Typically, when they nationalize infrastructure, private competition is not allowed. Even if it is allowed, they have to compete with a service the customer has already paid for. So you are stuck with whatever the state has to offer.

Obviously, private entities with no incentive to upgrade will not do so. That's what's so infuriating about this debate. People say: "well, I guess it's time to give up on having private telecommunications infrastructure" but like the ex-FCC chairman said here, it hasn't really been tried. A private company with a monopoly is not really a private company, they're just a money-taking intermediary between you and the government that granted them the monopoly.

By treating internet access as a piece of necessary national infrastructure, instead of just letting "the market" fight it out, you arrive at a far better end point far sooner.

But you have to hope that where you end up will be adequate for a long time, because you're going to be stuck with it. That's not to say that the private companies that dominate the US market are doing very well right now, but they're all locked into government mandated monopolies so they have no reason to even try.

There's no need to require Verizon to peer with Netflix. That isn't even what Netflix wanted. But if Verizon (or any ISP) has ports that are saturated during peak times, they could be required to upgrade them in order to keep up with customer demand. And they could be prohibited from charging their peer for their internal upgrades.

You see this a lot as industries mature. The initial developers are eager to roll out their technologies in order to make money and benefit everyone. Then later on they get bought up by others who are looking at how to make as much money as possible by any means necessary. Eventually, it gets so bad the government has to pass consumer protection laws and everyone has to fill out a bunch of paperwork to get anything done. Then the industry stagnates.

When providers have a monopoly, there's no way to let the market decide. So you have to either bust up those monopolies, or give them a whole bunch of rules to follow. Usually the government goes with the rules, because that's really what they're all about.

The problem is the way they do their accounting, people pay a monthly rate no matter what, and every bit they deliver is written down as an expense. Verizon doesn't feel they are obligated to actually provide the service their customers are paying for. I'm not even sure what they think their customers are paying for. They will readily admit that 30% of their peak traffic is Netflix, but somehow it never occurred to them that some customers might be paying them $120/month so they can have access to Netflix. Also, if Netflix can deliver this service $8/month (most of which is spent buying content), it's hard to believe Verizon can't keep up with them for 15 times that amount! In reality, there's a bunch of shady nonsense going on here.

If Verizon doesn't like government regulations, they probably shouldn't be such total assholes to their customers. You'd think that the geniuses running that company would have the foresight to realize their monopoly is only secure as long as their customers are happy, but instead they are pulling this crap.

If you prefer a free market solution, we could pass a law requiring ISPs to charge per GB delivered. Then they'd get the message that their customers are paying for data, not whatever the fuck Verizon thinks they're providing. But either way, Verizon is totally in the wrong here.

Your customers definitely believed they would receive internet access paid for from their rent, and if you change that while still holding to a lease it will upset them. Legalistic mumbo jumbo like claiming they paid for "network access" rather than internet access would't actually fly in court if you ever do face a class action lawsuit or FTC complaint about this. The expectation you intended for your customer is what matters, not your ridiculous word games. Most students would probably be too busy with other things to take action over this, so if your tenants really are all students you won't face civil action.

But this kind of move is bad for other reasons. The bad blood it will generate between you and your customers will incur other kinds of costs as your customers act out passive-aggressively against you, in the form of poor yelp reviews, poor word of mouth, and deliberate property destruction. This is just the kind of short-sighted nonsense I've come to expect from many businessmen. Absolutely no conception of the big picture. Providing this access is very inexpensive, and you said you'd do it when you rented the apartments. By changing it up you are saying to your customers that you don't value their time and that you don't take them seriously. You just want to use them to extort money from someone else.

Moreover, this action is not sustainable. If you and enough others to this, you will be seeing net neutrality and other consumer protection regulations in the future as a result. Most college students don't stay in college forever.

Just like how any corporation will run out of employees when their current crop retire.

There's nothing special about Microsoft products that makes them business compatible. That's been a ridiculous nonsense talking point for selling Microsoft's overpriced bloatware for far too long. The people running corporations are stuck in the '80s and believe they need to use MSFT because they were sold on that scam 3 decades ago. But those dinosaurs won't be running things forever. Soon younger CEOs with a more intelligent approach to IT procurement will be in charge.

I don't know why it's taking people so long to realize this. The NSA records everything they can get their hands on. And thanks to the USS Jimmy Carter they can get their hands on all terrestrial communications.

I don't think there are a lot of people who don't use Netflix. At least, I don't know any.

If it makes you feel better, they aren't using it just to get attention. They're using it gain notoriety and legitimacy so they can scam property owners out of money by offering fake prospecting services.

The company hasn't released enough information for you to know it's bullshit. Scientists aren't supposed to debunk things by saying "well I've never heard of anything like that so it must be impossible." Science has a hard time advancing in a climate like that.

That said, they haven't proven any of their claims. If they had done any of the things they said they've done on their website, they would tell you who their customer was so you could look them up and ask them if it was true. Basic fact-checking like that is a requirement of true journalism. If the company refuses to provide any evidence, the journalist should report the claims as being highly suspicious and call attention to the fact that the company has been unwilling to provide evidence of their claims. Unfortunately, this kind of basic work has been replaced by reporters taking claims made by scammers like this at face value and reporting them as fact.

What the law literally says doesn't really matter in a case like this. Even if the police would ask the prosecutor to bring charges against you (which they wouldn't) there's no jury on the earth dumb enough to to take the letter of the law more seriously than their own sense of justice. And even if there were, there are few criminals bold enough to report a crime like this to the police, since they'd likely face jail time as a result of it.

It's not wrong to retrieve stolen property.

I can understand wanting a free market system to avoid tragedy-of-the-commons types of issues with Netflix customers causing other non-streaming subscribers to get worse performance

Non-streaming subscribers?! How many internet users are there really who don't stream video? Isn't that the reason people buy the top-tier internet connections? It seems more like a case of ISPs not wanting to render services their customers have already paid for. Or it's a case of ISPs who also happen to own content providers, working to promote their content over a competitor's content. Either way, the ISP is abusing their position to screw over their customers.

It's the same kind of anti-compeditive bullshit we've seen time and time again in the US. There is definitely something wrong with the way the government works that they keep allowing abusive monopolies to spring up with every new technological innovation.

I'm driving over to Gander Mountain first to grab a gun!

Do you think it might be easier for someone to disarm the public if all their guns are consolidated like that?