I have a little trouble understanding the “net neutrality” issue. Oh, I understand that it grates to think that someone who pays more should get better service. I’m just not sure why. The internet is becoming a utility, so why shouldn’t it be priced like one? If you use more water, or more electricity, then you pay more.

“Net Neutrality” is not so much about end users as it is about sites and online services. It has nothing to do with what speed an individual can have in general. That is already done on a sliding scale by many ISPs; my own ISP offers several different cable modem speeds (5mbps, 7mbps, 10mbps) for different prices. That’s perfectly acceptable under Net Neutrality.

What’s not acceptable is the ISP limiting the speed at which people can access [i]specific[/i] sites, protocols, and services. The point of Net Neutrality is to prevent large corporations, say Microsoft, Apple or Google, from paying ISPs to get a higher priority, so people would be able to download faster from them than from their competitors or other sites. Conversely, people who did not pay ISPs extra would potentially have their sites crippled. It would be like traffic police enforcing different speed limits for different brands of cars, and then forcing every car company to pony up for equal rights.

Comcast’s new proposal does not conflict with Net Neutrality. As long as they are not misrepresenting their service in advertising (as most ISPs do, to be honest), it sounds perfectly fine to me.

Who says bandwidth is at a premium? A company whose internal workings are not accessible by the public? Perhaps there is really an oversupply - ever heard of dark fiber? Perhaps this is a bit like an oil company massaging the situation to maximize price. And how much bandwidth am I using? I’ve got some measure of it myself, but I’ll be damned if I’ll go along with some company’s estimate, especially when they have the conflict of interest of potentially making more profit on shortchanging me. At least the water company is willing to put their meter in my home and I can access and read it myself if I wish. And in a dispute, the meter can be pulled and sent to an independent lab to determine accuracy. I dunno, this effort to cap and limit seems a bit one-sided and open to abuse.

Why shouldn’t bandwidth be approached the same way?

I basically agree. Having users who eat up the most bandwidth pay more to do so is not unreasonable, at least while bandwidth remains at a premium. ISPs already have tiered pricing for different upload/download speeds. On the other side, Web sites pay more for faster servers and increased bandwidth use. Again, I have no problem here.

I agree as well.

However, the problem here is that while we are paying for the speed and bandwidth, Comcast and other ISPs are still limiting what we paid for.

It’s like paying for 5GB of monthly bandwidth for web hosting and because you use up 4.5GB of bandwidth per month, which is within the limit, the web hosting company is going to label you as an “abuser” and decrease your monthly bandwidth.

Bottom line, companies should give us what we pay for. If ISPs like Comcast are too cheap and want to limit the amount of data transfer we are allowed, fine, go ahead and set a limit like some ISPs do overseas. But of course, I’d only support that if there is actual competition when it comes to broadband providers in the U.S. otherwise consumers would simply suffer under monopolies.

Why shouldn’t bandwidth be approached the same way?

I basically agree. Having users who eat up the most bandwidth pay more to do so is not unreasonable, at least while bandwidth remains at a premium. ISPs already have tiered pricing for different upload/download speeds. On the other side, Web sites pay more for faster servers and increased bandwidth use. Again, I have no problem here.

Where I start to have a problem is when ISPs get together and say that “big” Web sites would get preferential treatment on their networks (assuming the sites pay a significant premium that smaller sites could not afford) — independent of the other factors I mentioned. This would mean that no matter how much I pay for faster Internet speed, and no matter how fast a server a Web site is using, a “small” site will still load slower on my computer — because Comcast (or whomever) is restricting its speed. The end result will be that Web traffic will flow to the “big” corporate sites, even more than they do already, making it harder for smaller sites to compete.

And why exactly do you find it necessary to tell people how to conduct illegal activity?

The author made no specific steps on how to conduct illegal activity with BitTorrent, nor did he promote it as he repeatedly stated that there is the legality issue. What he did is no more than telling people that to rob a bank, you’d probably need a gun, a mask and a bag with a big dollar sign on it…

What use is the new speed if they can’t sustain it?

I guess they’re hoping with the new speeds, they can charge more and assuming they run their business effectively, they can use the extra profit to actually upgrade their infrastructure to actually provide the necessary bandwidth.

I have a little trouble understanding the “net neutrality” issue. Oh, I understand that it grates to think that someone who pays more should get better service. I’m just not sure why. The internet is becoming a utility, so why shouldn’t it be priced like one? If you use more water, or more electricity, then you pay more. There are sliding scales for both, and in the interests of promoting conservation sometimes the scales go up instead of down. Why shouldn’t bandwidth be approached the same way? Why should someone who does nothing more than simple web browsing and email pay the same as someone who (even legally) downloads gigabytes of data? Bandwidth is, after all, a limited (at any given time) quantity so price it the same way any other commodity is priced. That’s as neutral as anyone could ask for.

Isn’t it?

The real problem, at least in the U.S., is lack of competition.

We live in a capitalistic society yet when it comes to many services, we don’t have much of a choice as consumers.

How many regions in the U.S. actually has more than two broadband providers? (who aren’t piggybacking on either a telco or cable company?)

Isn’t it?

What use is the new speed if they can’t sustain it?

Below is a link to the article where I got my source from
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-comcast-launches-50mbps-broadband-for-150-per-month.html