> So I dunno. I see some arguments in favor of having the providers of networks be strictly neutral when it comes to content.
What's the network, though?
Consider a cable company, such as Comcast. The physical cable that they own that runs from their nearest facility to your home can carry an analog waveform that can contain frequency components up to something like 2.something GHz.
The cable company divides that 2+ GHz into several hundred 6 MHz "channels". The channels are logically independent.
In the Before time, in the long long ago, those channels were used for analog television signals. One analog TV channel would fit in one cable channel.
Nowadays, the cable channels are used for digital data streams. The stream on a given cable channel often consists of multiple data streams multiplexed together. For example, a digital standard definition TV signal with good compression takes much less than 6 MHz bandwidth, so a cable company can put several such TV channels in one cable channel [1].
In addition to using these digital data streams over physical cable channels for TV channels, the cable company uses them for other services. Internet is one such service. Others could include telephone service and security alarm monitoring.
Let's take telephone service. There are at least three ways the cable provider could do this.
1. Run it directly on top of one of their digital data streams in one of their cable channels, using some reasonable protocol for telephone control and voice data.
2. Run an IP network over one or more of their digital data streams, completely separate from the IP network that is used for the home internet service that they provide for you. Use any common VOIP protocol on top of that.
3. Run a common VOIP protocol over the same IP network that is used to provide your home internet service.
Which of these would be subject to net neutrality? #1 and #2 do not involve the Internet, so it is hard to see how net neutrality would be applicable. #3 does use internet service (although if it is the cable company providing the telephone service, the packets probably never actually leave the cable company's network), so one might make a case for net neutrality there.
Both #1 and #2 do make it harder for a third-party internet VOIP provider to compete, because using a third-party VOIP provider will use some of your internet bandwidth, whereas #1 and #2 do not touch your internet bandwidth.
[1] This is why when some TV channels go out on a cable TV service, there is often no evident pattern to which are down and which are not. The mapping from user-visible TV channel numbers to actual channels on the cable can be arbitrary.
What's the network, though?
Consider a cable company, such as Comcast. The physical cable that they own that runs from their nearest facility to your home can carry an analog waveform that can contain frequency components up to something like 2.something GHz.
The cable company divides that 2+ GHz into several hundred 6 MHz "channels". The channels are logically independent.
In the Before time, in the long long ago, those channels were used for analog television signals. One analog TV channel would fit in one cable channel.
Nowadays, the cable channels are used for digital data streams. The stream on a given cable channel often consists of multiple data streams multiplexed together. For example, a digital standard definition TV signal with good compression takes much less than 6 MHz bandwidth, so a cable company can put several such TV channels in one cable channel [1].
In addition to using these digital data streams over physical cable channels for TV channels, the cable company uses them for other services. Internet is one such service. Others could include telephone service and security alarm monitoring.
Let's take telephone service. There are at least three ways the cable provider could do this.
1. Run it directly on top of one of their digital data streams in one of their cable channels, using some reasonable protocol for telephone control and voice data.
2. Run an IP network over one or more of their digital data streams, completely separate from the IP network that is used for the home internet service that they provide for you. Use any common VOIP protocol on top of that.
3. Run a common VOIP protocol over the same IP network that is used to provide your home internet service.
Which of these would be subject to net neutrality? #1 and #2 do not involve the Internet, so it is hard to see how net neutrality would be applicable. #3 does use internet service (although if it is the cable company providing the telephone service, the packets probably never actually leave the cable company's network), so one might make a case for net neutrality there.
Both #1 and #2 do make it harder for a third-party internet VOIP provider to compete, because using a third-party VOIP provider will use some of your internet bandwidth, whereas #1 and #2 do not touch your internet bandwidth.
[1] This is why when some TV channels go out on a cable TV service, there is often no evident pattern to which are down and which are not. The mapping from user-visible TV channel numbers to actual channels on the cable can be arbitrary.