Comments on: FCC's Comcast ruling: Fuel for the fire

Net neutrality backers say Friday's action could lead to a larger federal role on Internet usage. ISPs say au contraire.

[dneighbors]

The ISP operators are currently charging based on speed of connection so I don't see where charging for bandwidth is any different. I do, however, object to any ISP controlling content. In order to do this every customer to their morals which smacks of "Big Brother". These companies are "Internet Service Providers" not "Internet Content Providers".

[TomAldran]

there needs to be legislation to prevent ISPs to choose metered network usage that are attempts to make money in a market where there is already little competition in many different areas. i know that AT&T would lose a substantial amount of customers if they exploited this since many people choose then as a common "no bandwidth caps" alternative which gains them customers for those of us who have internet enabled DVR's or Tivo's. Surely Time Warners and other suspect ISPs profit margins are exceedingly substantial enough that they could fund their own network expandability & management.

[TomAldran]

there needs to be legislation to prevent ISPs to choose metered network usage that are attempts to make money in a market where there is already little competition in many different areas. i know that AT&T would lose a substantial amount of customers if they exploited this since many people choose then as a common "no bandwidth caps" alternative which gains them customers for those of us who have internet enabled DVR's or Tivo's. Surely Time Warners and other suspect ISPs profit margins are exceedingly substantial enough that they could fund their own network expandability & management.

[imacpwr]

BitTorrent and p2p: damned if you do, damned if you don't..?

[pjoshua5000]

"For $29.95 a month, they get 5 gigabytes of downloads and uploads on a service that offers 768 Mbps downloads and 128 Mbps uploads." "...and 512 Mbps upstream..."

I think they meat so write kbps not mbps, maybe some some correct this error

[pjoshua5000]

"For $29.95 a month, they get 5 gigabytes of downloads and uploads on a service that offers 768 Mbps downloads and 128 Mbps uploads." "...and 512 Mbps upstream..."

I think they meat so write kbps not mbps, maybe some some correct this error

[Lerianis]

The fact is that all of my neighbor's use Comcast for their internet, and have NO problems getting online even when I am Bittorrenting to the limit of my connection. Read that: NO PROBLEMS.
This is a bunch of fear-mongering by Comcast who doesn't want to upgrade the 'final mile' of connection to most homes, which is TRULY causing most of the problems.

[jef5623]

Net neutrality laws are unnecessary in the 7th Age of Computing as there will be great demand for bandwidth in this computing age.

[benjaminstraight]

This is the beginning of a major fight for the web.

[phixious]

to pjoshua5000:

You do mean 512 kbps correct?

The current rules on net neutrality do not work. The comcast incident proves this because the bogging down of connections of peer to peer went on for how many months?

Changing to a bandwidth based billing would be a major changed for the bad for a lot of users. There are a ton of gamers out there that wouldn't be able to play their favorite MMO or download that new XBox live patch because it is just to much of their monthly allotment. If you think about the bandwidth consumed for such applications, you would realize that in a matter of hours playing a single game, you can use gigabytes upon gigabytes of data transfer (ie. even older games such as Counter-Strike: 1.6 - A map runs anywere from 10 mb to about 95+ mb, if you figure on an average server having about 5 unique maps that turns into about 2 to 3 gb of transfer over that server after playing for just a few hours.)

If these companies change over to a "Per bandwidth" version of billing, they will just be boycotted until they either A.) Change their ways or B.) go out of business. Even the bigger companies like Verizon (going through their costs of fios installations right now) couldn't affort to drop 1,000,000+ subscribers over night.

Another major game to think about in this argument would be world of warcraft. 10 million players worldwide. Millions within the US. Just wouldn't work with per bandwidth billing.