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Originally Posted by Undertoad
Your solution is to make every road a highway. That would mostly work -- but is wildly expensive.
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Total nonsense. That is what net neutrality cured. It provided consumers with 2 Mb data access when everyone was limited to about 0.04 Mb. And when that 2 Mb technology was available 15 years earlier. Net neutrality mades highways instead of stop lights.
You have again posted the myth that we debunked many times previously. Death of distance. Cost of a data transmission is same from the Cellar to NYC as it is from the Cellar to Sydney Australia. Highways also mean greater reliability. It means everything is not at 100% - repeatedly suffering from latency - faults and other problems in normal operation do not cause congestion.
Once upon a time, AT&T used your reasoning. And so Mothers Day became a serious network problem. What fixed it? Free market competition. Competitors were permitted. They concentrated on the product (ie network) rather than profits. Therefore competitors were making profits with superior service (ie Sprint's quality so clean that one could hear a pin drop). And AT&T kept selling off divisions to claim that as profits. And even kept wasting money upgrading microwave towers.
Things got so bad in AT&T that their CFO, one day, leaned over to Sandy Weil (a board member) and whispered, "We cannot meet our short term debt obligations." Rather then invest in their network, AT&T had so cost controlled everything that they could not meet payments on their three month bonds.
No problem. They were running their network at near 100% capacity most often. So spread sheets said profits had been maximized. Purpose was profits; not the product.
Yes, that happens when one uses your cost control reasoning rather than invest in the product. Net neutrality means a network that always has sufficient bandwidth. And therefore no or minimal latency. Customers paid less money to companies that were profitable.
That was until Michael Powell, et al, attacked net neutrality so that everyone can only have two internet providers. Powell's, et al reasoning - only two companies will be more profitable. And so
TV cable that once was $8 per month is somewhere well above $50 - and rising to pay for skyscrapers, broadcast networks, and theme parks.
Throttling (also called priority pricing) is what business school graduates love. Minimal network that runs at 100% and does not provide service to everyone every time. Then both consumers and content providers can be surcharged. Prices go up - because the purpose is only profits.
Satellites do something similar for completely different reasons. Priority service is not based in using everything 100% of the time. Priority is an insurance policy - for reliability - to improve the product - not profits.
A Bastille Day event being a classic example. AT&T was the only satellite operator that did not configure their birds for a major sun spot emission. Therefore both AT&T satellites were damaged.
Certain customers (ie broadcasters) sign agreements on other birds. So networks like PBS and CBS moved their network to other birds. Service remains reliable. Priority used as insurance. Not for profits.
Some less priority systems (ie ATM networks) temporarily surrendered their transponders. Priority is not for normal operation. Priority is for the rare or catastrophic event. An insurance policy or a futures contract. Profits are not the purpose - as UT's reasoning is based. The product - in this case reliability - is the only reason for responsible priority scheduling. And that only works when networks (ie highways) have enough bandwidth (roads and bridges) so that latency also is not a normal event.
As a result, some hedge funds hold transponders (that do nothing most of the time) as an insurance policy should another bird fail. IOW excess capacity (not priority pricing to maximize profits) is held in reserve to address the product - to make that network more reliable.
Priority charging, as promoted by UT, is how to increase profits without investing capital in the product. Just another way to get more money to buy theme parks and skyscrapers.
Even latency is only a problem when cost controls have diminished available bandwidth. It does not happen with net neutrality and the resulting free market competition.
It always comes down to this question. What is the purpose of a company: its profits or its product? UT advocates increases profits. Consumers then pay more to have same service. Then Comcast can buy more food companies.