Quite possibly true but missing the point.
Before they fail they are by definition anti-competitive and harmful to the market. That's why every developed nation I can think of regulates monopolies.
Giving the government the power to decide who is and isn’t a monopoly does nothing but foster corruption.
If not the government, which is really you and me in a representative republic, then who? Or is it your position that since the monopoly probably won't be permanent society should ignore it?
Comcast *should* be free to choose to whom they apply the added costs. They shouldn’t be *forced* by government to have to decide how to apply the costs to their end users.
I agree that this is the ideal and I haven't heard of an instance where the NN rules have changed this.
For over twenty years since the privatization of the Internet there was zero regulation. And (if you can believe it) there was no censorship by providers - those that tried any form of it at all it were eventually forced into bankruptcy as their respective customer bases evaporated.
And I want that model to continue as I think you do - which is what's interesting about this debate.
What I don't want is for my ISP to decide my level of service based on the content provider I choose to use.
If they want me to pay more for using more bandwidth, fine, but I don't want them to charge me more for streaming a movie from Netflix than for streaming a PPV movie from them.
Please note that if I have true choice in broadband providers then I don't care - I'll find an ISP that does what I want. But monopoly situations are different and there's no question that many ISPs are de facto monopolies in certain communities.
If it will eventually fail, then it is - by definition - not a monopoly.
The only true monopolies that exist are things like power companies, gas companies, water companies, and cable providers. All backed by what? The force of government.
Yes, society should ignore a cornered market. Trust me - if the price of something gets high enough, competitors will enter that market with a cheaper/better product or service. Of course that’s provided the government doesn’t hamper them with things like licensing fees, certifications, franchise fees, special taxes, inspection fees...etc.
These are all examples (and it’s certainly not an exhaustive list) of barriers that government puts in place which - intended or not - hamper competition and allow monopolies to exist and in most cases flourish.
Giving a government power to regulate something will always result in in corruption and you will end up with what we have today: Crony Capitalism.
Comcast was forced by the threat of NN to either a) eat the cost of the additional bandwidth, or b) find a way to charge their end users. Neither of which made any sense because the content provider was the one causing the problem and the one that should have been eating the costs. Again, they chose not to fight *because* neither side wanted to set a bad precedent.
Finally, it matters not one whit whether or not your cable provider charges Netflix’s peering partner more for their use of the cable provider’s bandwidth - even if they provide the same service. By that logic, Kroger should be forced to offer shelf space for Kraft’s mayonnaise at cost because they have a competing product. That makes zero sense.
If you - or anyone else - have, and don’t like, a government-mandated monopoly on last-mile providers in your area, perhaps *you* should petition *your* local, county, or state government for a redress of *your* grievances rather than trying to make the federal government fix *your* problem - which I, and many others, don’t have.