Net Neutrality is an attempt to regulate the internet service providers so that all consumers have access to the internet without any sort of favoring or blocking to certain types of content. In simple terms it means that an internet service provider ( ISP ) cannot slow down your connection to Netflix or YouTube just because it consumes more data than say simply searching on Google. A past example of a company violating the principles of net neutrality is when Comcast was slowing some of its consumers upload speed because they were using peer-to-peer file sharing applications. As mentioned in USA Today article the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to create these new rules to regulate the internet because the federal court removed the previous rules on January 2014. Now the biggest entities against net neutrality are broadband companies including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon among others while companies including Apple and Google support it.
Those who are against net neutrality say that the new rules are too heavy-handed and could stifle investment and innovation. The article Net Neutrality IS A Bad Idea Supported By Poor Analogies believes that net neutrality is a bad idea because a one-size-fits-all solution is bad since it limits the new ideas or business models a company can develop surrounding the internet. Another view against net neutrality is the idea that there should not be government regulations since it could give them the power to control the internet as a whole.
The support for net neutrality comes in big part from content providers since it could affect their business in big ways. So if an ISP decided they could start slowing access to something like YouTube at which point they could force consumers to pay extra for unlimited access to it. Another option would be a contract between the ISP and the content provider, in this case YouTube, so that the content provider pays directly to the ISP to not slow down traffic to their service. Obviously any sort of control of traffic could cause a service to lose consumers who would more than likely which to a different service which is not getting slow down.
Now there is a strange gray area with net neutrality which Facebook is trying to use. Now Facebook supports net neutrality here in the US but is trying to provide special services overseas that do go against it. The gray that Facebook put forward was their idea of providing free internet to countries like India but the free internet in question provides access online to a limited number of websites including Facebook. The article on BBC mentions how controversial the plan has become in India and the fact that it was put on hold and more recently taken away all together. Another program that is in the gray area is T-Mobiles Binge On which makes it so that some content providers data does not count against the consumers data cap.
I believe that net neutrality is a good thing and that it will do more good than the harm people claim it will do. The only way to accept Facebook’s free plan is if it provided access to everything even if it’s at a much slower connection which then might make their service unusable which is why this is not the current way it works. Now to attempt to enforce the rules would have to be part the consumers and part the content providers. Both sides must make sure to see if their service is getting controlled in any way and report it to the FCC which would have to then decide when a suitable number of reports are enough to actually investigate a certain ISP or not. Even if net neutrality is a great step forward, the FCC should focus their attention in the current problem we are facing in the US and that is the cost and quality that the ISPs are providing and the lack of competition in certain part of the country.
Norman Morales 