Opinion: Broadband providers are already monkeying with traffic to give their own products higher priority than third-party solutions. Yeah, that's ethical!
Yeah, I was more than a little peeved when I wrote about the telephone companies' plans to charge higher rates for "preferred" traffic on the Net back at the
beginning of February, and I'm still pretty miffed about the whole thing.
The Internet was founded (pretty much) on the concept of "Net neutrality" (for more info check out this nifty video rant), the belief that a packet is a packet is a packet and all get treated the same.
And while this isn't always the case, the bandwidth and priority allocated to Internet traffic is pretty much equal.
This, of course, bugs the providers who see the differential usage by popular sites as a revenue opportunity. What they'd like to do is make sites that want a "fast lane" on the Internet pay a higher fee than those that don't.
What you end up with is that those who have the money get preference and those that don't get to chug along in the "slow lane" with the rest of the losers who can't pay more.
Bad idea. And there's even worse stuff coming down the pike in the form of a proposed "broadband tax" from the Feds (talk about your double whammy!) and some evidence that broadband providers are already monkeying with traffic in order to give their own products higher priority than third-party solutions. Yeah, that's ethical!
But I was heartened to read this week that Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, has introduced a bill supporting Net neutrality and that Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has also spoken out against the tiered-pricing plan. Both are in favor of restricting providers from discriminating against Internet traffic.
Whew! It seems like the folks in Washington can get something right once in a while. And the fact that the chairman of the Commerce Committee is speaking out against the plan gets to the heart of the issue: economics.
Click here to read more about Congress' discussion of Net neutrality.
It's not just that the plan would result in unfair competition (providers like Comcast that have their own VOIP (voice-over-IP) services might be able to push out companies like Vonage), but that the plan would also make it difficult for new businesses to gain access to the Internet if they couldn't pay the fare for "fast lane" access.
The fact is that the Web as we know it today wasn't built because a bunch of big players decided to create it. Instead, it was built up one small brick at a time by small-time operators who took a stand, built a site, and worked to bring it up in the world.
Sure, gazillions failed, but some Davids eventually became Goliaths, because they created stuff that people wanted and made it accessible on a global, neutral Internet. The Web represents information freedom and entrepreneurship at its best, and Net neutrality is essential to keeping that spirit alive.
Sites like Google, Yahoo, and eBay all once started small but were able to appear as the big players at the time because of the leveling effect of the neutral Net.
The open-source movement was able to flourish as a free, grassroots, global collaboration because those involved had equal access. Many found success as bloggers because they started small, wrote smart stuff, and built up their readerships using the same access that Comcast, AT&T and Microsoft had.
It's the way the Net's been and the way it should stay. The future of the Web depends on it.
