Net Neutrality (www.savetheinternet.com)
11:27pm Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 by Rolande
Save the Internet! Voice your opinion to Congress in support of Net Neutrality regulation.
Over the past few months or so I had seen and heard about the whole prospect of the government legally empowering providers to pick and choose what content they wanted to prefer for their customers while relegating competing content into a virtual digital toilet. I hadn’t really paid much attention to it until recently, thinking it was just a bunch of bureaucratic hot air coming out of Washington and that it really couldn’t happen. Eventually, I began to realize what the real impact of this decision or lack thereof means to me as a paying customer and to the rest of the Internet industry, as well as the fact that the Service Providers are spending millions to lobby Congress and publish misinformational ads and propaganda about this whole issue.
I don’t think that I can stress enough how dire the consequences can be for every Internet user if the Government allows the providers to have their way and not regulate their neutrality. I think that most people who use the Internet don’t believe this issue will affect them. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
If the Government kills the proposed legislation to enforce Net Neutrality for providers that will, in effect, empower providers to sign exclusive content agreements (i.e. Big $$ Contracts) for their networks and unilaterally discriminate against any competitors in that content space.
This is a really huge deal! To better illustrate the impact it will have on consumers… Imagine that you have 1 or maybe 2 choices of broadband providers in your neighborhood for Internet access (probably not too hard for anyone to imagine). Now picture the provider who you happen to be a customer of signs a lucrative contract with Yahoo for search services. Part of that contract stipulates that the provider will offer premium/priority access to all of Yahoo’s content and either block or limit the bandwidth access to all other search engine services like Google, Lycos, Ask.com etc. I don’t know about you but I would be pretty ticked off if my access to Google was limited or slowed down. My only other option would be to switch to a Cable Access provider who may sign a contract with an alternate search engine like Google. But what if I prefer the price and bandwidth quality that my current provider offers or the Cable Service in my neighborhood offers unreliable or poorer performing Internet access? That doesn’t leave me with any broadband access options. I essentially get forced into using Yahoo, until Google realizes that they are losing tons of revenue from customers of my large ISP and they approach my ISP with big $$ (extortion payoff) in hand so that they compete on a level playing field again for customer’s access and earn a big chunk of their revenue back.
Beyond search engine services, one of the most notable issues at the center of this debate has revolved around Voice over IP service better known as VoIP. Most of the incumbent (large) carriers offer some sort of VoIP service. But they are also competing with literally hundreds of other service providers across the Internet. Since these big providers also own and manage the customer’s Internet access, if they are allowed to discriminate on what you can access or what quality of service they provide to specific destinations, then they have the ability to force/extort you into using their VoIP service instead of a competitor’s service. They could legally diminish the quality of the service that you can receive from any of their competitors or even outright block access to them. Does that even remotely sound fair to you?
So, allowing providers to be non-neutral with respect to their providing of Internet access is nothing more than Government endorsed/legalized extortion and another weapon for these providers to strengthen their duopoly type environments. Maybe the Government should even go a step further from just enforcing Net Neutrality and possibly even pass a regulation that bars Internet access providers from partnering with or owning content providers. It is too tempting as an access provider to have access to a potentially limitless revenue stream that they can transparently extort without anyone being able to definitively prove that they are doing so.
The idea and principles that the Internet was built upon are in complete opposition to what these carriers are trying to lobby the Government to allow. If the Government stays quiet on this issue and allows the moratorium to run out this August, we will slowly start to see each provider’s network turn into something similar to the packages that the Cable and Satellite providers offer for TV channels or even something similar to the gated service that AOL offered in the early 90’s for their version of “Internet” access.
That Sucks!
Please go to SaveTheInternet.com to read more about this issue and Sign the Petition as well as read about other ways to support this Coalition against the incumbent Internet access providers.
I work with the Hands Off the Internet coaltion and we oppose legislation madating net neutrality. The telecos don’t want to limit access to content. They want the ability to recoup their investment in the next generation internet and net neutrality legislation would prevent them from doing so. Again, it’s not about discriminating content based on the personal preferences of the telecos but prioritizing packets based on maintinaing a fast and fully functioning internet.
As VOIP, video and music become more popular online the amount of bandwidth being used is greatly increasing and the current infrastructure isn’t equipped to handle this demand. Thus, they want to invest billions to upgrade the network. Nobody will have their access downgraded or have content blocked. What will happen is the content providers who are streaming HD videos, and other large files will have to pay more to accomodate the amount of bandwidth that they are using. If the telecos aren’t allowed to charge the content providers more for better service then the financial burden will fall on the consumer.
The FCC has four solid net neutrality principles and the legislation that passed the House gives the FCC the power to enforce them. In addition, the chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, commented last week that additional net neutrality regulations are unecessary. To use a phrase I’m sure you’ve seen, net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.
The point is that the telco providers want to make an even greater profit margin on the existing infrastructure. They set the prices for their customers and the fierce competition has kept the profit margin relatively small. Now they think they have found an easy way to get rich quick off of their huge subscriber base leveraging them as an extortion tool against the content providers.
The idea that the telcos need the ability to charge content providers in order to be able to invest in future growth is ridiculous. They are already charging their customers for the access to the bandwidth and have commercial customers paying premium rates for hosting bandwidth. What the customer does with it is their own business. If the providers are whining about carrying large amounts of transit traffic between their peering partners then that is best left to be discussed during peering negotiations between them. Otherwise, they can just cut off their transit peering and only allow traffic through their network that is originated by or sent to a directly connected customer.
The Internet was built to be an open access network and I should not get a completely different view of it depending on which provider I am a customer of. If the cost of delivering service goes up, then the telcos should charge the customers, especially the commerical customers who are using it a fair price to recoup the investments. Simple economics.
The big telco providers are already being paid for the access bandwidth for much of the commercial hosting that is going on today anyway. Why don’t they just charge a premium rate for bandwidth that will be used for commercial hosting?
If the big telcos are so cash poor that they can’t invest in next generation backbone infrastructure to support the customer demand, then how are they able to fund these huge mergers that have been taking place requiring billions to complete? Not to mention, the majority of the telcos have been writing off huge amounts of depreciation ($Billions) for the past 5 or 6 years with much less capital investment in comparison. The majority of their positive cash flow has been going right to the funding of the next big acquisition or merger. If the telcos want to cry poor and say they can’t afford to fund the growth to meet consumer demand for bandwidth, then let them. They have made their own bed by focusing on the next acquisition target instead of their customers. Too bad. That is their own problem for running their businesses the way they have. They can not just indiscriminately change the fundamental access model of the Internet to meet their own profit goals. If the Government allows this to happen, then the Internet as we have known it, since the early days of NSFnet in the 80’s will begin to erode and become segmented within the US. It would be a terrible disaster for the Internet.