their own site when they can sharecrop on someone else's, and if they feel like it, move on later. The way browsers work doesn't require any visitor to view the website in the way intended by the site owner, either. More wide-spread encryption (and wide-spread damages for failing to encrypt or otherwise do security properly) makes it harder for anyone but the site owner and the user's computer to know what's going on.
There are so many fundamental differences with cable TV and with how the internet and web function and will continue to function (even if in a less universal way) that comparisons and predictions of everything becoming "packaged" like TV are laughably ridiculous and simplistic. Sure, we might see some business models attempted where ISPs charge for access to certain sites, but if those sites contain links to other sites and users don't have access to those, they're going to be annoyed. When more and more of the web is served over HTTPS, how can ISPs know? Furthermore the cost of plans like "youtube only" or "wikipedia only" can only in the limit ever be as expensive as the "cost per GB delivered" plan that VPN users will have. VPN will continue to exist, if not for the general public at least private parties and probably universities will still want because they can't predict what employees/students/professors will want to access or set up for access that they want it all (as it currently is). Not to mention work-from-home/remotely employees. I'm sure with less regulation many interesting and unforeseen business models could appear, some I'll have no interest in, but I don't foresee the destruction of some way to keep my internet experience more or less what it currently is.
My only concern would be not as a consumer but a big company. No neutrality law lets ISPs more easily attempt to shakedown large or popular companies like Netflix, Facebook, Google, etc. and put them in a standoff of who would survive customer outrage the longest if users couldn't access them anymore. I don't think ISPs can win that fight in the long term without strong support of the government to stop those other companies from providing their own methods of delivering their content to people. Google Fiber was a warning flag to the ISPs to show they're capable of it, and that was just Google acting alone.
jfaucett|9 years ago
No they do not. Yet, this is due to government regulation. If you'd like to read about the historical development of cable regulation this article provides a decent summary: http://www.uclalawreview.org/cracking-the-cable-conundrum-go...
Jach|9 years ago
Meanwhile setting up a site is cheap and comparably much easier, and can even be free or profitable in many situations for many audience sizes and site types and levels of effort. Pretty much anyone can do it, even children and teenagers, and reach arbitrary audience sizes. Content is often cheaply produced, and when it's text, cheaply delivered. Content is furthermore produced by people who don't have a share in the server itself, i.e. interactive users, and those users aren't required to exclusively post their content in one location, nor are they required to continue producing content at any given location. There are many sites in competition to host user content for free so that individuals don't even have to go through the hassle of setting up their own site when they can sharecrop on someone else's, and if they feel like it, move on later. The way browsers work doesn't require any visitor to view the website in the way intended by the site owner, either. More wide-spread encryption (and wide-spread damages for failing to encrypt or otherwise do security properly) makes it harder for anyone but the site owner and the user's computer to know what's going on.
There are so many fundamental differences with cable TV and with how the internet and web function and will continue to function (even if in a less universal way) that comparisons and predictions of everything becoming "packaged" like TV are laughably ridiculous and simplistic. Sure, we might see some business models attempted where ISPs charge for access to certain sites, but if those sites contain links to other sites and users don't have access to those, they're going to be annoyed. When more and more of the web is served over HTTPS, how can ISPs know? Furthermore the cost of plans like "youtube only" or "wikipedia only" can only in the limit ever be as expensive as the "cost per GB delivered" plan that VPN users will have. VPN will continue to exist, if not for the general public at least private parties and probably universities will still want because they can't predict what employees/students/professors will want to access or set up for access that they want it all (as it currently is). Not to mention work-from-home/remotely employees. I'm sure with less regulation many interesting and unforeseen business models could appear, some I'll have no interest in, but I don't foresee the destruction of some way to keep my internet experience more or less what it currently is.
My only concern would be not as a consumer but a big company. No neutrality law lets ISPs more easily attempt to shakedown large or popular companies like Netflix, Facebook, Google, etc. and put them in a standoff of who would survive customer outrage the longest if users couldn't access them anymore. I don't think ISPs can win that fight in the long term without strong support of the government to stop those other companies from providing their own methods of delivering their content to people. Google Fiber was a warning flag to the ISPs to show they're capable of it, and that was just Google acting alone.
massysett|9 years ago
For Internet, yes. My phone is pulling over ten megabits.