I've been in this business a long time. A brief history:
1.) The Internet as we know it was standardized in (1/1/1983 - TCP/IP - IPv4).
2.) The World Wide Web was standardized in 1990. It is the most heavily used protocol on the Internet today.
3.) In the early 1990's, the Internet started to transition from education/government into the commercial sector. Dial-up ISP's started popping up. Dial-up bulletin boards were very popular around this time - and some of the early ones such as CompuServ and AOL ended up providing Internet access.
4.) Early Internet access was expensive and heavily metered. Part of this was due to no competition. . Some ISP's charged as high as $1.00 / minute.
5.) More dial-up ISP's entered the market and started offering $20/mo unlimited plans (mid 90's).
6.) Dial-up and DSL started to compete with each other as DSL became more readily available. Both used your local phone companies infrastructure heavily.
7.) Cable companies started providing always on broadband via DOCSIS. The transmission medium was better off than DSL.
8.) DSL and dial-up started to die off. The two wire copper just doesn't operate clean enough to transmit high speed data for long distances.
9.) Without much competition, the cable companies started gaining a monopoly on services.
a.) It can be very tough to get through the permitting process to get fiber and other medium down alleys and on the poles. In many cases, the cable company will sue anyone trying to do that (making expensive legal battles instead of running expensive fibers for competition).
b.) In other cases, it is so capital heavy and the rate of return is so long, investors aren't interested.
10.) Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Youtube, and all these services start taking up massive amounts of bandwidth. They are priced far cheaper than cable tv packages. The only content that is tough to find is realtime events - mainly sports and news. People decide they don't like paying $200 a month to watch a handful of channels while getting double dipped on advertisements.
11.) Cable companies start losing video subscribers. Their Internet customers start using far more streaming bandwidth. They have to come up with options:
a.) Data caps. You see these occassionally - usually with Comcast and your Cell Phone provider. They will claim that you get some arbitrary speed (say 100Mbps), but after you have downloaded an arbitrary amount of data (say 2GBps), they will throttle you down to another number - say 2Mbps). [1]
b.) Randomly throttling customers bandwidth that regulary use more than the average. Now that
With a & b, the average user began using so much data, they ended up providing a useless service. So they decided:
12.) Lets go try to get the content providers to pay us for using our network. This is a bit tough to type out, and I'm running out of time, but let me try to explain how how it has worked:
a.) you, the consumer buy internet access from your ISP. You want to access the internet.
b.) your isp buys bandwidth from a backbone (likely multiple backbone providers).
c.) Google, or say wyonation, wants to serve content, they purchase bandwidth either through an ISP or a backbone provider.
Everyone pays everyone for the service.
13.) Comcast and others want to force google, wyonation, or whoever to pay them money to provide the content onto their network. They are basically changing the way billing is handled. Instead of selling Internet access, they are trying to control the internet. The scary thing is, since they are mostly a monopoly, they may be able to do this. Comcast had already nailed netflix for $20m a few years back. The FCC responded by moving from "we trust ISP's to honor net neutrality" to "here is some forced regulation that you will provide equal access to the entire internet." Netflix/google/wyonation win here as they don't have to pay for their bandwidth twice.
The problem is they are losing too many subscribers to the streaming services. They have the last mile (local loop) to your house. They are doing everything they can to get you to pay them more money.
Net neutrality is important. It has been with us since the dawn of time. We wouldn't recognize the Internet if it hadn't been honored in the early days, then the FCC came in when ISP's started trying to double charge (consumers and providers).
There are a few solutions:
1.) Let your representatives and senators know that you only support net neutrality.
2.) If the cable companies get their way, try to find another ISP (which will be tough) to get Internet through. For example, a local wireless ISP like Lariat, ACT Wireless, etc.
They are just gaming the system to keep their already large profit margins by using the law and regulations in their favor. They are doing their best to create a monopoly.
