Blog topic #7

What is Net Neutrality, who benefits and who doesn’t?...you decide

For the amount of people that use the internet today, most people have no idea what Net Neutrality means.

The internet first came into our homes via existing telephone lines that were owned by companies like Pac Bell and AT&T. Cable companies soon joined the internet rush and started delivering the internet to our homes via television cables.

Today we can receive our internet via phone wires, cable, satellite or mobile devices using a single copper wire (telephone line), multiple copper wires (cable) or fiber optics (a technology that delivers information by sending light through optical fibers).

The different technologies used to deliver internet services have an impact on how fast data is transferred to and from our computers. Most of us remember the days that it took forever to download a page from the internet because we had a “dial-up” connection. The optimal delivery method is fiber optics.
The measurement of high standards in internet technology is how fast we can download/upload to and from the internet. According to the (OECD), Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development, the United States has dropped in rank to the 19th place in internet technology and is rapidly dropping lower.

Speed and content contribute to our internet experience and as such the quality of those are important to both the consumer and owner of the information.

So how is it that we dropped from 1st place in internet technology to the 19th place?

In the early 2000’s the United States wanted to build a fiber optic network to enable high speed internet for millions of internet users. The question was: who was going to pay for this? The telecom companies offered to pay up if they could receive special tax breaks and would be allowed to charge internet users more for its basic services.

In 2006 the telecom companies had not lived up to their promises and fell far behind the rest of the modern world in upgrading the United States’ internet technology. The 125 billion dollars in tax breaks and 128% increase in profits had not produced any kind of acceleration in internet technology.

The handful of telecom companies who own the internet pipelines and therefore control of the flow of information are now complaining that the internet is getting too congested and that there is a need for a separate faster information pipeline that could be used by preferred companies that would pay an extra fee for its usage.

When the internet only used telephone wires for the transmission of information the common carrier rules of the telephone companies applied. This, by default made sure that there was no discrimination or preferential treatment given to any content that was being transmitted over the web. In essence Net Neutrality was a built-in feature of the internet.

However, now that there are different methods of transmission, the telecom companies feel that they might make use of the loophole that has developed as a result of new technologies for the transmission of data to which the common carrier rules do not apply. This puts Net Neutrality on the chopping block.

Last year I tried to browse to one of my favorite websites and received the “unable to display webpage” screen. I later found out that my ISP (sprint) was involved in a lawsuit with the ISP of my favorite website. Sprint had disabled all websites that were hosted by this other ISP. (For 4 days I was unable to bring up the website

Even though these companies own the lines of communication, they should not be allowed to tamper with the information that is being sent or received. And no matter how big or small the sender or receiver of such information is, the telecom companies must remain impartial to the parties that use the internet structure. Net Neutrality must be maintained as part of the basic structure of the internet.

Users of the internet should be wary of the telecom companies’ request to charge higher fees for higher speeds.

Large companies, who are able to foot the extra charge, already have expensive websites and notoriety would thrive under these conditions. They could potentially dictate the majority of the content on the internet only because users would prefer to download from a faster website than from a slower one, not to mention a user might be totally blocked from any website deemed “controversial” by the ISP.

Telecom companies would be able to pick and choose which websites internet consumers would be able to access by giving their partners preferential treatment. Since most of the telecom companies own large media companies, consumers could end up only seeing the un-educational, sensationalized and propagandist material available on T.V., while content rich, educational, relevant and diverse materials and opinions would be suppressed.

The telecom companies contend that Net Neutrality stands in the way of upgrading our internet structure and keeping up with internet technology because nobody will pay for the upgrades, even though they have received a tremendous amount of tax breaks and an increase in revenue from internet consumers.

It would be a sad day in internet history if Net Equality is not guaranteed. Freedom of information and the ability to be heard equally is the foundational premise of the internet and should not be messed with.

Resources:
www.savetheinternet.com

www.niemanwatchdog.org

www.teletruth.com

www.newnetworks.com/

www.opposingviews.com

www.youtube.com Part one and two from PBS NOW

www.handsoff.org/blog/