220 (240) is just 2 x 110 circuits in parallel. I absolutely guarantee you are getting the same service as everyone else. You are probably paying for more amperage (voltage x amperage = wattage). Voltage is always in steps of 110 volt because they are just additional lines bound together from different circuits.

This has nothing to do with what the going market rate is for service. If you are buying Internet service, you should get Internet service, not 50% of the Internet, or whatever the provider chooses to provide you. Would you really want to pay additionally for each website you want access to? (That is the opposite of Net Neutrality). We have Net Neutrality right now, the business push is to get to a model where they can bundle or charge per website like they do cable television channels... Why? Because the cable television model is failing. What if you happen to like watching porn, but your local cable provider would really rather you watch THEIR porn for $9.95 an hour. Would you want to have your porn sites blocked? How about cnn.com if your cable subscription DOES NOT INCLUDE CNN? That's already been done... HBO just announced they are wiling to start selling HBO direct online and streaming separate of the Cable service contracts because they can't come to the agreement anymore with the narrowing number of cable providers (Comcast has pretty much gobbled almost all of them up). So if you don't buy HBO from Comcast for $20, but would rather just buy it for $9.00 from HBO directly and only watch on your Tablet or Roku or whatever, do you want Comcast to then block the website on the $70.00 Internet service you are already paying for from them?

Net Neutrality just codifies the status quo in the market, nothing more. There is quite a bit of rhetoric from a few politicians, but before suddenly assuming that whatever comes out of someone's mouth is the gospel, do yourself a favor and peek at OpenSecrets.org and see who their biggest contributors are. Politics in America is pretty corrupt, unfortunately.

Like I said, we have regulated monopolies - telephone service, etc. In exchange for realizing that it is probably no economically feasible to have 6 telephone providers trenching cable to each household, and likely that only 1 can recoup the infrastructure investment (over a very long period of time) then regulation is needed in my opinion. Natural gas would be another one... you don't normally see a dozen natural gas competitors in the neighborhood. But should the only one be allowed to charge an astronomical rate of say $1200 a month to heat a home in the winter, while the local government also prohibits burning wood in fireplaces? (We also have that BS here).

Personally, I'm rather off the grid, I generate a surplus of solar power and with the exception of Internet, water, sewer, and natural gas, I don't have any other external services to the household.

Water and sewer are other great examples, the cities love to be the only provider of water, sewer, garbage... why? It's a substantial piece of their monthly cash flow revenue. Ever seen another sewer provider? Neither have I. If there was truly an unregulated free market for that, you could probably expect to pay several dollars every time you flush your toilet because the alternative would be an open-ditch sewer in the street.

My preference? Null and void all 'regulated monopolies'... we'd see some pain at first, like the California electrical crisis... or deregulating the airlines, but we things would even out if there was no corruption and free access.

In some stuff though, the free access to the CAPITAL to build out the infrastructure is not really there, the telecom bust in the 90's kind of killed any investor interest in building out telecom... so we are rather stuck for the foreseeable future.

If you really think its a horrible idea, what would you like to see happen? Or do you just really not like the idea of not having to watch whatever Hollywood deems is in your interest to watch. There are really only about a half-dozen media content providers on cable, they all own all the properties... HBO, Disney, ABC, NBC, CBS, Viacom, pretty much sums them all up actually.

Again you are proving how bad more regulation is.
"We have 110v / 60hz AC standard electrical service in the US,"
I use 240v, I use 3 phase, I use 5 megawatts and pay a different rate for that.

At my home I pay 60/mo. and get 60 meg down and 10 meg up. I pay for that service more than what my parents pay which is 19.99 and they get 256k up and 3 meg down.

Is that fair? Define how to make that more fair?

Maybe I pay $60/mo and get the same service my parents pay for $19.99? But now I am being ripped off.

Every time someone starts talking about "fair" the conversation ALWAYS becomes what is fair for ME is NOT fair for you, especially when it is regulated by Government who thinks fair is TAKING from one who has more and giving to one who appears to have less.

One more thing, my mother barely uses her bandwidth, I am a Computer professional who uses every bit of bandwidth I can get. So what is fair again?

It`s obamacare for the net.

This is a cry from Comcast which is losing its business model, period. People are rejecting their stupid 'bundling' of a phone you probably don't want or use, their Internet, and their 'basic cable' that you probably watch zero of, then have to upgrade, and in reality most consumers would like to just buy their channels a la carte, even if it cost a little more to do so, they wouldn't have 500 channels of junk and 25 they actually use. The same practice keeps those garbage channels in business that should have failed long ago.

If they had new customers tripping over each other for service, you wouldn't see it being so ridiculous to try and cancel the service. Google for recordings of some of the calls, they are hilarious, it can take 2 hours to cancel something from Comcast, if not longer.

Comcast would love to pick & choose now and hold-up various websites for 'fees' to access their network, but they already are charging their subscribers for "Internet Access", whatever that Internet content is. Their dirty little secret is that they oversubscribe their ability to deliver that performance by hundreds or 1000s of times over under the theory that no one uses it very much, but they are having performance problems with everyone watching House of Cards or Alpha House instead of their crappy sitcom reruns on their cable bandwidth.

How long does Netflix or any other provider like that last having to pay a toll to every ISP in America? If the ISP cannot operate their business (which is really just connecting 2 wires together) then they need to step aside and let others compete. They have a zero-growth business, Wall Street doesn't really reward them with a share price anymore, and its a cry for free pennies from heaven. Nice, but they don't need to get it... (Net Neutrality just denies their ability to charge that toll).

To be a sports celebrity who came out of the closet would maybe help get one invited too. That is, after Ovomit congratulates you for coming out on national TV.

Fair would be no intrusion at all and a free marketplace for any competitor to operate in.

However, the cities and counties already screwed that up in greed for 'exclusive access fees'. If you had, say an open market with multiple providers in the market at each address, you would have a free market. Presently, I know I pay $75.00 a month for pathetic DSL that hasn't changed since I ordered it in 2004, but its the only thing in the market, and they are a protected monopoly (local phone company). When I discontinued their stupid phone service, I got an added fee of $5.99 on my $75.00 DSL service fee, plus an additional $3.99 for a "dynamic IP address fee". Or, about half what the useless copper line phone cost me. I didn't care, I switched to Ooma and wasn't going back out of protest.

If you had a case where AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and a few mom & pop ISP providers were all allowed to offer competitively in every neighborhood, we wouldn't have any of these problems. If someone throttled Internet speed for specific services, then the other competitors would just get more business as people switched. We can't even have wireless providers here to houses, as they violate that 'monopoly'.

If you are paying for Internet service, you should get the service at the performance you are paying. They don't say "x speed, but only from my websites and it's x divided by 20 for anybody else". They sell it to you by a speed.

If you do not get the speed they are selling you, its false advertisement and the consumer protection really does and should step in.

The monopolies are unfairly protected by the same cities and counties, by refusal to issue building permits and access to utility easements to lay new cable or fiber, or to issue permits for wireless antennas.

So if the rule is simple, requiring anyone providing ISP services to not favor one content provider over another on that service, we have an establishment for regulation in utilities for interoperability. We have 110v / 60hz AC standard electrical service in the US, you can't have some provider going willy nilly and piping out DC or European spec AC voltage & amperage, the grid takes an enormous amount of active management, and it is interconnected. Generation has to match load at all times, or the frequency can race or drop, and burn out electrical devices. Would that be reasonable to the consumer for a service they are paying for? They are being sold a service that they are paying for, and it should operate as the same.

I don't see the issue as an intrusion at all, quite the contrary, I see it as just requiring providers to "provide" what they are committing to, or exit the business and let someone else do so.

I'm sure there are many areas that have multiple competitors, but for the vast landmass of the US, that is not the case. There were originally agreements struck with phone companies and cable providers for 'exclusivity' in exchange for building out the infrastructure, but that was 4 or 5 decades ago, or more. There isn't any need for those agreements, or the wires for that matter.

Satellite is an obvious competitor, but many municipalities put ridiculous taxes on the service at given addresses, for the same reason, to discourage, limit, or stifle competition for the 'main provider' that is giving the municipality a kickback for service.

Please define "fair".

Then define "fair" for who?

What are you going to TAKE, i.e. steal from one to give to another to make this "fairness."

We have to get rid of all the regulations, franchise agreements, and laws that prevent the entry of new competitors in local, regional, and national data transit markets. If I'm prevented from stringing up my fiber or coax and offering internet access over it, then the only ones who are empowered are the local cable monopolies.

So here's some background you may not be aware of:

- The backbone of the Internet is called the Domain Name System (DNS) and is comprised of about 13 "root" servers (+ backups) - one for each web extension (.com, .biz, .net, etc.) They keep adding them, so the number keeps going up. DNS servers translate your request for www.galtsgulchonline.com into the actual server's actual IP address at 74.125.25.121. Without DNS, you'd have to type in the numeric addresses to any site you wanted to go see and every link on the internet would instantly break. Not kidding. The entire Internet relies on those servers.
- Currently, these DNS servers are operated and maintained PRIVATELY and have done so since they were invented. And they are based in the United States.
- Part of Net Neutrality as put forth by its advocates is an attempt to impose US Federal Government control over these servers.

So a vote FOR Net Neutrality is nothing more than a vote FOR government control of the Internet. And we saw how well that works with the IRS.

Now, there is a second prong and this is the one that gets talked about while the other (more important IMHO) gets conveniently overlooked, and that is the issue of what is called "packet prioritization". With the advent of the latest version of the Internet's main routing protocol (for techies, it's IPv6), they introduced the concept of "quality of service", which basically means an allowance for the Internet Routers to service one packet before another. It didn't used to exist in the previous IP version which still is in majority use here in the US because of the MASSIVE infrastructure relying on it. The ability to prioritize was built so that Internet Telephony (think Skype, GoToMeeting, etc.) could function reasonably. The idea is that a person making a video or voice call (or streaming a movie) needed to maintain a pretty constant data flow from server to user - thus the implementation of "prioritization". But of course every application wants it's demands for information to go first, so EVERYONE's requests have this flag set, effectively rendering it useless.

The telecommunications companies actually run and administer the vast majority of the actual pipe carrying all those wonderful little bits of information. They are capitalists (to the extent they are allowed) and want to be able to form and shape the traffic flowing through their routers (which they don't necessarily get paid for, btw) to conform to their profit objectives. The problem is that if they are allowed to do that, what will happen is that the Internet will become a Pay-to-Play network. Netflix would instantly go bankrupt - either because their monthly fees would skyrocket or the fees charged by the telecomms would bankrupt them. YouTube might survive, but they would probably have to start charging content producers to post and users for fees to view videos. You can imagine how well that would go over.

So we have a conundrum - if we allow the telecomms the right to run their routers in a way that makes them money, some of the usefulness of the Internet would automatically be severely undermined. Yet if we tell them they don't have the right to run their own routers, we're imposing price caps on them unjustifiably! To a certain degree, one can look at the Internet as a "public utility" because of the infrastructure investment required to really compete with them, but do we really want the Federal government in charge either way?

that is what governments want, to control your eyeballs if possible.

Correct.

Realistically, Net Neutrality is kind of needed to alter the intrusion that government (at the local level) has already made into the market. If we had fair competition, there wouldn't be any need for the discussion at all, but we don't really have fair competition.

You made the PERFECT argument for NOT chagning things, and getting Government out.

"The provider has an exclusive right from the county"

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM!!! If the County government got its face out of the free market someone else might come in and provide better service.

This is what Ayn Rand called "pull" in her book.

"Solve the bandwidth; solve the problem. "

Which is exactly why the Government needs to get out of the way and let the market deal with it. Private industry paid for the lines, the fiber, the labor, the hardware to provide what we have.

THEY will do what makes a profit, and kill that which does not. Also when did internet become a basic human right which is how people talk about it.

For my part you have the right to go out, WORK for the money to pay for what you want. Not have the government at the point of a gun TAKE from private industry to feed the beast of entitlement.

Obviously Comcast, Time-Warner, etc., are not thrilled about things like Amazon Prime or Netflix - which are now winning awards for their original content, beyond having slightly-dated movies for free.

Keep in mind that Comcast, et al. have video-on-demand they would love to sell...

This prohibits them from being able to throttle performance of other providers on their IP networks, which would cause rebuffering, dropped connections, etc., and artificially paint the competition as 'incompetent'.

Personally, I'd rather see much more competition in the Internet provider space, if city governments were not so hot to sell monopolistic exclusive access rights in exchange for taxes, fees, and kickbacks from the providers, we wouldn't need this at all.

Where I live (northern California), and a stone's throw from Silicon Valley, I'm still stuck on 4 mbit down / 256k up DSL, because its the only thing in the ground to the neighborhood. The provider has an exclusive right from the county, and they have no interest in upgrading it. Even 4G house / premise connections like Clear are blocked from putting up an antenna for wireless here as it would violate the 'exclusive rights'.

I am currently enjoying freedom aided by an
electronic system;;; if the government does
ANYthing to mess this up, I will be infuriated
beyond rationality ,,, so I must brace myself
because it is bound to happen, somehow or
somewhen. . these people are evil incarnate!!! -- j

The idea of the Internet being indifferent as to its users - like a utility - is not a bad idea to me. It will still not be neutral, because (for example) a rich company can pay to have fiber optic run to its building whereas a small company can not. One of the aspects of the Internet that I find valuable is that the minority opinion is present. I sometimes imagine that, absent net neutrality, all of the bandwidth of the Internet is absorbed by Netflix (who I imagine is airing a popular sitcom), thus leaving me unable to watch a small, privately made, documentary on Minoan architecture.

I think that the overall best solution is probably to keep the government out of the situation. Sigh. I will forgo my documentary for a while so that millions of people can watch their sitcom.

Because, you see, 'this is just a phase we are passing through'. The only reason that Netflix would _want_ to pay more to get priority is because there is not enough bandwidth. Solve the bandwidth; solve the problem.

Were the government to be trusted, then it would be appropriate to have them insure net neutrality until everyone had at least optic...but I do not believe that the gov would ever let anything 'go' once they got their hands on it.

Jan

Wait a minute!! Does this not undermine the ability of a man, or business to charge what they deem worthwhile for a service, and EMPOWER you to go elsewhere if you deem, or find a better price for the service,...ergo trade freedom

The image. Oh, the image. It hurtz.

Jan

Pretty much if Government gets out of it, and stays out of it we will have it, but the more Government gets involved the less "Neutral" will be become.

To be invited you need to wear glow in the dark lipstick and bath in milk and fruit loops.

Yeah, someone asked me what I would say to Obama if I was invited to the White House. I thought for a sec and replied that I have no interest in meeting Obama and wouldnt have ANYTHING to say to him. I really meant it too

Net Neutrality - an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak. Freedom is slavery. Neutrality means passing rules that favor Google and Netflix and violate the property rights of the cable companies.

Yes, for some reason I have a trust issue each and every time the 2013 Lie Of The Year Winner moves his lips. Heck, I had that same trust issue way back in 2008!
When a socialist serpent asks us to partake of his offered fruit, we should all just turn our backs like those cops did to the New York mayor.

IT IS JUST A NEW TWIST ON HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THE INTERNET.