Have some sympathy for the AT&T devil

"Have some sympathy for the AT&T devil"

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. No.

How I think of net neutrality

I think of net neutrality as internet providers not throttling, interfering, or discriminating with traffic in any way. If the death star wants to provide a service that does not consume my data allotment, why should I care? So long as AT&T does not throttle competition (i.e. Netflix) or "accidentally" forget to upgrade the backbone connecting to the competition or throttle traffic on someone not using AT&T's network to stream AT&T's satellite service, why should I care?

Why did net neutrality become so complicated? It shouldn't be. ISP's should do all they can to deliver the data I want and paid for without any discrimination or roadblocks. What is so hard about that?

Broadcast or Point to Point?

That is the question. Most video things are broadcast in nature (like over the air TV). When you go to point to point, lots of thing change. For one thing you need bandwidth, and someone needs to pay for it. Most of the time the monthly fees contribute to the build-out of the connections that support high bandwidth. Eventually the users pay for much of the capital cost of the bandwidth, then the operator can keep charging people even though the capital cost is now zero (it was paid for). This happened for long distance in the period leading up to the "divestiture" of 1984. Because bandwidth was so cheap, long distance subsidized local service which was more costly to maintain, and so it goes. Fast forward to cellular service, and a similar circumstance happens. You charge for minutes while you build out the physical plant and keep going. Eventually the cell towers get paid for and all that is left is the electricity bill (cheap by comparison). Then the bandwidth hogs take over and you then need to make more bandwidth between points, and charge for it. If the pipe to the service provider (netflix, amazon video, etc.) pays for some of this it makes the consumers happier since they don't have to (directly) pay for it. So, it is all about cost shifting and capital costs. Pick your poison. Yes, AT&T (a modem test command if you are interested) will make money, possibly obscene amounts of it. If you are interested, the symbol on the stock exchange is 'T', and invest there.

Life goes on. Movies will cost money, bandwidth will cost money, and we will all pay.

A lot depends on how much of a game changer 5G might be

But in the long term perhaps some sort of paying for how you watch OTT services might come into play. This could be driven either by the OTT services themselves, or by the network. From the network end, I've seen this on visits to Africa already. Consider Zimbabwe:

- I can buy a prepaid SIM card on arrival at Harare Airport, load this with some money, and buy a data package (typically USD 30 for 1Gb for one month - data is generally expensive in Africa).

- This is all well and good, but what cash strapped locals do is buy a smaller allowance, and then buy packages of unlimited services they want (typically unlimited WhatsApp, which is big in Africal, but also Facebook, Twitter).

In the longer term, I can see this trend happening with OTT services. Of course, if 5G radio brings us sufficiently close to wired, we might also see networks deciding they don't have to invest in a lot of expensive equipment for data metering, content billing and so on. I think the latter possibility is rather unlikely.