Final Rose Cafe and Net Neutrality

Last week for the final Rose Cafe we welcomed Jeff Prince who is the Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Indiana University to talk about the recent shift from cable to streaming services such as hulu, netflix, youtube, etc. One of the most interesting part of the talks was when we shifted to start talking about net neutrality and its implication for streaming services. I understood Prince’s description of net neutrality as meaning that internet service providers are forced to charge people on the suppliers side evenly for using their internet services. For example, Netflix doesn’t have to pay more than other people despite the fact that they are using so much data to stream video. However, Prince pointed out that we do not have net neutrality on the demand side, since customers have to pay different prices in order to get faster internet. Prince stated that he can see both the merits and detriments of net neutrality, especially so since he has made personal contact with Ajit Pai, the current chairman of the FCC who has vowed to get rid of net neutrality. I personally think that getting rid of net neutrality is really dumb, as I believe it would stifle start-up growth.

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