<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 18727" data-quote="PeterCastle" data-source="post: 654350"
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Back in 2010, for example, did you use to complain about the internet not being neutral enough? Serious question.
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Well there was that time where Comcast held it's user's access to Netflix for ransom unless Netflix paid Comcast for all the traffic the service was using. <br />
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Best explanation I could find: <a href="https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-to-pay-comcast-for-internet-traffic/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="noopener">The inside story of how Netflix came to pay Comcast for internet traffic</a><br />
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In essence, Comcast sought to meter Netflix traffic requested by Comcast’s broadband subscribers.
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Comcast subscribers went from viewing Netflix content at 720p on average HD quality) to viewing content at nearly VHS quality. For many subscribers, the bitrate was so poor that Netflix’s streaming video service became unusable.
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Despite purchasing transit on all available routes into Comcast’s network that did not require direct or indirect payment of an access fee to Comcast, the viewing quality of Netflix’s service reached near-VHS quality levels. <br />
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Faced with such severe degradation of its streaming video service, Netflix began to negotiate for paid access to connect with Comcast. Netflix and Comcast eventually reached a paid agreement.
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The letter concludes that Comcast, through its “interconnection relations,” had “deployed an ecosystem in which hosting companies such as Voxel are effectively forced to pay Comcast to serve its broadband subscribers.” In that ecosystem, “it is simply not possible for competing external providers to deliver gaming, or streaming video services to Comcast’s broadband subscribers” without directly or indirectly paying Comcast.
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<b>Comcast was the first large terminating access network to successfully implement a “congest transit pipes” peering strategy to extract direct payment from Netflix, but it is not the only one to do so.</b> Since agreeing to pay Comcast, Netflix also has agreed to pay TWC, AT&T and Verlzon for interconnection. [Redacted section.] Netflix is not the only edge provider to encounter Comcast’s peering strategy. In a 2011 filing with the Commission, Voxel, a hosting company relying on Tata for interconnection with Comcast’s network, noted that “[w]here broadband ISPS typically ensure that links connecting their customers to outside networks are relatively free from congestion, Comcast appears to be taking the opposite approach: maintaining highly-congested links between its network and external ISP.” The letter concludes that Comcast, through its “interconnection relations,” had “deployed an ecosystem in which hosting companies such as Voxel are effectively forced to pay Comcast to serve its broadband subscribers.” In that ecosystem, <b>“it is simply not possible for competing external providers to deliver gaming, or streaming video services to Comcast’s broadband subscribers” without directly or indirectly paying Comcast.</b>
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This is the kind of situation that Net Neutrality set out to fix. <br />
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Again, to be clear, I'm all for small government and allowing the market to self-correct in situations where self-correcting is possible. But when no "free market" exists to allow competition to self-correct the problem, what is to be done?<br />
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For the longest time (and likely even today), Google themselves had issues competing with these folks. Competitors were legally roadblocking access to lay new infrastructure or access the existing one in efforts to prevent competition in the areas Google sought to compete in. A quick search shows that in Kansas, Google was willing to pay up to $1 Billion to implement infrastructure but was being kept out by the utility companies who sought to prevent competition in the area. <br />
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So this all begs the question - what's the free market solution where free market competition not only doesn't truly exist but is actively prevented by the existing players? <br />
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I'm not trying to be a hippy about this topic or anything, I just don't see the viable free market alternative in situations where massive monopolies / oligopolies control essential services and use their power and influence to artificially hold market positions and screw with their customers?</div>
