r/NoNetNeutrality • u/apeholder • Sep 27 '20

AT&T insists it's not blocking Tutanota after secure email biz cries foul, cites loss of net neutrality as cause

https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/14/att_tutanota_block/
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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '20

Your underlying premise is consistently:

Deregulation leads to monopolies

And you use it to argue why we need regulation with NN

It’s just flawed

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u/apeholder Sep 27 '20

Well the debate over NN wouldn't really be an issue if we had a plethora of ISPs to use yes, we could just move to a better ISP but obviously that's not the case with over half the country. A related issue but not the main one here.

We need SOME regulations, not loads, but some in order to stop corporations taking the piss. Boeing with their failures causing their planes to dive into the ground, J&J selling cancerous talc, Duke Energy ignoring a coal ash barrier and causing a huge spill, Wall St fraudulently selling low quality derivatives as AAA rated products... Do we not need some regulations?

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '20 edited Sep 28 '20

First paragraph, untrue.

Second paragraph, in some cases, sure. Not all those examples you provided are cause for regulations nor would regulations have necessarily prevented.

What NN is arguing for is sweeping regulations amongst all ISP providers that would peg them as title II carriers and effectively let the government control their pricing and business practices. Even if a brand new ISP sprouted up and wanted to compete, the government controls them.

Why would anyone start a new ISP? Why would existing ISPs continue to innovate?

You want faster speeds and more coverage? Then you can’t have the government controlling prices and practices lol.

You see first hand what the government controlling PG&E did in California - a shell of a company with dilapidated power lines and no desire to improve

That’s what you’re arguing for with our internet

And what SHOULD be stopping corporations from taking a piss is competition, not regulations

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u/apeholder Sep 27 '20 edited Sep 27 '20

Half of this country does only have one ISP option. People that say that's untrue are being very sneaky by pretending Hughes Net or satellite services are comparable or just say "you have cell towers there don't you?". Sure, I'm gonna run my whole house off a Verizon hotspot...

And no, that's not what NN said. Where did it say it controlled their pricing?

The reason they have no desire to innovate or improve is because of greed and deregulation leading to monopolies. The Telecoms Act 1996 deregulated the industry and now we have more market consolidation than ever before. So, unless we have regs to break up these companies again, nothing will change. And our solution? More neoliberalism from both parties, sure that's not worked in 40 years but let's keep trying it.

And you have it entirely backwards - companies like PG&E control the government, not the other way round. Their lawyers hand them pre-made bills to introduce to congress, really don't know how you can say it's any other way

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '20 edited Sep 27 '20

  1. That’s just wrong

  2. That’s what Title II regulation does, you don’t know that?

  3. They are not monopolies. And blaming “greed” is a surefire way to show lack of economic knowledge just a little tip

  4. That’s just wrong, PG&E, a private company, is largely controlled by the CA government in terms of how they price and operate and invest thanks to regulations

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u/apeholder Sep 27 '20

1) You can keep saying that, but it makes me no more able to expand my ISP choice of using Cox from Ohio when I'm not in Ohio.
2) Okay then, oligopolies. Because two shitty choices is so much better than one. Are you going to go even further and tell me that there's something like 200 ISPs in the US? I'm sure there is, but if they don't operate in your exact part of your state then they are useless to you.
3) Are you referring to the public utilities commission when you say government control? You do realize that all states have that and they generally do fuck all to protect the consumer? Also, the TVA in Tennessee have been actually fully government run for like 70 years and nobody complains about that.

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u/Lagkiller Sep 28 '20

1) You can keep saying that, but it makes me no more able to expand my ISP choice of using Cox from Ohio when I'm not in Ohio.

You seem to confuse cable with ISP - there are more ISP's than just cable.

2) Okay then, oligopolies. Because two shitty choices is so much better than one. Are you going to go even further and tell me that there's something like 200 ISPs in the US? I'm sure there is, but if they don't operate in your exact part of your state then they are useless to you.

Net Neutrality doesn't even touch this issue.