Yeah, sure. They won't throttle, but they will conveniently not notice saturated links until someone offers to pay them money to upgrade. Kinda like how Verizon did a few years ago with Fios and Netflix.
>If Comcast starts sucking, 5G and other competitors are going to eat their lunch.
That's the thing: T-Mobile already have "unlimited" streaming at reduced resolution (480p) for the major streaming providers. As someone who has no TV much less an HD one and only watches streaming on mobile devices anyway this could easily be a tipping point for me to ditch Comcast, switch back off of Project Fi for T-Mobile and call it a day.
All I see is $100+/mo savings between cancellation of Comcast and YouTube TV which is a bust anyway. OMG. So many commercials, so little interesting content. I remember why I cancelled cable TV in the first place: it's garbage.
Making the net non-neutral is going to similarly be revenue non-neutral but maybe not in the way these ISPs hope.
Actually you'd think Google, Amazon, et al would have skin in the game this time around too: I'm already reconsidering my purchase of Nest cameras my wife wants and frankly I'll be giving away the free Google minis as well if/when I cancel Comcast / Xfinity. There is zero reason to invest in IOT devices if you cancel the I.
There's just too much potential downside to the rent-seeking behavior of these ISPs to invest in IOT if I can't rely on an unfiltered, unmolested, unthrottled experience.
If Comcast starts sucking, 5G and other competitors are going to eat their lunch. If users hate throttling and uneven networks, someone will swoop in with a better product. Example: T-mobile and Sprint forcing companies like Verizon to start offering unlimited plans again.
I suspect not. Building a network is a huge investment and there will only ever be a limited number of these access points and its likely they will be profit focused. Also we are seeing increased corporate consolidation so if anything the internet companies will hover up more access point for a greater oligopoly.
I suspect this will more be a limited window of profit taking until another election cycle (or several) where a new president/party brings back net neutrality. I cant see this being forgotten as an issue in our generations and its an easy piece to legislate on if the motivation is there.
not likely or it would have already happened. Comcast and other ISP have consistently rated among the top of most hated companies by its customer base. I would love to tell comcast to F off but I have no choice to keep them as they are the ONLY ISP that offer Fast Internet in my area like much of the rest of the country.
5G is going to solve this. You’ll affix a transmitter/receiver to a window of your house and you can bypass your cable company.
The point still stands, if a company is introducing fast lanes and slow lanes and it is making enough customers angry enough, a competitor will swoop in and take their business.
Take an extreme example of Comcast only allowing HD streaming of Comcast owned programming and throttling the rest. That would be so bad that folks would cancel Comcast, which would provide an opportunity for a non atrocious company to displace them.
As things currently stand, Comcast is good enough that a competitor can’t “out customer service” them to displace them.
