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These are orthogonal issues. Net neutrality is important regardless of isp options. Not only on principle either, not everywhere will naturally have competition.


I am a big supporter of municipal fiber/broadband as a means to provide enough market competition such that net neutrality regulation is no longer needed.

You bring up a great point though, even if 100 of the biggest cities have municipal internet infrastructure, there are still lots of areas that wouldn't be covered and could benefit from basic NN regulation.

I don't necessarily think the issues are orthogonal, but I do think basic "don't be a dick" ISP regulations should be in place.


These are orthogonal issues

They're not. If NN is a user sought feature, true competition will bring it.

E.g. a few years ago cell phone plans sucked in the US. TMobile started some real competition. The other big ones had to follow. Unlimited data plans, demanded ages ago, have been recently introduced.


> not everywhere will naturally have competition.

Many rural areas have only one grocery store.


And this is universally agreed to be a bad situation.[1] Do not play word games.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happene...


I didn't say it wasn't bad. We aren't discussing good and bad. We are discussing a specific situation that requires govt intervention.

I am implying this is a equivalent situation where govt didn't create rules for grocery stores to call all brands of goods equally.

Also, that is not what a word game is.


False dichotomies and appeal to the middle are absolutely types of word games. I am sick and tired of "moderate"-sounding weasley arguments that excuse corporatocracy and cronyism as "free competition".

There's only one grocery store in many towns, because the moment another chain opens, the dominant one lowers prices to below what the market can bear. The dominant chain takes temporary losses to drive competition out of business, then raises prices sky-high and returns to business as usual. This exact behavior occurs in many broadband markets.




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