Comcast should be free to sell its services on whatever terms it deems fit, and customers should be free to patronize Comcast or not as they choose; anything else is socialism.
Comcast is now charging to slow the internet into your house, and for some sites to get faster service over others. This is the equivalent of making some players into AM/FM radio stations while others are Ham radio operators.
This is not because Comcast is innovating. Its because Comcast has bought up the wires into your home. For most people, they did not build the original wires. They bought them. And they have a duopoly if you count the phone companies.
I am not suggesting that they can’t charge what they want. Although they do have a monopoly built into laws of many states that makes it illegal for towns to build or even pay for over the top cable services. The internet is not Comcast’s. They only charge to pipe it into your house.
But what they want to do is to put a toll on companies who want access to your house through the internet. Comcast could charge, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc. for premium access. Other sites would still get through but at a slower speed. Comcast would not be building a faster internet. They would just be building a tollbooth. Its like the fast pass at Disney. The ride is the same speed. The number of people per hour is the same. Its just that some people don’t wait in line.
The reality is that Comcast could sell those companies access to their other pipe. While you may see one wire coming into your house, there are really two. One is Comcast’s own service which has, among other things, all the cable channels. Then they have the internet pipe. These two networks that share one wire into your home can be throttled as a whole. They are allowed to limit the bandwidth of the cable channels or the internet as a whole. They just aren’t allowed to limit some internet traffic or support others within the internet pipe.
But they are allowed to sell bandwidth within their own network that has all those 200+ cable channels. Nobody is stopping them from letting Facebook or Youtube send video to you through their network and getting access to it through a web-site.
This is not about Comcast’s freedom to sell any service. Its about their right to decide how you get to see the internet. And I don’t trust that the producers of MSNBC are going to make the right choice.
And by the way, Comcast is a huge lobbyist at every level of government. They license the right to provide cable wires from every community. At the local level they fight to keep their licenses low. At the state level they fight to make sure there is no access to the home internet except through them. At the national level they fight to be allowed to buy as many cable companies as possible. And your cable bill is sending lots of money to every level of government. There is no free capitalist here. Its cronyism. Or maybe I should say, its cronyism vs. tax and spy.