@izzion said in Net neutrality non-neutrality:
Yeah, the top end ISP market isn't very competitive on a regional basis. Ultimately, for the 90% of standard users in the 90% of the US population that is covered by Verizon and AT&T 4G, mobile broadband Internet is at the point where its technology can compete with local ISPs (though the cost is generally not competitive yet, unless you're defraying the data cost over many cell phone lines, at which point you're going to hit the throttling cap even faster and Netflix will suck even more during peak hours). Obviously, for power users (VPNing in from home, playing real time online games, etc) even that isn't a viable option -- the jitter and packet loss spikes on a 4G hotspot would be bad enough that I would never be able to play League of Legends well while using my mobile hotspot.
Actually, if you want some more concrete numbers on "fixed broadband" (which for some reason also includes satellite), here's the latest report from the FCC released on April 21, 2017 on the Internet Access Services Reports page of the FCC's website.
According to the chart on page 6, 79% of the US has more than two fixed line providers at 10/1 Mbps speeds or faster. That drops to 13% at 25/3. And presumably, the 66%* that have 1-2 providers, those are the cable company (mainly Comcast) and the phone company (mainly AT&T/Verizon).
Mind you, Comcast and AT&T are using the courts to try to block any third player from entering the market, both businesses (such as Google Fiber) and cities who are trying to roll out their own fiber network.
*21% have no 25/3 or faster providers.