This is taken from an extremely articulate comment to this article. Tom Wheeler is nothing short of a cable and telecom industry shill. The former chief lobbyist for the National Cable Industry Association and for the Cellular and Wireless Industry Association knows there is NO consumer choice in the monopoly cable and telecom industry. Every stupid proposal he comes up with is to satisfy his monopolist overlords, not to represent the public interest. He (and really the rest of the FCC) is the very definition of the fox in the chicken coop. The issue of Net Neutrality is not the “internet’s biggest threat.” Net Neutrality is important and critical, but I feel there is a real case to be made that the Net Neutrality issue is nothing more than a red herring. A distraction. The real threat is the industry’s plan to implement Metered Billing. The monopoly cable industry’s major business objective is to quietly slide into metered internet billing. Their plan is to bill you by usage. Which, BTW, is total price-gouging. A consumer rip-off. The industry, with the FCC’s help, will seem to “lose” on the the Net Neutrality issue in order to seem “entitled” to the Metered Billing System. Metered billing will make your old cable TV bill look cheap. Internet service is already the most profitable product the monopoly cable systems sell, by far. Fees for incremental usage above some phoney cap are almost pure profit. Like, 99%+ pure profit. Nobody in any competitive industry expects to make 99% profit. Multiple credible studies around the world have repeatedly shown this. Internet service is not like groceries, or gasoline or electricity. But monopolists throughout history always create artificial scarcity in order to charge higher and higher prices. In the case of Comcast, failure to invest in their system (which we all know, with advancing technology and low-cost commodity equipment, is actually cheap) makes it seem like they deserve more money to keep up with demand. They failed to invest very much for decades and now they want to charge more for this failure. It has been shown that Metered Billing is actually a DIS-incentive to the monopolists to ever improve service--just bill more! The cable “industry” is publicly projecting that the average internet bill will be $200 to $300 per month in 3-5 years. JUST FOR INTERNET. That does not include a Netflix subscription or MLB TV subscription, or TV fees--just for internet service. Comcast SVP David Cohen publicly stated to his investors just last February that they plan to do this. It will be a license to print money for a very few, very rich companies. “I would predict that in five years Comcast at least [!] would have a usage-based billing model rolled out across its footprint.” These monopolists want more and more and more. And they want you to believe theyre entitled to it! So, the real (and huge) pot of gold is Metered Billing. They really don’t care so much about Net Neutrality. They’ll give that away, and in doing so will eliminate the opposition that Netflix and the other the big content providers have to their merger activities. If we don’t stop them now, we’re screwed. It will be The United States of Comcast/AT&T. They will have more money for lobbying, electioneering, and just plain bribery, than any other industry in America. Most of the Republicans youre planning to vote for on Tuesday favor the monopolists. Most Democrats dont. Metered Billing will cause a $2,000 to $3,000 tax increase that -you- dont favor. Vote accordingly on Tuesday.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 06:58:10 +0000
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