Net Neutrality takes takes a big blow

[uebermann]

[Mr.Bill]

[The Dude]

Wow, that sucks to be you guys.

Over here we have packages too but adding the landline always makes it $20 more expensive.

We have just TV and internet bundles (granted, also TV and phone or internet and phone bundles as well).

Also, the f**k are you paying for a router for? Spend $50 a buy one over $10 a month.

[Mr.Bill]

I'm not paying for this router.. That they gave me, for free.. With no monthly rent/fees...

[The Dude]

That was to professor.

[Medius]

[jimmyz]

[Mr.Bill]

Yes and no... My old copper line land-line Verizon phone, yes even with the electricity my phone worked..For days with no electricity..

With this new FIOS land-line phone, and I'm pretty sure with Prof 'package' phone then it's mostly a no... My new land-line FIOS phone has an 8 hour backup battery, after 8 hours with no electricity my new land-line phone will no longer work..

[Medius]

[Bauce]

The bottom line is, more and more people, especially youngs, are ditching cable in favor of streaming content. Between easily accessible free content and dirt cheap legal sites like Netflix, it's taking a huge bite out of the cable service that pretty much everyone in town used to subscribe to. Cable providers are in luck though, because they had the foresight to also get in on the ISP business back before streaming content really became a thing. They're running out of ways to compete with streaming internet content to keep people on traditional cable. Live sports has pretty much been keeping them afloat for the past couple years but that's going by the wayside too. So while I like things the way they are and hate that they'd mess with it, the alternative is to ask them to just step aside and let their industry die off along with the olds who are too tech illiterate to use streaming services.

I think it will be fine. They'll probably do what I said initially. Find ways to make sites like Netflix less accessible/usable, then offer their own in-house version of netflix to their customers. Maybe Netflix and Hulu end up seeing the writing on the wall and get acquired by the cable companies rather than be run out of business. Either way, I think we'll end up with something like Netflix but also offering some live content, and we'll have to pay a little more. And there will probably be commercials. It's not ideal for us, the customers, but I don't think that it was ever realistic to think that "all the movies and tv you can watch, on demand, for 7.99 a month" was realistically gonna last when the people who offer the infrastructure to make it possible are losing business left and right from it.

Honestly, between YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, sites like Spotify or Grooveshark, Pandora, Songza, and a ton of other things I'm forgetting to mention, we have exponentially more media entertainment at our fingertips than ever before and we pay so much less for it. Today, you can get a virtually limitless library of music and more quality tv/movies than you'll ever have time to actually watch, for less than one CD and one DVD would have cost you back in the 90s. I definitely think that we as consumers should be cautious and vigilant about this stuff, but I don't think it's unfair to say that the pendulum has swung a bit too far in our direction and we need to give a little more.