Gadgetory

wait we're making another net neutrality video okay so FCC Chairman AGP is on a huge crusade to repeal net neutrality the very popular law that says your internet provider can't slow down your connection or give special treatment to websites they own like Verizon's go 90 which is a pile of garbage put everywhere algae pie likes to say things like the internet was not broken in 2015 when he argues for the repeal of net neutrality I think that's hilarious because in 2014 I literally wrote an essay called the Internet is fucked in 2014 Verizon was blocking apps on phones Comcast was excusing its own apps from data caps 18t was asking startups to pay for sponsored data for better access to customers this was a mess and the FCC didn't have the juice to stop it until President Obama got involved and the FCC finally passed a net neutrality rules in the 2013 anyway all cheer but now PI wants to repeal net neutrality and all of the olla arguments are back there's a huge day of action happening online Google and Facebook and Amazon and Netflix are all doing stuff on their websites but look you know what we don't have to do all of the exhausting activist stuff we can just say true obvious things about the state of Internet access in America and then we can demand to know why the government seems determined to make it worse it's not really about policy it's just about whether or not you are getting what you paid for already number one the broadband market in America is not competitive 51% of Americans only have one broadband provider 38% of Americans only have two choices of broadband service add it up that means 89% of Americans have at most two choices of ISP and one is often much slower than the other that is terrible America is not in the top ten when it comes to average speeds America is not in the top ten when it comes to lowest prices and you can argue that the United States is huge because it is but the problems are the same whether you live in New York City or the middle of Montana and when there is competition America even just a little bit things get better so there's only four national wireless carriers but t-mobile is furiously competitive with 18t and Verizon and that means prices have gotten lower and unlimited plans are being offered again but mobile isn't a replacement for wired broadband it's more its pensive it's less reliable and you can't run your smart home and stream Netflix and 4k off a fucking MiFi we need wired broadband competition and we don't have second broadband competition is dominated by a tiny handful of corporations so this is Ajit PI's big argument he says that net neutrality regulation holds back Internet investment and he has to say it because the government isn't allowed to just to change policy on a whim he has to offer substantial evidence that market conditions have changed and the number he's banking on to provide that evidence is something called capital expenditure which is the amount of money the carriers spend you invest in their networks but if you really look at it what a jeep is saying is that AT&T should dictate US Internet policy here's a chart from USA Today the total broadband investment from 12 largest carriers was down 3.6 billion dollars from 2014 to 2016 but 3.4 billion dollars of that drop was 18 T all by itself why did 18 t go down because the company had just spent a ton of money on network investments and then told investors that was gonna slow down for them let's not forget that most people are 2016 thought Hillary Clinton was gonna win the election and net neutrality would stay on the books what were all those big companies saying to their investors in the SEC during that time in December of 2015 18 T CEO told investors the company would deploy more fibre in 2016 than it did in 2015 and that title too would not impede its future business plans in December 2016 Comcast chief financial officer said to investors that any concerns it had about net neutrality were based only on the fear of what title tube could have met instead of what it actually meant by the way disclosure Comcast an investor in bluffs media which owns the verge by Comcast I was going to see it look that same month Charter CEO told investors title - it didn't really hurt us it hasn't hurt us it's illegal for these companies to lie to their investors in the SEC so you have to assume they're telling the truth a GPS saying if you let ice please squeeze more money out of their existing networks by charging for fast lanes and blocking services that don't pay up they will dump that money back into expansion but remember there's no competition so it's way more likely they're just going to take the some walk right now net neutrality protects against these monopolies screwing you because you have any choices pi wants to take away that protection and hand these companies more profits without spelling out exactly how his plan will increase competition it's definitely like that scene from Ferris Bueller only this time it's Vudu broadband policy instead of due to economics anyone third the more successful a company becomes the less it cares about net neutrality so net neutrality is important for two big reasons one it protects you from monopolies ISPs but second and more importantly it makes them market for apps and services on the Internet fair so the best products have the opportunity to win in 2014 Netflix really really cared about net neutrality they were super loud and a bunch of lobbyists that made statements that went to war eons comcast the works but now netflix is huge and as they've gotten bigger they've backed off we made an entire chart is Netflix subscriber count grew over the years their statements on net neutrality got more and more lukewarm and then at the code conference in May Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just up and said we think net neutrality is incredibly important it's not narrowly important to us because we're big enough to get the deals we want the pattern is clear net neutrality is great for the little guy and not really that important to big companies doesn't that seem like a rule we need okay so here's four it looks like FCC Chairman Ajit PI has already made up his mind like I said he can't just change net neutrality on a whim yes have evidence but it's pretty clear he's going to ignore the evidence he doesn't like so the process is open right now and you can go to the FCC's website and leave a comment and millions of people support net neutrality and mostly only big ISPs want it gone so the comments are pretty much in favor of net neutrality but I keep saying things like what matters most are the quality of the comments not the quantity yeah it turns out that corporate lawyers for ISPs leave higher-quality comments than regular people who just don't want to get screwed on their bills when PI and his team say things like we have to make a decision based on the facts and then also say things like make no mistake about it this is a fight that we intend to wage and this is a fight that we are going to win it's pretty clear dude has already decided what the facts are and this process is a huge sham and that's just kind of bullshit look this fight is still on and the truth is still the truth we live in an uncompetitive broadband market that market is dominated by a handful of giant corporations the big Internet companies that might challenge them are doing it half-heartedly and a GPI seems determined to offer up a massive corporate handout without listening to everyday Americans but you can still participate and you should you can go leave a comment at the FCC website you can call your representatives and ask exactly how pie thinks his plan will work to make our prices lower and our speeds higher and you can demand that our government's policies reflect the concerns of actual Americans because I got to tell you right now it really sounds like the Internet's fucked all over and sprint just found enough money to buy 33% of title give it an additional 75 million dollars in marketing money and buy a million copies of jay-z's 444 which guaranteed it would go platinum that doesn't seem like the smartest use of money if your network sucks does it