DSEngere Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 We, as ancaps (aka economically literate people) know, the price of technology tends to go DOWN over time. I realize we are far beyond DSL and all that shit, but it seemed like 5 years ago, the price of internet was a lot cheaper. Why has the price of internet been increasing over the last 5 years? That's my subjective experience, at least. The media is full of all sorts of anti free-market conspiracies about how companies are out to screw us. I of course know that it must be rooted in the regulatory capture, lobbying, general bullshit relationship that many ISPs have with the government, the FCC, etc, however I don't know any of the details. Is anyone savvy on this subject? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iHuman Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 Simple Explanation. the Major ISP's (Cable/phone Companies) are creating a veritable Monopoly and increasing the prices, and it will continue as long as people continue allow it to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shirgall Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 The mechanism that is creating the monopolies is government regulation, esp. their intention to make it a utility. The next step is metering so that more you use the net, the more it costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iHuman Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 they are already doing the metering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan C. Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 There is only one provider in most municipalities. Even if somebody had the capital to build new infrastructure, getting through regulatory barriers would be impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepin Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 People are paying for a lot more speed. It doesn't really make sense for companies to really sell lower speed internet, so they just sell everyone high speed. The technology isn't quite keeping up with the bandwidth usage. This is a big reason for data caps. Another reason for data caps is that many ISPs can't fulfil their advertised speed without them. With a cap, they can almost guarantee the advertised speed because it reduces the number of people using the network at full capacity. Another big factor is that demand curve for internet is pretty steep. Having fast internet isn't really a choice in most people's mind, so ISPs are able to charge more. To put it this way, they lower the price, a few people probably join, they raise the price, nobody leaves. There are also a lot of issues with monopolies and laws against competition. Some of it gets pretty confusing because a town or city without high speed internet will strike a deal with an ISP pretty much saying that they will get a monopoly over the area if they bring high speed internet to the area. In most of these cases, I think the price of internet could be argued to be lower than it ought to be, because without the deal there would be no internet there at all. Governments in general are really pushing super high speed internet for some reason. I think a lot of the increasing costs is just the result of governments pushing ISPs to go faster despite the demand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J-William Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 There is only one provider in most municipalities. Even if somebody had the capital to build new infrastructure, getting through regulatory barriers would be impossible. This is the answer here! Why is it that most of San Francisco has one cable provider? It's the same reason they're driving out airbnb and the car sharing apps. Cuz the local government. They make regulations that favor big real estate owner, taxi companies and telecoms... And then pretend to be looking out for the poor and disadvantaged. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laforge Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 Quite a worrisome development. Worst case the state may try to reshape the internet landscape completely:free: news, government websites, banks, email.10 $/month: wikipedia, skype, licensed webshops20 $/month: google, websites allowed by google, limited youtube, spotify50 $/month: youtube, most websites but not: torrents, tor, vpn, bitcoin clients, fdrurl.com150 $/month: full tcp/ip support + free listing as potential terrorist at your local police station. so don't be surprised if a drone is frequently hovering at your window or cops looking to fine you for jaywalking.Everything ofcourse heavily data limited with penalties "to cover copyright infringement"Maybe some internet-prepping could be wise so download:- kiwix =offline wikipedia, about 50 gb- gutenberg =offline book collection, about 45 gb (i didnt check it out yet but sounded useful)- keep loads of movies and music on encrypted external hdds.- don't forget tons of hard core porn and FDR media (but i repeat myself) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WasatchMan Posted April 12, 2015 Share Posted April 12, 2015 Internet killed cables monopoly as the only content provider. Cable providers are also internet providers. They are attempting to re-coop lost revenue of cable substitutions by raising the cost of internet service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 I'm not sure about the last 5 years, but I do know that the number of ISPs was reduced as a result of regulation in the Clinton era. Watch The truth about net neutrality for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z_nBhfpmk4 That being said, recent rises in price could be a result of sharply increasing demand and infrastructure playing catch up. Netflix, youtube, and other streaming sites entered common use in the last 5 years or so. Their bandwidth requirements are absurdly high compared to text articles and video games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRobin Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 The price isn't increasing in Switzerland. Although I pay about the same (or slightly more) than 5 years ago, the speed has either doubled or tripled along with that. So I can't really complain.And don't even ask me about the times I had to use expensive dial-up modems that cost more for 10 hours at 56 kylobyte per second download rate than I pay for a whole month at 3MB/s now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweak Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 I moste We, as ancaps (aka economically literate people) know, the price of technology tends to go DOWN over time. I realize we are far beyond DSL and all that shit, but it seemed like 5 years ago, the price of internet was a lot cheaper. Why has the price of internet been increasing over the last 5 years? That's my subjective experience, at least. The media is full of all sorts of anti free-market conspiracies about how companies are out to screw us. I of course know that it must be rooted in the regulatory capture, lobbying, general bullshit relationship that many ISPs have with the government, the FCC, etc, however I don't know any of the details. Is anyone savvy on this subject? Well in my country "they" are lobbying quite hard for regulation. All this because someone might call you a fag online. The leftist media is heavily involved with this and has gained a lot of support by the trendies. They want you to have kind of a "real" internet name so that when you call someone a fag they can get prosecuted. Even now the biggest newspapers uses former trainers of terrorists (literally) to find the "dissidents" online who then break out information from peoples private accounts and gives it to the media who then go to the dissidents home with a camera crew. Their lives will be destroyed (threats, loss of jobs and so on). Theres even a popular show called "Trolljägarna" headed by a popular leftist who goes around finding these "horrible enemies." They even hold "workshops" organized by leftists who teach them how to extract information from say a post like this one to find out who I am, how old I am, to my home location so that I could be found. Mmmm socialism. I put all important informations separate drives... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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