But first the ISPs have to actually do the things that we were warned they would do if the FCC scraped these laws. No ISP has yet announced or even proposed any specific future changes.
I'm not even sure what being "wrong" here will look like in practical terms:
- Are average home broadband internet plans going to have their internet filtered unless they pay more for 'unlimited'? With TV-style "grouped" packages?
- What websites (tech companies) will be included in these hypothetical filtered packages?
- Will they (Netflix/Disney/Facebook/Google/etc) let the ISPs include their brand(s) in marketing these new non-neutral plans? Will they let the ISP include their website in any throttled package in technical terms?
- Will ISPs be launching the new plans perfectly in sync with other ISP companies, for the 80% of Americans who have more than one ISP option, so they won't hemorrhage customers to competitors when they completely revamp their billing? Will they grandfather existing users?
...there are far too many questions to properly give you a answer about how the industry will respond.
When/if that actually becomes a reality then it will be easier to guess how the trillion dollar industry will react and if the ISP customers will sit idly by with no recourse... at the moment I'm confident there will be plenty to do to make business/life for Comcast/ATT shareholders uncomfortable if they ever were dumb enough to mess with how the internet works for the average American.
But first the ISPs have to actually do the things that we were warned they would do if the FCC scraped these laws. No ISP has yet announced or even proposed any specific future changes.
I'm not even sure what being "wrong" here will look like in practical terms:
- Are average home broadband internet plans going to have their internet filtered unless they pay more for 'unlimited'? With TV-style "grouped" packages?
- What websites (tech companies) will be included in these hypothetical filtered packages?
- Will they (Netflix/Disney/Facebook/Google/etc) let the ISPs include their brand(s) in marketing these new non-neutral plans? Will they let the ISP include their website in any throttled package in technical terms?
- Will ISPs be launching the new plans perfectly in sync with other ISP companies, for the 80% of Americans who have more than one ISP option, so they won't hemorrhage customers to competitors when they completely revamp their billing? Will they grandfather existing users?
...there are far too many questions to properly give you a answer about how the industry will respond.
When/if that actually becomes a reality then it will be easier to guess how the trillion dollar industry will react and if the ISP customers will sit idly by with no recourse... at the moment I'm confident there will be plenty to do to make business/life for Comcast/ATT shareholders uncomfortable if they ever were dumb enough to mess with how the internet works for the average American.