Exactly the opposite is true. NN is most important when you have a market dominated by a few large companies!
In Europe, we don't have net neutrality. It's common to see plans marketed with free/unlimited data favouring specific services, such as Netflix.
But neutrality just isn't a big issue so long as there is plenty of competition among providers. If one company is giving slow speeds (or high charges) to your favourite services, you just switch. There's plenty of choices.
Surely the real issue in the US & Canada is the limited competition among monopolistic carriers and service providers. Net neutrality is just a smokescreen!
In Europe, we do have net neutrality. The EU wide legal framework has some big loopholes though, like allowing countries to decide whether they want to allow zero rating. And indeed, some countries did so.
See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_law#European_... and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/eu-net-ne...
It's not a case of opting out: member states would have to make their own, stricter rules if they wanted to ban zero rating.
Surely non-discriminatory pricing of services is a fundamental principle of net neutrality? Without it, you can't really say Europe has net neutrality at all.
News to me. The EU most definitely has NN and healthy competition, it's doing fine.
Whether it's free Spotify streaming or free Spotify membership or free iPhone offered with your contract (Vodafone UK does all three) ... They're all the same and nothing to do with NN in my mind.
As long as all data streams the same at all time. Everything else is just marketing and sale offers.
But zero rating (i.e.: "Service X data is free and does not count towards your data cap" is another. Discriminating by charging different rates for different data services isn't really much different to discriminating by prioritisation, in terms of the effect it has on the ability of rival services to compete.
I lived in Florida and my net taxes, incl health insurance was the same
If you're phone plan is legit, I'd like to see what it is. My bet is that you're paying Rogers $40/month for some tiny amount of data over LTE[1].
Secondly, this is like saying "I live in a super rich suburb and never see homeless people around. Must not be an issue."
Now, I don't actually think that your intention was malicious, but come on. Vancouver is the rich suburb of Canada when it comes to anything.
Cheap fibre in Vancouver is more or less something you luck into by getting into a new and super expensive condo or hopping on an intro offer from Shaw or Telus.
[1] https://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ip...
Edit: I'd be so bold as to suggest that even while Vancouver does have some options for cheaper internet, the median cost per person would be notably higher than the rest of the country.
I live in an inexpensive building built in the 1980s
There are options, but many people don't know about them or are unwilling to do anything
To keep the $20/mo, I will have to call them after 1 year of service.
In Canada, isn't there a data cap on your fiber internet? I think I have 1tb/mo here for my cable internet.
So, the wireless situation does finally seem to be getting better due to competition from new entrants like Wind/Freedom mobile. I've never heard of anything close to $40 for unlimited LTE + calling though. (Although I believe Freedom does throttle your connection rather than cutting you off when you hit their data cap; is that what you're referring to as "unlimited LTE"?)
All that Koodo has online is a message on their homepage: "You want gigs? We got gigs! Bring your own phone and get 10GB of data for $60/month. Details in store." - https://www.koodomobile.com/
I signed up for the plan today though and can confirm the details in that first link.
Check all the deals today, and every provider is giving $50/$60 per month for 10 gb data + unlimited calling.
I just switched to Koodo from Fido, since Freedom isn't available on Vancouver Island.
Net neutrality has been critical because the incumbent players have usage caps, and have tried to offer bundled services that aren't metered. This was stopped by the CRTC, but it is exactly how regulation restricts anti-competitive activities.
Currently paying $90CAD for 25mbps down 2mbps up which is the fastest available plan from the only ISP with unlimited data
Ignoring satellite options there is one other ISP that can serve my house. The best plan from them is around $60CAD a month for 10mbps down and 1mbps up with 120gb of data.
For some context, I don't live in one of the two big cities of SK, but I'm not out on a farm or anything either so I think my experience is similar to most in SK that are not farmers or in Regina/Saskatoon (the two biggest cities in SK)
Well, that's why. Competition drives prices down.
https://www.beanfield.com/residential/ https://www.coextro.com/
If so, you are misunderstanding what Net Neutrality is.
Go read about it, as there is more than plenty, readily available on the subject.
To me Net Neutrality is a needed regulation that forces telco ops to compete on telco stuff. In that framework it's a free market competition and it does bring prices down as well as allows additional players to enter the game on ground unbiased by deep pocketed content production, which is a venue in direct conflict of interest with the telco (i.e be a pipe) side of things.
Agreed, I was merely outlining the opposite side argument in a very concise way so that it's immediately obvious how much broken it is.
> It does not hamper free market competition, it protects human beings from monopolies and cartels and sets up the legal framework within which the free market is allowed to operate.
This is precisely my opinion, as stated in my second paragraph.
That is so clearly not the case with this specific regulation, that your conclusion is total nonsense.
Net Neutrality is a term describing a necessary quality for the internet to have in order to be a free market.
Net Neutrality regulation is necessary because ISPs do not have competition to prevent them from breaking that.
Net Neutrality regulation requires ISPs to keep a few records, costing them a tiny amount, which is totally reasonable, and will not hamper the free market in any way.
Just to be clear, the first sentence is not my argument, and not my point of view at all: I was merely stating in a very clear way the (flawed) chain of reasoning people in favour of killing net neutrality put forward, which makes it all the more obvious how much nonsensical it is.
If you (re)read my second paragraph you will notice that it exactly states your last three sentences, and that we definitely agree.
Ask them what it will do and it turns out that it will fix every problem you don't like about your ISP. They charge too much? Fixed. They throttle bittorrent? Fixed. Poor service? Fixed. Too slow? Too much latency?
And beauty of it is that when it's been effect for 20 years and I look around and all those things still happen ... well, imagine how bad it would have been without Net Neutrality.
Frankly I think for most people this is just a political chip. We want this because the other guys don't and vice versa. When we get this win we hurt the people who support so many other things that we don't like. The weird thing is that the logic of thought is perfectly reasonable.
The only bandwagon I see is the one in opposition to net neutrality regulation. It's a bandwagon against any and all regulation, as if the word "regulation" suddenly makes something malicious.
The rest of us actually considered the details and implications, or trusted someone else who did.
If anything it makes it even worse, where prioritizing one type of data has an even bigger impact and can quickly cement the presence of companies such as facebook and obliterate any competitors.
Not At all? Are you sure? Ever tried to use video streaming services when your bandwidth is capped at 10 Gb per month?
> Ever tried to use video streaming services when your bandwidth is capped at 10 Gb per month?
That's the whole point. You can't. But hey, lucky for you your ISP has partnered up with netflix, and thus netflix streaming doesn't count towards that data cap. Awesome huh?
Most customers will think so. But in reality it's nothing but a death blow to all of netflix competitors.
Go read about it, as there is more than plenty, readily available on the subject.
The only cost associated with net neutrality regulation is a minimal bookkeeping one.
The only cost associated with net neutrality itself is the potential cost for consumers without it.
On NN, it’s even more important up there precisely since there’s little competition.
The majority of Americans either get variations of 'free' healthcare (half the population) or get most or all their healthcare paid for by their job (3/4 of the other half).
To make an accurate comparison, you need to increase the median full-time pay in the US from $47,000 per year to about $58,000 per year, to build in the massive benefit of employer provided healthcare, which is excluded from US salary numbers.
That's a combination of a few things:
1) US wages are far higher than most developed nations (50% higher than Japan for example). People often want to blame eg big pharma for costs, or big insurance; in reality, those are only about 1/4 of the $1 trillion over-cost problem, the rest is over-consumption of services and very high wages in the health system (eg radiologists will make three to five times in the US what they do in France; nurses in the US make ~60% more than nurses in Germany).
2) US healthcare consumers consume far more healthcare services than in other developed nations. Americans are used to heavily abusing their healthcare. One of the biggest ways socialized systems bring down costs is by aggressively rationing care.
3) US health is quite poor at the median, thanks to diet and lifestyle in general. Some other nations like Britain have partially caught up to the US in obesity, but the US still leads. Combine mediocre health with a system in which the consumers over-consume healthcare services, and you get an explosion of cost. That cost spike happens to coincide almost perfectly with the ramp up in obesity in the US during the 1990s (the aging boomers also accelerated it).
4) US healthcare consumers have a big layer of separation between them and their healthcare costs. The majority never actually touch the real cost of their healthcare. They're getting their health coverage either through government programs, or through their employer. That has been a big cause of the healthcare cost inflation. The US has a badly structured government-market healthcare system today, that has few mechanisms to restrain costs well (either on the market side or the government side).
It’s a shame so many people in Canada fall for it and let them get away with it meaning nothing changes.
Lol. This reminds me of their highly publicized welcoming of undocumented immigrants after Trump was elected. But, once that count crossed thousand, they just shut their border.
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how-canad...