We’ve noted several times how European telecom giants have somehow convinced European policymakers that technology giants like Netflix and Google should annually give them billions of dollars… for no coherent reason. The proposal is dressed up to sound like a sensible adult policy aimed at shoring up broadband access to the downtrodden. In reality it’s net…
Um, excuse me? So is my internet going to become free then?
What the fuck are we paying ISPs for if they just want money from the sites we connect with? The whole point of the internet is to connect sites (whether you are consuming a video on Netflix or two banks connect their networks via a secure VPN) and ISPs are the last mile to customers.
We already saw during COVID that there are really zero bandwidth problems. Fuck your double-dipping.
I’m really sick of all the artificial scarcity that tech bros try to invent.
It’s capitalism. In this day and age bandwidth needs to be a utility, but as long as it is treated as a consumer good we are gonna get gouged. Next year spectrum is allowed to set data caps so any of you living without a care are gonna get a slap in the face for no reason.
It’s not at all capitalism. ISPs are a regulated monopoly. If it were capitalism there’d be a choice.
Try starting your own ISP, the government in your towb wont let you. At most this is crony capitalism.
The natural result of unregulated capitalism is something that mimics a monopoly. Monopolies are illegal in my town; I can’t open an ISP because of capitalism.
It’s not at all natural, and would not have happened if government didn’t step it to create a “regulated monopoly”.
Fast food, gas stations, supermarkets, etc are all unregulated1 and there’s countless offerings there. That’s capitalism. This is crony capitalism. These companies work with the government to lock out competition.
1 - Yes, these industries have regulation, but there’s no regulation whatsoever on opening an identical business next to an existing one. We see it all the time, a lowes next to homedepot, burger king next to mcdonalds, etc.