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 daedalus wrote:
Hope your trip went well. Where did you guys go?

We went to Norfork, AK. Cabin was right on the stream.

Only caught one trout . But, the dam was generating most of the time, so we mainly putz around, BS'ing...

I've read what you say. Something that bothers me here is that EVERYONE does that, effectively. If I sent an email to someone in the UK, hypothetically, it doesn't just go from me to Charter to the UK isp and then be done, it has to route through several other providers along the way. No one has had an issue up to this point with that; it's just been the "cost of doing business".

That's not quite comparible. You pay for your internet access to send/recieve emails and the reciepient ALSO paid for internet access as well.

Netflix did not pay for that bandwidth usage across Comcast's network that were going to non-Comcast customers.

They do now as evidenced by their Open Connect partners contracts.

Netflix got huge. I'll admit that. The problem is that the terms are all negotiated behind closed doors. How big did Netflix have to get before this became justified? Where are the numbers? If I saw that, I'd probably feel better about it. It doesn't help that there's an obvious conflict of interest in Netflix vs Charter/Comcast here.

The only conflict of interest is if Charter/Comcast were also streaming content... which, they both do.

A counterpoint by one of the high-ups at Netflix is here: http://blog.netflix.com/2014/04/the-case-against-isp-tolls.html

Everyone's is worried about ISPs double dipping... and rightly so. But the brouhaha between Netflix and Comcast isn't this. It's completely different.

Both sides are interesting, and I can see arguments on either side. I'm just bothered by the lack of cold hard numbers defending this action. There are plenty of holes in the Netflix side of things too, and that chart doesn't show some data that I think would be very interesting, like the number of users on Comcast as a comparison.

As far as the subsidies go, I've found stuff from different websites on either side of the argument as well, but both sides sport websites a little too off their meds for me to take seriously.

Not sure if we can see the hard numbers yet... I'm interested in them too. But, it's proprietary information that we won't see unless one of them sues in court (where it would be see during a discovery process).

FWIW: I'm a Netflix fanboi... I really want them to succeed and be around. But, in this specfic case, I believe Comcast was in the right.

Keep in mind, Comcast makes oodles of money (just think... over 30 millions subscribers paying an avg of $100 / month? That's a lotta jack... Jack) I can tell you that Comcast isn't fighting for it's life, needing some money for some small infraction here.

Isn't there a danger of it all fragmenting as well? In the UK you used to pay your TV licence and you got the BBC channels and the commercial ones, a one stop shop. The problem is now that this is no longer the case. You have Sky with their bundles, but you then have Netflix and Amazon producing shows. You will then be having to have multiple subscriptions so that you can get to watch your favorite show. The only other option would be torrent sites.

 Wolfstan wrote:
Isn't there a danger of it all fragmenting as well? In the UK you used to pay your TV licence and you got the BBC channels and the commercial ones, a one stop shop. The problem is now that this is no longer the case. You have Sky with their bundles, but you then have Netflix and Amazon producing shows. You will then be having to have multiple subscriptions so that you can get to watch your favorite show. The only other option would be torrent sites.

I'm not exactly sure what the UK situation...

We've always been sorta fragmented.

We generally have an account for our cable/satellite TV.

We have another account for our internet access.

We have another account for our landline phone.

We also have different accounts for the various content providers (ie, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc...).

It's only recently within the last 5 years or so that some of these products are "bundled together". IE, my cable providers offers TV, internet and IP telephony (landline). Often their "bundled" together for a better rate.

Only think I've bundled is just my TV and internet.

Traditionally would had the terrestrial setup, which was the two BBC channels, ITV, C4 & C5. Then came along Sky and they started to grab subscribers with movies & sport. They then were the only ones getting hold of alot of the American shows. When Freeview built up steam, channels like C5 started grabbing a chunk the US broadcasting rights, with C5 being the main one over here.

What's happening now is that not only do we have them but the there has been a flood of other providers. Virgin is really just a duplicate of Sky, same as BlinkBox & BT, but now have Netflix & Amazon producing their own shows. If the poor viewer likes a show / shows that these two produce, then they will have sign up to two more subscriptions. This could meant that Joe public is paying for his TV licence, Sky (because the y want HBO and the footie), Netflix (for House of Cards) and Amazon (for Black Sails). It's starting to get really crazy out there for the viewer.

On the other hand, there is some degree of cross-pollination so you're not often entirely left out.

But yeah, there's loads of different internet/phone companies here. - I'm pretty sure I could choose from Sky , EE , Plusnet , BT or Talktalk or any of those with or without Fibre.
There is, potentially Virgin broadband or cable there too. Ultimately, (please correct me if I'm wrong) a lot of these various companies end up 'renting the line' from BT who own most of the physical cables.

However, Virgin lay their own cables and, BT is heavily regulated by Ofcom (according to Wikipedia) to make sure they're not favouring any of the various companies renting the line from them.

Of course, most of these various companies charge 'Line Rental' as part of your phone/broadband package.

I remember the last thread about Net Neutrality, and there were quite a few folks proclaiming that NN being struck down meant nothing, or simply wasn't needed.

Grab your dinner plate and eat your words. If the big ISPs moved to strike down NN, then its obvious they wanted to further pad their pockets despite what they claimed a few months ago.