I'm not sure I understand what net neutrality is overall.
It was in place for a while, and now it is not again.
Has anything changed between those two periods of time? I'm totally serious.
Did you have competition prior to net neutrality, and don't anymore?
I don't get it I suppose. Did they charge more to stream stuff before, and didn't after - and now will do it again? Is that all net neutrality is? Throttling?
I'm familiar with this scenario. People that live a couple of miles away - not considered the sticks - don't have any options....and never have.
They can get a hot spot from the cell companies. I haven't heard of any satellite locally, although that doesn't mean it isn't there. Although, Satellite is HUGELY expensive.
Many places don't have cable, fiber, dsl, etc. They didn't have it prior to this, nor afterwards. As far as the digital divide? That's something I would bet they never address. It will leave children behind in technology, but big companies like Cox, Comcast, ATT, etc? Its not their concern.
I wish they would find something that addresses that.
Regarding satellite, it's pretty much everywhere in the continental US. It is expensive, but not "that" expensive. I used it for a couple of years. The problem was throttling once you had used it. However, it allowed unlimited and unthrottled usage in the wee hours of the morning, which was good for my Torrent activity. I could time downloads for that time period.
My cell plan used to give me 40 gig per month and then it throttled me. However, when I got throttled, it was so slow as to be completely - and I do mean COMPLETELY - useless. I could not even check email. It would time out. And 40 gig gives you the ability to watch only a few youtube videos a month. My phone bill for two phones and one hotspot was $280.
Then, I complained about my throttled performance about a year ago. They told me about a 22 gig plan that was $70 cheaper. But the key was that they only throttled you if others were using the tower and you became the "low priority" user. Well, I'm in the sticks using a tower near a highway about a mile or two away. And the highway gets pretty light traffic. So I thought I'd try it.
We now pay $200 a month for two phones and a hotspot. Actually, it's three phone lines, in essence. All three can be used as a phone or a hotspot. I now have an LG G3 stuck in a window (better reception) that we use 24/7 for our home internet access. I use it when I work from home.
But here's the kicker: We have an amazon prime membership and a 55" 4k tv with amazon prime, hulu, web browser, etc. built in. We now watch pretty much anything we want as much as we want in this last year and have yet to be throttled. And the service is rock solid. i.e. videos don't freeze up. They will, on very rare occasion, go "low detail", but usually only for a few seconds, and only every couple of days. i.e. it's a non-issue.
BTW, it's AT&T.
We are now fully plugged in. I watch concerts, old TV shows, new TV shows, old movies, new movies, I could even watch live football games if I wanted to, but I don't. I watched a couple of minutes of a game a couple of weeks ago just to see if it worked. It did. And all this programming is free, though you do have the option of renting or buying some "premium" stuff.
Net neutrality was an attempt to get the brutish and "dumb, raw force" of the government involved in an industry to solve a problem that did not (yet) exist. If it ever becomes a problem, we can always do it. There was a LOT of money supporting both sides of this issue, as I'm sure Greyhound Bus did not want to see the airline industry deregulated, which brought prices to the floor (and quality to match, at least to a degree). Free markets are always the best way to go, with the exception of protecting the public from them cutting costs to the point where their product is dangerous. That was not the issue with the internet.
