Not necessarily - look at what's happened in Canada and the UK. The governments have forced the major ISPs to lease lines in order to instill competition.
I'm a Canadian, I left a major ISP for one of the smaller competing ISPs because they were offering unlimited bandwidth. Now, 2 years later that major ISP has caught on and is now offering better high end plans than the smaller competitor I was using. Looks like that might change when new plans come out with the competitor, but... point is, competition helps. At least in the case of high-bandwidth consumers.
This simple change made me go from feeling like my ISP options were terrible, to having 4+ completely acceptable ISP options in a matter of a few years.
Anecdotal, sure, but I think freeing up the lines to competitors is beneficial with or without additional net neutrality legislation. While it might not be the only solution, people having only 1 choice of ISP in any given area certainly hurts. Having an option that doesn't have motives for slowing down service to certain sites basically kills this entire issue.
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Not necessarily - look at what's happened in Canada and the UK. The governments have forced the major ISPs to lease lines in order to instill competition.
I'm a Canadian, I left a major ISP for one of the smaller competing ISPs because they were offering unlimited bandwidth. Now, 2 years later that major ISP has caught on and is now offering better high end plans than the smaller competitor I was using. Looks like that might change when new plans come out with the competitor, but... point is, competition helps. At least in the case of high-bandwidth consumers.
This simple change made me go from feeling like my ISP options were terrible, to having 4+ completely acceptable ISP options in a matter of a few years.
Anecdotal, sure, but I think freeing up the lines to competitors is beneficial with or without additional net neutrality legislation. While it might not be the only solution, people having only 1 choice of ISP in any given area certainly hurts. Having an option that doesn't have motives for slowing down service to certain sites basically kills this entire issue.