Why is that confusing? During the Title II debate many on HN thought broadband should be regulated as a utility, or at least forced to be sold only as a "dumb pipe". Utilities and dumb pipes have terrible profit margins. Businesses want to invest capital in things that have larger profit margins (today, for example, wireless).
Verizon's vision for Fios was to sell a bunch of value-add services like video calling and on-demand movies. When plain-old-internet services started providing those capabilities without having to pay Verizon directly, Fios deployments slowed to a crawl.
Interesting that Comcast is heavily pitching their home security add-on, as that's a service not yet broadly adopted over the 'net.
> Utilities and dumb pipes have terrible profit margins.
Utilities and dumb pipes also have incredible societal value. In the first world, potable water is so cheap that you can use a gallon of it to make your pee disappear, and water-borne disease is almost nonexistent. Businesses try to avoid this miracle of efficiency by putting that water in plastic bottles, trucking it around the country, marketing the hell out of it, and charging a dollar or more per liter, but I don't see any reason to encourage that behavior.
> Verizon's vision for Fios was to sell a bunch of value-add services like video calling and on-demand movies. When plain-old-internet services started providing those capabilities without having to pay Verizon directly, Fios deployments slowed to a crawl.
Let's say this succeeded and people jumped to Verizon for their internet and their media. What would happen to Amazon Video and Netflix?
Verizon might want to ensure that their products work better than NetFlix and Amazon by throttling network traffic going to those domains? Perhaps even stall the pipe every now and then to frustrate users into seeking more stable alternatives? Oh, look! Verizon's service is so much faster than those other two!! I wonder why?!?!
Verizon's vision for Fios was to sell a bunch of value-add services like video calling and on-demand movies. When plain-old-internet services started providing those capabilities without having to pay Verizon directly, Fios deployments slowed to a crawl.
Interesting that Comcast is heavily pitching their home security add-on, as that's a service not yet broadly adopted over the 'net.