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So if Comcast chooses to prioritize their own pay-per-view service at Netflix's expense, I can either deal with limited bandwidth for my Netflix viewing or I can switch to Comcast's own service.

If Comcast tries something like that you still have options.

You can get with other members of your community and solicit other providers to come to your community to provide competition.

If you community has is one that contracts with Comcast that gives them a monopoly on providing service to your area petition your community leaders to pressure Comcast not to prioritize their own PPV service. If they do not relent your community can contract to another ISP.

My home town has had at least 3 cable service providers that I can think of in the last 40 years. Your area is not stuck with Comcast. If you don’t like them get involved and get rid of them.

The top 5 ISP’s control 65% of the US market. That’s Comcast, Time Warner, SBC, Verizon, and Cox. To say people have a choice is deeply disingenuous. Because of the build out cost, and control local government asserts, competition is pretty much dead. There is just consolidation at this point. The last time there was real competition was during the DSL heyday, but notice how the big telcos were able to kill the competition by blocking the smaller companies using their lines.

If Comcast tries something like that you still have options.

You can get with other members of your community and solicit other providers to come to your community to provide competition.

I can certainly try, and I will not succeed for the following reason: other providers must pay to establish the infrastructure to provide this competition, and the cost is prohibitively expensive. Companies like Verizon have stopped rolling out broadband fiber because their stocks take a beating when they make such investments, and cable is effectively a monopoly in 98% of the US because the cost of laying new cable is too high for any competition to form.

80% of the US gets it's Internet via Comcast cable or Time-Warner cable. That's not because we love them - it's because we have no choice. And that's the way it'll stay - the two companies are well connected to both political parties in Washington - Comcast's CEO is one of Obama's golfing pals on his Martha's Vineyard trips. And why on earth would Comcast or Time-Warner want to help Netflix or Hulu or Amazon sell you TV content at $8/month over their cable Internet service when Comcast and Time-Warner sell TV content themselves for 10 times that amount?

“You can get with other members of your community and solicit other providers to come to your community to provide competition.”

Yea, all five of us. We’re lucky to get what we have. Soon
the tards will be paying the providers to limit access to
their competitors site. And it will domino after that. Sorta
like caller ID block unlock block.