I don't think that is strictly true. Netflix probably pays for huge access circuits and probably from a tier 1 provider so they are certainly kicking in on the infrastructure cost.

Champion for it? Yes. Free? Not so simple.

We should all pay for the bandwidth we use but have the rules for access to the highways just as fair for a small business and startup as for a big one.

We (USA) do a whole lot more subsidizing than many realize and have public goods. If you look an US employment trends, gig economy and the number of small entrepreneurs it might make a whole lot if sense for rules that give those small players a chance.

I do have bias for protecting small players. Where I work there are hundreds of employees but our competitors include Whole Foods (that's Amazon now), Starbucks, and Wal-Mart. The competition is good but when I look at our greater number of local suppliers and employee compensation in addition to hiring practices I see some very important things compare to those giants. Firms like ours appear to be really important if you're outside a major corporation c suite and in what many consider fly over territory.

We should pay for the backbone (highway) via the client and server side bandwidth we use and then let our packets travel with fair if not equal chance of getting there.

Unless you work for a non profit, my guess is that your old company has had no problems making the customer pay for infrastructure in the past and will have no problem with that in the future.

They built and owned the largest network on the planet and carried more traffic daily than all other carriers, worldwide, combined.

In hundreds of cases, customers outside of available footprint wanted fiber internet services. I would collect the construction estimate to deliver it and I never saw one under $300,000. If there were other large potential users along the route, this would sometimes be 100% waived. When that wasn't the case, I never found a customer willing to pay the 1/3 million up front in over 20 years.

The internet is not free and does not allow all data to be equally accessible now.

So sorry to hear the company went out of business.

They still have a couple of bucks. At least enough to pay my pension every month and they bought me a watch and they haven't canceled my discount for cell and Uverse.

This might sound counter to most on the consumer side, but people spend entirely too much time as it is on internet, cell phones and then personal gaming and music listening devices. This is isolationism as a bi-product of cheap advancing technologies bringing it into the homes and all other aspects of life. My family of four can all be at home at the same time and yet not one of us would know it.

In my humble opinion, we are becoming a culture of personal recluses at the real life level, yet making tongue-in-cheek claims that we do socialize on the virtual level. I'm wagering most here seeing the difference realize a second definition for socializing has insidiously crept into our psyches.

Staying our course, our succeeding thinking will be to champion the cheap and lazy, hold it as a standard bearer for living life and become a mumbling, grumbling bunch of malcontents every time someone wants to make a buck from us.

That's a different topic and/or you don't really know the ways you depend on the Internet. It's pretty hard to make any phone call these days without the Internet. If you walk into most stores everything you see is likely ordered via the Internet. Most company locations communicate with VPN tunnels over the Internet vs a private network where they're buying their own fiber, T's or dry pairs.

If you're complaining about people doing too much on the Internet you should be screaming at the TV watchers. We got told to not do that in the 1960s and 70s. Now that travels over the Internet.

What is the Internet? It's the public network. Leaving out IP v 6 for the sake of simplicity, the Internet is 0.0.0.0 - not the people you're criticizing spending too much time at a game or social media.

:)

It's part of our culture and way of life now. Whether you agree with it or not, it's pretty difficult to do anything nowadays without the internet. Some of us who grew up in the 90's and yesteryears can always reminisce to a simpler time without the internet and actual human social interaction.

Whether it's in front of you or hidden behind the scenes, the internet allows us to do things we never thought possible. Just imagine, how many guitars would you have if it weren't for the internet? Chances are, you were exposed to guitar builder's you would have never heard of if it wasn't for the internet.

Seems like this is going to be bad for small business and non-commerce sites.

Unfortunately.
#1 Parts of US Net Neutrality rules are going to be repealed particularly taking ISP's out of the the telecommunications category and out of FCC enforcement control. The political makeup of the FCC all but guarantees that at least.

#2 What that will actually mean for the consumer, is unfortunately mired waist deep in the quagmire of totally conflicting partisan rhetoric



It does seem to me , counterintuitive and unlikely that removing restrictions and enforcement of rules on blocking, throttling, etc will actually benefit consumers. Time will tell

As much as I dislike the FCC's leadership, ultimately, the blame lies with Congress. The only way to avoid these regulatory wind shifts is to codify them. Sadly, Congress is has pretty much abrogated its responsibility to consider and pass legislation.

This is an important topic and this has been a civil discussion. However, discussions about government regulation are political. So I guess it’s time for guitar talk.