The Concerns Surrounding Net Neutrality and Its Impact on Video Streaming Services

Neutrality is about prioritizing one type of content over another, and with the recent deal between Netflix and ISPs, it's clear that this concept is becoming increasingly complex. The issue at hand is whether neutrality will be maintained or allowed to unravel, leading to a more uneven playing field for video streaming services.

The Deal Between Netflix and ISPs

Netflix has agreed to pay ISPs (Internet Service Providers) for the right to prioritize its content over other streaming services. This deal is seen as a compromise between Netflix's desire to maintain control over its delivery and the ISPs' need for revenue. However, some experts are concerned that this arrangement will lead to unequal treatment of different streaming services.

The Concerns Surrounding Neutrality

One of the primary concerns surrounding neutrality is that it prioritizes one type of content over another. This can be problematic if smaller companies struggle to compete with larger players like Netflix. The fear is that innovation may be curtailed as smaller companies are unable to afford the increased costs associated with maintaining neutrality.

The Impact on Smaller Companies

The deal between Netflix and ISPs has significant implications for smaller companies. If they need to pay for their content to be prioritized, it can lead to higher costs and decreased competition. This could ultimately harm consumers by limiting the options available to them.

Amazon's Strategy: A Similar Approach

Amazon has a similar strategy in place, where it uses fulfillment centers to ensure fast delivery of goods. When you order something from Amazon, it often reaches you within 24-48 hours because it's located near your location. This approach is seen as a model for video streaming services.

The Potential for Tiered Services

With neutrality unraveling, there is potential for tiered services to emerge. This means that customers would pay more for faster speeds or better quality content. While some argue that this could lead to improved customer service, others see it as a way to limit access to certain types of content based on income.

The Potential for Increased Costs

As content costs continue to rise, streaming services will need to absorb these increased costs. This may translate into higher prices for consumers, which is a concern for many people. With Netflix's $8 monthly fee being a prime example, it's unclear whether customers would be willing to pay more.

Verizon and the Future of Net Neutrality

Verizon has already been involved in negotiations with ISPs, and some speculate that they may be working on their own deals to ensure neutrality. This raises concerns about the potential for tiered services and unequal treatment of different streaming services.

The Uncertainty Surrounds Net Neutrality

As the situation around net neutrality continues to evolve, it's clear that there is uncertainty surrounding its future. With Netflix paying ISPs to prioritize its content, some argue that this will lead to a more uneven playing field for video streaming services. Others see potential benefits in this arrangement, but these are largely outweighed by concerns about unequal treatment and the impact on smaller companies.

Will Streaming Services Adopt Tiered Services?

The possibility of tiered services is already being explored by some streaming services. With Netflix's $8 monthly fee being a benchmark, it's unclear whether customers would be willing to pay more for faster speeds or better quality content. As the market continues to evolve, it's likely that we will see a range of options available to consumers.

The Future of Streaming Services

Ultimately, the future of streaming services hangs in the balance as net neutrality unravels. With unequal treatment and potential tiered services on the horizon, it's clear that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. As consumers, it's essential to understand the implications of this shift and how it may impact our options for video streaming.

The Role of Consumer Choice

As consumers, we have a significant role to play in shaping the future of streaming services. With multiple options available, we can choose to support companies that prioritize neutrality and provide affordable, high-quality content. By making informed choices, we can help drive innovation and ensure that smaller companies are able to compete with larger players.

Reaching Out to Your Questions

The future of net neutrality is uncertain, but one thing is clear: it's essential for consumers to stay informed about this issue. Whether you're a Netflix subscriber or an Amazon Prime user, there are concerns surrounding the impact on smaller companies and potential tiered services. Reach out to us with your questions, suggestions, and feedback. We'll be here to provide you with updates and insights as this situation continues to unfold.

Following Us

For more articles and videos on technology and consumerism, follow us on iTunes, YouTube, and ConsumerReports.org. Our team of experts will continue to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on the latest developments in the tech world. Join our community today and stay ahead of the curve!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everybody Welcome to talking Tech from Consumer Reports today we're going to be talking about the Comcast Time Warner Cable merger and Netflix what happens when Netflix starts making deals with the cable company that delivers you your internet hi I'm glender uh don't forget to subscribe to us on iTunes or YouTube where you can see all the episodes of Talking Tech or obviously come to consumerreports.org where you can see all of our video content and uh reach out to us on Facebook Twitter we want to hear your questions and uh suggest things for us to discuss maybe we'll uh talk about you in the meantime let's talk about Comcast and Time Warner let's start with them uh I'm here with Jim Wilcox uh he is our television's expert and uh actually your television's audio you're you're one of our one of our experts Renaissance experts I guess right yeah uh but here we're talking about cable the the the company that's that's that's delivering the content that ends up on your TV on your computer Etc um why don't you walk us through the through what this merger means who what are these what are these two companies why are they merging yeah you know I mean I think that there's just a lot of pressure right now for companies to continue to get bigger um in its environment regulatorily where it seems like that's an okay thing um there's the expectation that this merge will probably go through but I think you know it it's not operating in a vacuum right now so you have a lot of different things that are causing consumer concern so you have you know the net neutrality rule which we'll talk about a little bit later happening you have Netflix deciding to pay Comcast for better access to its servers and so I think a lot of people just find that this environment right now is a little bit anti-c consumer yeah that's that that it certainly does seem that way in fact it's worth noting we have an advocacy Wing Consumer Reports uh uh has an advocacy Wing that has totally come out against this Comcast Time Warner merger they think it's really uh it's really poses a a danger well not a danger but a threat to Consumers and is going to end up with everything from higher prices to less competition um and I don't know do we how do you feel about that what's the what do you think how do you think it's going to pan out for consumers I think that the fear is that as companies get bigger they just wield so much power in negotiating um you know one of the unusual things about Comcast is that you know they're you know they're a provide a TV service provider but they also own NBC Universal so they're also a Content um a cont provider and so there's in fact they they had to sign an agreement with the FCC when they made that merger right right so you know should keep them from you know from doing some of the some of the net from violating some of the basic net neutrality principles right um and in fact you know God there's so much to unpack here right there's there was before this there was the Verizon FCC ruling and not to get too wonky about it but essentially it sort of defanged the FCC in their ability to police the delivery of the internet so and these compan is they they deliver internet television telephone and all those things are sort of stepping on one another now aren't they and I think that you know was one of the problems is that initially these were looked at as TV service providers and in fact they're also the Broadband providers now so I think what happens you know with this merger you're going to have one company that's serving about 30% of all of the uh TV PID TV customers in the country so that gives them a lot of power in terms of when they're negotiating now we all seen you know in in the deals that they're negotiating with content providers it gives them a lot of Leverage and so one thing is you would think that well maybe that'll mean that you know their rates could be cheaper for their customers but one thing to think about is 70% of the people are not Comcast Time Warner and they think that you know the fear is that um the cost for those guys who don't have that same negotiating power is that 70% of the customers may be paying more just as a result of you know time water Comcast coming together yeah so let's talk for a second about those deals right so there you know a lot of people have been seeing their cable bills rise and rise and rise and the cable companies have been saying listen we have to pay more for the content we have to you know ESPN wants a lot of money they want P they want subscriber fees of I think it's like that $5 $5 a subscriber now whether or not you like sports and they say hey we're just passing the the the cost on to you and what I understand is is uh the position of the big cable companies is hey we get bigger we have more negotiating power more leverage we can negotiate a better deal price gets delivered to you but as you say what if you're not the customer of the biggest company in the world and you know two things one you wonder you know with this merger is it going to cause the other cable companies to say we better start merging and in fact you have increased consolidation you know the other thing I worry about is you know cable companies do miserably in our in our customer service um surveys every year and so now you got to merge two completely separate databases into one you know so if you're a Time Warner customer if you get merged into the Comcast database we wonder is is the customer service level going to get worse as the company gets bigger yeah in other words do they do they then look for efficiencies and then do those efficiencies go hit the consumer when they need to call up because their cable's out right so you know instead of you know be there from 8 till 4: it's you know from 8 until 8 or something late at night yeah um so what about their argument that they don't compete in any markets right so one of the and and and from from our research they they really don't and in fact they're even divesting themselves of a bunch of um a bunch of their a bunch of subscribers a bunch of consumers although it's going to be interesting where do those where do those where are those people going to get tossed to but they're saying hey you know it's not as if we reduced the level of choice for any one individual so so let's let's look at that are they right I mean are they is it that hey if you were a Time Warner you never had a choice between Time Warner and and uh Comcast before so why does it matter yeah I mean I think I think they're right in that regard but I think that they're ignoring some of the big issues that we've been talking about is that you know you're creating a bigger entity and bigger entities have more negotiating power in different ways um so you know cable has really never really competed very strongly with each other in those markets so I don't see that changing but um I do see the competitive landscape changing um in terms of being able to negotiate better deals some of the other things that we were talk that we will talk about that have happened um allowing them to favor their own content over other you know other competitive content and things like that and just you know the the the the potential ability to stifle Innovation by smaller companies that can compete on the same level yeah I was going to get into that what about the um what about their investment in technology and infrastructure right like as you get bigger presumably you have more more resources to throw at that but maybe you don't have as much incentive to do so anymore right because you've sort of reduced the overall competitive landscape if nobody else is upping their Broadband to 100 megabits per second why bother right if you're the only if there's only three or four players in town maybe nobody's really pushing each other you know there's two ways to look at it too cuz you know where I'm from in some ways is like well maybe this provides a little bit more inste when when you get that big and you have that many customers you know Comcast has rolled out a pretty for a cable company a pretty Innovative you know X1 uh system it's it's a whole home system it's their set toop box more advanced in Time Warner so if you're a Time Warner customer you may be like oh maybe I'm going to get some better Hardware finally get rid of that Scientific Atlanta box and the other thing is I'm curious as to whether or not you know um Cable's rolled out this thing called Doc's 3.0 it's given them about 300 second unpack the jargon so just your your internet speed most people are probably getting I maybe 15 you know megabits per second so this new system that they have um enables them to up the bandwidth yeah and have a just a higher ceiling right and so the higher ceiling is around 300 but when you look at what Google's doing oh Google Fiber Google Fiber is you know the capacity is is multiples of that and I'm wondering whether cable companies are looking at that and wondering if they need to be competitive with what Google's doing and certainly the size increase you know the size increase of a company will give them both the wherewithal and the incentive to look at the next competitor because I don't think really you know cable doesn't have that much competition unless you're willing to go to one of the Telos or to a satellite service so what about the content providers when a lot of people say streaming video what they really mean is Netflix and there's been some news around them recently we alluded to before tell tell us what the structure of that is yeah I mean basically what happened was um you know the way that Netflix operates you know there's a whole backend to their business and a lot of times what they do is you know they have handoffs to these third third parties who carry their they store and carry their content to the over the backbone yeah it's invisible to Consumers but what happens sometimes um is that you know there's congestion on on these third party Distributors and so the deal that um Netflix just announced was that they are actually now going to pay Comcast pretty much if you think of it as like um like an an exit ramp to a highway they're getting their own exit ramp so that they're going to be able to bypass these third party people where you know congestion supposedly occurs and that means that they pay upfront to guarantee like a quality of service essentially to the to the end user right so that's the good thing is if you're a Netflix customer in comast Market you know you're supposed to get better quality of service so it means you get a higher quality video it doesn't pixelate doesn't lag there's not as much buffering on all that you know the fear though is that um you know that these sorts of deals are great for companies that have the financial wherewithal to pay and this is a new thing that's happening where you're now paying for that access so does that does does that unpack net neutrality I mean I think a lot of people are wondering like is that and and and to I guess to explain to anybody who think who has this who doesn't understand this vague concept net neutrality it's essentially do isps do internet service providers get to discriminate between content charge more for it slow some things down or do they or must they treat all internet content equally so how does this fact into that is this net neutrality or not it's more complicated than yes or no unfortunately because what's happening is they're saying we're just providing a direct access we are not changing the prioritization and that's what really net neutrality is about is prioritizing one cont over a type of content over another and so you know I'm sure legal minds are going to be looking at this people far smarter than me but I think that that's sort of the sticking point is that you know hey we're not prioritizing content we're just giving you your own little pathway so that you don't have to to deal with some of the other congestion it's interesting it's kind of like the Amazon strategy of of like actually getting you real stuff right in other words Amazon puts little fulfillment centers all around the country and then if you order something from Amazon and it just happens to be at the Fulfillment center near you Tada it's there it's there within a day or two days and and it was easy for them uh so it's kind of what they're doing with video is that right and some of these deals have happened before but I don't I think that the fact that they're paying now because there's always been that sort of hand sh agreement where you know we'll let your stuff go through our pipes and you know just and vice versa but here and I think that again the concern is that it's going to um it's going to make the playing field unlevel for smaller companies so if you're you Pops video streaming you're and so you know when that happens there's a fear that Innovation is going to be curtailed as well because you know if you have to start paying this extra cost you're already you know Netflix is already paying an Ever escalating content cost and now you're at on you know Broadband cost to the service makes it harder for new new you know for for new companies to come in and to compete yeah so Netflix has the capital to do this stuff they're investing in content they're throwing money around like crazy right now at what point does this start hitting the consumer in the pocketbook I mean we're all used to this $8 a month streaming fee does this eventually find its way into a more expensive service you know I think it's going to be hard to figure out you know what if if costs go up what they're due to because one we do have escalating content costs we know that programming gets more expensive every year and so it's going to be hard you know to figure out whether this incremental cost and that's what Netflix called it Netflix wasn't complaining about this you know they had this other initiative where they were trying to convince companies to do this voluntarily that didn't work out so now they're paying they said it's an incremental cost to them but you know they can absorb that now but what happens when they have to start making deals with every cable company out there and at a certain point does it translate to higher costs of uh of delivery and then isn't that what we were worried about with net neutrality in the first place right and you know so you know part of it's a market question what what are people willing to pay so they're willing to pay $8 a month right now would they be willing to pay $10 a month you know Amazon is going to go through the same thing you know content costs are saying you know they're talking about you know maybe a $20 bump in their Amazon Prime fee where you get the free videos for you know two-day shipping so I think that all of these providers are dealing with that especially subscription Services you see a potential for tiered services like if you wanted at this speed you get the I mean I guess all that's on the table right and that's the other fear is that you know there are going to be tiered service ISM based on your ability to pay I mean it exists to a certain degree now but they think that that's going to be exacerbated where you know pors get worse service people who have more money to spend on are they going to get better service yeah yeah well so and then therein lies the ultimate potential problem with uh with net neutrality unraveling well obviously this is going to continue and we we already know that there are potentially other deals on the table for Netflix there's been uh what is it Verizon has uh Verizon in fact the very company they seemed to be arguing with a couple of month a couple of week ago uh with you know you know strangling their bandwidth seems like they're negotiating with them too uh this is going to develop so uh we'll be following it uh and we hope you're there so please join us the next time on talking Tech please follow us on iTunes and on YouTube and of course on consumerreports.org we have lots more videos for you to look at uh and we also want to hear your questions please reach out to us on Twitter reach out to us on Facebook send us your questions send us your suggestions for topics maybe the next time you see us we'll be talking about youhello everybody Welcome to talking Tech from Consumer Reports today we're going to be talking about the Comcast Time Warner Cable merger and Netflix what happens when Netflix starts making deals with the cable company that delivers you your internet hi I'm glender uh don't forget to subscribe to us on iTunes or YouTube where you can see all the episodes of Talking Tech or obviously come to consumerreports.org where you can see all of our video content and uh reach out to us on Facebook Twitter we want to hear your questions and uh suggest things for us to discuss maybe we'll uh talk about you in the meantime let's talk about Comcast and Time Warner let's start with them uh I'm here with Jim Wilcox uh he is our television's expert and uh actually your television's audio you're you're one of our one of our experts Renaissance experts I guess right yeah uh but here we're talking about cable the the the company that's that's that's delivering the content that ends up on your TV on your computer Etc um why don't you walk us through the through what this merger means who what are these what are these two companies why are they merging yeah you know I mean I think that there's just a lot of pressure right now for companies to continue to get bigger um in its environment regulatorily where it seems like that's an okay thing um there's the expectation that this merge will probably go through but I think you know it it's not operating in a vacuum right now so you have a lot of different things that are causing consumer concern so you have you know the net neutrality rule which we'll talk about a little bit later happening you have Netflix deciding to pay Comcast for better access to its servers and so I think a lot of people just find that this environment right now is a little bit anti-c consumer yeah that's that that it certainly does seem that way in fact it's worth noting we have an advocacy Wing Consumer Reports uh uh has an advocacy Wing that has totally come out against this Comcast Time Warner merger they think it's really uh it's really poses a a danger well not a danger but a threat to Consumers and is going to end up with everything from higher prices to less competition um and I don't know do we how do you feel about that what's the what do you think how do you think it's going to pan out for consumers I think that the fear is that as companies get bigger they just wield so much power in negotiating um you know one of the unusual things about Comcast is that you know they're you know they're a provide a TV service provider but they also own NBC Universal so they're also a Content um a cont provider and so there's in fact they they had to sign an agreement with the FCC when they made that merger right right so you know should keep them from you know from doing some of the some of the net from violating some of the basic net neutrality principles right um and in fact you know God there's so much to unpack here right there's there was before this there was the Verizon FCC ruling and not to get too wonky about it but essentially it sort of defanged the FCC in their ability to police the delivery of the internet so and these compan is they they deliver internet television telephone and all those things are sort of stepping on one another now aren't they and I think that you know was one of the problems is that initially these were looked at as TV service providers and in fact they're also the Broadband providers now so I think what happens you know with this merger you're going to have one company that's serving about 30% of all of the uh TV PID TV customers in the country so that gives them a lot of power in terms of when they're negotiating now we all seen you know in in the deals that they're negotiating with content providers it gives them a lot of Leverage and so one thing is you would think that well maybe that'll mean that you know their rates could be cheaper for their customers but one thing to think about is 70% of the people are not Comcast Time Warner and they think that you know the fear is that um the cost for those guys who don't have that same negotiating power is that 70% of the customers may be paying more just as a result of you know time water Comcast coming together yeah so let's talk for a second about those deals right so there you know a lot of people have been seeing their cable bills rise and rise and rise and the cable companies have been saying listen we have to pay more for the content we have to you know ESPN wants a lot of money they want P they want subscriber fees of I think it's like that $5 $5 a subscriber now whether or not you like sports and they say hey we're just passing the the the cost on to you and what I understand is is uh the position of the big cable companies is hey we get bigger we have more negotiating power more leverage we can negotiate a better deal price gets delivered to you but as you say what if you're not the customer of the biggest company in the world and you know two things one you wonder you know with this merger is it going to cause the other cable companies to say we better start merging and in fact you have increased consolidation you know the other thing I worry about is you know cable companies do miserably in our in our customer service um surveys every year and so now you got to merge two completely separate databases into one you know so if you're a Time Warner customer if you get merged into the Comcast database we wonder is is the customer service level going to get worse as the company gets bigger yeah in other words do they do they then look for efficiencies and then do those efficiencies go hit the consumer when they need to call up because their cable's out right so you know instead of you know be there from 8 till 4: it's you know from 8 until 8 or something late at night yeah um so what about their argument that they don't compete in any markets right so one of the and and and from from our research they they really don't and in fact they're even divesting themselves of a bunch of um a bunch of their a bunch of subscribers a bunch of consumers although it's going to be interesting where do those where do those where are those people going to get tossed to but they're saying hey you know it's not as if we reduced the level of choice for any one individual so so let's let's look at that are they right I mean are they is it that hey if you were a Time Warner you never had a choice between Time Warner and and uh Comcast before so why does it matter yeah I mean I think I think they're right in that regard but I think that they're ignoring some of the big issues that we've been talking about is that you know you're creating a bigger entity and bigger entities have more negotiating power in different ways um so you know cable has really never really competed very strongly with each other in those markets so I don't see that changing but um I do see the competitive landscape changing um in terms of being able to negotiate better deals some of the other things that we were talk that we will talk about that have happened um allowing them to favor their own content over other you know other competitive content and things like that and just you know the the the the potential ability to stifle Innovation by smaller companies that can compete on the same level yeah I was going to get into that what about the um what about their investment in technology and infrastructure right like as you get bigger presumably you have more more resources to throw at that but maybe you don't have as much incentive to do so anymore right because you've sort of reduced the overall competitive landscape if nobody else is upping their Broadband to 100 megabits per second why bother right if you're the only if there's only three or four players in town maybe nobody's really pushing each other you know there's two ways to look at it too cuz you know where I'm from in some ways is like well maybe this provides a little bit more inste when when you get that big and you have that many customers you know Comcast has rolled out a pretty for a cable company a pretty Innovative you know X1 uh system it's it's a whole home system it's their set toop box more advanced in Time Warner so if you're a Time Warner customer you may be like oh maybe I'm going to get some better Hardware finally get rid of that Scientific Atlanta box and the other thing is I'm curious as to whether or not you know um Cable's rolled out this thing called Doc's 3.0 it's given them about 300 second unpack the jargon so just your your internet speed most people are probably getting I maybe 15 you know megabits per second so this new system that they have um enables them to up the bandwidth yeah and have a just a higher ceiling right and so the higher ceiling is around 300 but when you look at what Google's doing oh Google Fiber Google Fiber is you know the capacity is is multiples of that and I'm wondering whether cable companies are looking at that and wondering if they need to be competitive with what Google's doing and certainly the size increase you know the size increase of a company will give them both the wherewithal and the incentive to look at the next competitor because I don't think really you know cable doesn't have that much competition unless you're willing to go to one of the Telos or to a satellite service so what about the content providers when a lot of people say streaming video what they really mean is Netflix and there's been some news around them recently we alluded to before tell tell us what the structure of that is yeah I mean basically what happened was um you know the way that Netflix operates you know there's a whole backend to their business and a lot of times what they do is you know they have handoffs to these third third parties who carry their they store and carry their content to the over the backbone yeah it's invisible to Consumers but what happens sometimes um is that you know there's congestion on on these third party Distributors and so the deal that um Netflix just announced was that they are actually now going to pay Comcast pretty much if you think of it as like um like an an exit ramp to a highway they're getting their own exit ramp so that they're going to be able to bypass these third party people where you know congestion supposedly occurs and that means that they pay upfront to guarantee like a quality of service essentially to the to the end user right so that's the good thing is if you're a Netflix customer in comast Market you know you're supposed to get better quality of service so it means you get a higher quality video it doesn't pixelate doesn't lag there's not as much buffering on all that you know the fear though is that um you know that these sorts of deals are great for companies that have the financial wherewithal to pay and this is a new thing that's happening where you're now paying for that access so does that does does that unpack net neutrality I mean I think a lot of people are wondering like is that and and and to I guess to explain to anybody who think who has this who doesn't understand this vague concept net neutrality it's essentially do isps do internet service providers get to discriminate between content charge more for it slow some things down or do they or must they treat all internet content equally so how does this fact into that is this net neutrality or not it's more complicated than yes or no unfortunately because what's happening is they're saying we're just providing a direct access we are not changing the prioritization and that's what really net neutrality is about is prioritizing one cont over a type of content over another and so you know I'm sure legal minds are going to be looking at this people far smarter than me but I think that that's sort of the sticking point is that you know hey we're not prioritizing content we're just giving you your own little pathway so that you don't have to to deal with some of the other congestion it's interesting it's kind of like the Amazon strategy of of like actually getting you real stuff right in other words Amazon puts little fulfillment centers all around the country and then if you order something from Amazon and it just happens to be at the Fulfillment center near you Tada it's there it's there within a day or two days and and it was easy for them uh so it's kind of what they're doing with video is that right and some of these deals have happened before but I don't I think that the fact that they're paying now because there's always been that sort of hand sh agreement where you know we'll let your stuff go through our pipes and you know just and vice versa but here and I think that again the concern is that it's going to um it's going to make the playing field unlevel for smaller companies so if you're you Pops video streaming you're and so you know when that happens there's a fear that Innovation is going to be curtailed as well because you know if you have to start paying this extra cost you're already you know Netflix is already paying an Ever escalating content cost and now you're at on you know Broadband cost to the service makes it harder for new new you know for for new companies to come in and to compete yeah so Netflix has the capital to do this stuff they're investing in content they're throwing money around like crazy right now at what point does this start hitting the consumer in the pocketbook I mean we're all used to this $8 a month streaming fee does this eventually find its way into a more expensive service you know I think it's going to be hard to figure out you know what if if costs go up what they're due to because one we do have escalating content costs we know that programming gets more expensive every year and so it's going to be hard you know to figure out whether this incremental cost and that's what Netflix called it Netflix wasn't complaining about this you know they had this other initiative where they were trying to convince companies to do this voluntarily that didn't work out so now they're paying they said it's an incremental cost to them but you know they can absorb that now but what happens when they have to start making deals with every cable company out there and at a certain point does it translate to higher costs of uh of delivery and then isn't that what we were worried about with net neutrality in the first place right and you know so you know part of it's a market question what what are people willing to pay so they're willing to pay $8 a month right now would they be willing to pay $10 a month you know Amazon is going to go through the same thing you know content costs are saying you know they're talking about you know maybe a $20 bump in their Amazon Prime fee where you get the free videos for you know two-day shipping so I think that all of these providers are dealing with that especially subscription Services you see a potential for tiered services like if you wanted at this speed you get the I mean I guess all that's on the table right and that's the other fear is that you know there are going to be tiered service ISM based on your ability to pay I mean it exists to a certain degree now but they think that that's going to be exacerbated where you know pors get worse service people who have more money to spend on are they going to get better service yeah yeah well so and then therein lies the ultimate potential problem with uh with net neutrality unraveling well obviously this is going to continue and we we already know that there are potentially other deals on the table for Netflix there's been uh what is it Verizon has uh Verizon in fact the very company they seemed to be arguing with a couple of month a couple of week ago uh with you know you know strangling their bandwidth seems like they're negotiating with them too uh this is going to develop so uh we'll be following it uh and we hope you're there so please join us the next time on talking Tech please follow us on iTunes and on YouTube and of course on consumerreports.org we have lots more videos for you to look at uh and we also want to hear your questions please reach out to us on Twitter reach out to us on Facebook send us your questions send us your suggestions for topics maybe the next time you see us we'll be talking about you\n"