Net neutrality won't make Netflix cheaper. It will ensure that Netflix can use it's size and influence to scale better and squash any potential competitors, who don't have the influence to force ISPs to colocate their cache boxes for free. They're still probably continue to raise their prices on consumers, because that's what monopolies (like Netflix) do.
Net neutrality is the creation of regulatory capture for Netflix, and probably YouTube. Which is why it is shocking these are the two companies funding every single supposedly grassroots effort to support it.
I can't think of a single metric by which Netflix can be called a monopoly.
A comparable number of number have Amazon Prime Video and Hulu while trailing isn't in a david-vs-goliath situation.
Netflix has been struggling to keep licences, let alone licence shows exclusively.
Then you have groups like HBO-go who get a huge influx of users, when their flagship show releases. But, users quickly leave when they realize they don't like anything else.
Netflix is ahead atm, because it is better (or less worse) and not because of monopolistic practices keeping themselves in front.
How well are their competitors actually doing? Hulu gave away a year of their service for 99 cents a month on Black Friday and just dropped their regular prices, Netflix just raised their prices and are trialing even higher prices as well. Most streaming service exclusives are buried under complaints about having to subscribe to something that isn't Netflix to watch them[1]. People regularly decry being expected to subscribe to 4 or 5 different services to watch the shows they want to, despite the combined total still being less than traditional cable.
Netflix also has a huge first mover advantage, and the subscriber base and cash to move quickly to squash any entrant to the market. And they have a huge technical and infrastructure advantage. They alone make up about 30-35% of all US Internet traffic, and they've got their own CDN boxes all over the globe, hosted for free by the ISPs. Don't like their US subscriber numbers account for two out of every three households or something like that?
Their back catalog agreements with traditional studios are definitely their weak point though, as the studios are increasingly realizing that they need to charge more for access to their catalogs or claw them back to start their own services. Netflix has shifted heavily to their own original content, and in time, CBS, Warner, and Disney's sizeable back catalogs are definitely going to make some strides on their own services, but they'll be following, not leading the pack.
[1]This is half the complaints about Star Trek: Discovery in a nutshell. My guess is most people have come up with reasons they didn't like the show based on their initial upset about it being on a new paid service. Discovery's excellent, btw.
The issue for Netflix with not having net neutrality is that some of Netflix’s competitors are run by some of the ISPs. If those ISPs were to decide that they wanted their customers to be forced to go with their service, and net neutrality weren’t a thing, they could block (or essentially block) Netflix.
We have other more applicable laws to that task: It's called antitrust laws. It's already illegal to use your monopoly in one market segment to progress your control in another. The reason you won't see Google or Netflix promoting that ISPs face antitrust investigations, is because they're monopolies themselves. So they're investing in laws that hurt ISPs, but protect them.
Net neutrality is a custom love letter to big tech, rather than a generally applicable law against bad practices. You'll notice exceptions are carved out to ensure Comcast is a telecom, and Google isn't, even if they both provide video services and both also run ISPs. (You could see similar when Google tried to avoid registering as a telecom when trying to deploy Fiber in Austin, so that they had less regulatory limitations than their competitors.) You'll note that Google has both last mile service in terms of Fiber and Fi, as well as major international infrastructure, like their undersea cables. They aren't shockingly different from Comcast in that regard, either.
We should be promoting antitrust, where big tech and ISPs face similar penalties for their behaviors. And yes, Google and Netflix are both monopolies under any reasonable definition of the term. Yes, ISPs are in some areas, regional monopolies, but Google and Netflix are global ones, and they're a far bigger threat.
The problem with antitrust is that the law is extremely vague, there is no administrative rule-making process for it and Congress rarely touches it. It's possible to argue that it applies in this case, but actually applying it would involve a decade-long court proceeding, meanwhile everyone is open to getting pillaged by their ISPs.
> You'll notice exceptions are carved out to ensure Comcast is a telecom, and Google isn't, even if they both provide video services and both also run ISPs.
The telecom is the thing that owns the physical last mile network. YouTube isn't a telecom, Comcast is. Google Fiber is too, and if they claim they're not they should lose.
100% agree that promoting antitrust legislation has the potential to improve our current economic trajectory. Both regional and global monopolies are a threat.
Google and Netflix aren't monopolies. And neither are any of the ISPs.
You could definitely consider some of the ISPs a monopoly in certain regions but that doesn't apply in this case. Either way your antitrust argument makes absolutely no sense.
Many are, in areas where there is only one ISP with high bandwidth. That's exactly why net neutrality is critical. Monopolies among ISPs combined with data caps allow them to harm all Internet services that compete with other business they own (such as video and etc.).
The vast majority of Americans have but one choice for wired high speed Internet. Cable cos like to pretend that they compete with DSL, which is a lie.
Net neutrality stopped ISPs from tolling traffic from sources like Netflix and its CDN partners, thus making Netflix cheaper. These costs were then spread among all cable customers, regardless of whether or not they were Netflix customers. For the record, this is not nearly as significant an issue today as it was 5 years ago.
It's regulatory capture for the carriers, definitely not for content providers.
Whatever profit Netflix makes, it will be eaten up by the carrier oligarchy.
Moreover, with value chain consolidation like AT&T owning Hulu and things like that, we'll see carriers preferring some sites over others. Creating serious market inefficiencies.
Will you be happy when Netflix in your county is slow because they don't pay the extra tax, but crappy Hulu is cheap because it's being subsidized by their parent company?
Almost all roads are public roads.
Most electricity transmission lines are now owned by a highly regulated entity, separate from production.
For the same reason we have NN.
Edit: FYI Netflix and Reed Hastings are ardent supporters of Net Neutrality, which is evidence of 'what's good for their business'
Net neutrality is the creation of regulatory capture for Netflix, and probably YouTube. Which is why it is shocking these are the two companies funding every single supposedly grassroots effort to support it.