July 14th, 2017: Net Neutrality

Undertoad · 07-19-2017, 11:16 AM

Heh, of course not. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has nothing to do with net neutrality and doesn't even mention it. Some net neutrality rules were introduced in 2015.

~

Depending on where you are, you can certainly get Internet access over a private circuit. You're completely allowed, even in residential areas, to talk to someone like Hurricane Electric and purchase an interconnect to get the net to wherever you are. You need not get Comcast or FIOS.

You can get even a Gigabyte connection. It'll be a couple thousand a month, but here's the good news: you can resell it, as slightly-less-than-gigabyte internet, to as many people as you can connect. If you own an apartment building, you can wire the whole thing for this shared gigabyte and charge everyone in the building $20/month.

But if you find that difficult to do, you may want to hire a network admin to make sure the service is running. A tech support person to make sure people have a place to call for help. A billing department.... hmm this may mean more than $20/month to really price out.

It's hard. In 1996 I was running the tech end of an ISP and we connected people at 50K/min, 400 times slower than the average cable/FIOS connection, and charged people $20/month. But we went out of business, hmmm.

07-19-2017, 11:16 AM	#16
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Heh, of course not. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has nothing to do with net neutrality and doesn't even mention it. Some net neutrality rules were introduced in 2015. ~ Depending on where you are, you can certainly get Internet access over a private circuit. You're completely allowed, even in residential areas, to talk to someone like Hurricane Electric and purchase an interconnect to get the net to wherever you are. You need not get Comcast or FIOS. You can get even a Gigabyte connection. It'll be a couple thousand a month, but here's the good news: you can resell it, as slightly-less-than-gigabyte internet, to as many people as you can connect. If you own an apartment building, you can wire the whole thing for this shared gigabyte and charge everyone in the building $20/month. But if you find that difficult to do, you may want to hire a network admin to make sure the service is running. A tech support person to make sure people have a place to call for help. A billing department.... hmm this may mean more than $20/month to really price out. It's hard. In 1996 I was running the tech end of an ISP and we connected people at 50K/min, 400 times slower than the average cable/FIOS connection, and charged people $20/month. But we went out of business, hmmm.

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