Actually they are requiring long term contracts now with onerous penalties for breaking them to prevent this. It's not so simple as "just switch".

If your contract is up however, you can. And there's nothing saying the nice new company you sign up with (and who probably requires a contract themselves) won't impose something similar on you two or three months in. If they do, what recourse do you really have?

That's crap... my ISP options in Charleston will probably be Comcast and some local company I'm not familiar with (Knology?). We want to use Hulu rather than cable so metered internet is a scary proposition. Also I download 1GB per month in podcasts and who knows what the filesizes are for everything she watches on youtube.

All completely legal stuff, so I wish ISPs would butt out!

Cable, phone and Internet companies have gotten wise to the fact that technologies are now widely available to access content independent of medium so they now all sell the same product - bandwidth.

You don't need a phone company to make phone calls (Skype, video chat, etc). You don't need cable or satellite to get tv or movies (hulu, YouTube, Netflix, apple tv, etc). But you DO need bandwidth for all these, so that's what they're focusing on controlling and driving the price up for.

Red, whats the charge if you go over?

Reds situation has nothing to do with net neutrality.

ISPs have traditionally offered plans with caps, speed, time, data usage etc...

Nothing wrong with it as long as it's clearly disclosed to the consumer up front.

What folks need is a good way to estimate personal useage before trying to shop plans. I am sure there are some that would think that aint enough pr0n.

They don't say. I have the chart showing my maximum usage was 17GB in a month. I don't use Netflix.

Just calculated it. It would mean a continous "drip" of 772kbps over a month. I guess my connection of 15-20Mbps could handle it...

If I could get FIOS... I would ditch Time Warner... Believe me.

The FIOS cables behind my house have changed ownership about 3 times in the past 5 years. No one is getting service from them.

Not available in my area unfortunately - my choices are phone co. or cable co.

I hate Comcast with the fury of a million flaming suns. I had them years ago when I was in college and I hated dealing with them then and I have no doubt I'll hate dealing with them now. But it's not like there's really an option (the package through the phone co. isn't nearly as good in terms of features...)

Cable companies are vastly different than other ISPs. For home use, other ISPs are often DSL providers, and there is a fair amount of competition there because the phone companies can't limit access to the phone lines.

Cable companies differ in that they have locally granted monopolies to provide cable service to a community. These monopolies are established by local governments and technically come up for review periodically.

The cable companies have no obligation to share "their" cable plant with other providers. In the past, it wasn't technically possible for more than one cable operator to run a cable system in an area. However, new set top boxes and technologies make this possible.

However, local government hacks have no interest in deregulating their cable services. In fact, the cable companies are in cahoots and won't bid to share cable plants either. They'll cite technical limitations, but it's BS.

So, the problem as James identifies it, really stems from government intervention. Comcast (a cable company/ISP) has a local monopoly on their service. They're charging what they want, and they are aided and abetted by their lobbied (i.e. "bought off") local political hacks.

When cable TV lines become shared, then we'll have competition.

PS those cable lines are run on public property with easements, and right of way given by the people. There is no reason that they should be able to act as if they own those lines (which have been bought and paid for over decades by now).

Lol!

Will the marketplace rule in favor of consumers if this should happen?

Web pay tier attempt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/technology/05secret.html

Sherwood

No. We need regulation to keep the marketplace open.
Companies as big as Google and Verizon are the problem. If "net neutrality" is left to the unregulated capitalist system it will devolve into two or three companies controlling access to the entire internet. With no need to compete in order to reap billions, they will become lazy, poorly run outfits providing poorer service, higher prices, and even worse customer non-service. Eventually taxpayers will held hostage to "too big to fail" internet companies pulling an AIG/Goldman Sachs on us, wanting government bail-outs while they give their corporate officers million dollar bonuses. It's not like we haven't seen it happen before.

I dunno, 30 seconds seems like it would be plenty nuff ;)

Comcast is very good at sucking dollar bills from wallets.

I bought some of their stock last year. So... drop by for a free Comcast beer on me.

Next time I'm in Orygun...

They are good at giving them back too. Our 6-year old Comcast cable modem gave up the ghost 2 weeks ago, techs came in next day at 9AM, installed a new business class modem, faster than ever, got a letter in the mail apologizing for the inconvenience and a $20 credit off our bill.

Shaun, I bought my own modem, so they stopped charging me for the modem.

yeh James - give me a call/Email


Comcast does have pretty good service