Net Neutrality - Life in The Fast Lane (For a Price)

Net Neutrality. What the heck? What is this junk and why do people care about it? What in the world is the FCC and why do I care?

Alright...let's break this down into segments that are easy to digest.

FCC = Federal Communications Committee - This is basically a government organization that sort of polices the ethics of communication in our nation. It's what assumes to allow certain things to happen for companies and individuals to communicate.

Net Neutrality = Our ability to access sites and information being open and having equal opportunity to all people and all companies. This means you can watch videos, skype, blog, play Xbox live, add modems, and use the internet in a way that is of your choosing, hampered by only your own ability to access.

SO WHAT ARE THE RULES?

1. Transparency: That all ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers and users all relevant information as to the policies that govern their network

2. No Blocking: That no legal content may be blocked

3. No Unreasonable Discrimination: That ISPs may not act in a commercially unreasonable manner to harm the Internet, including favoring the traffic from an affiliated entity.

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/open-internet

So what is all of the hub-bub about then? This sounds like stuff that is pretty reasonable and regular. I mean, we do want things to be good for everyone right?

The problem is the consequences.

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?

The legislation conflicts with a few simple statements:

1 - Comcast just bought out Time Warner Cable (TWC) and now owns 31 million subscribers. (by comparison the next runner up is At&T with about 17 Million and below this isn't worth mentioning)

2 - Coverage in the US is largely by the top two companies (Previously TWC and Comcast) http://www.broadbandmap.gov/number-of-providers - but they are now a single company, so the majority of coverage is offered not only by one company but it is mostly available THROUGH one company now.

3 - The new regulations allow ISP's to charge different money to companies like Facebook, Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Skype, etc. for the volume of their service required for their site. In this case if, say YouTube pays an extra fee their site gets the speed needed, but if say Vimeo does not then videos on Vimeo will run so slow that the website will crash.

4 - The regulations don't stay with the companies specifically. That is to say, if your phone has the cool video call option, but it uses an ISP service to do that, the ISP now has a right to charge you as a consumer of that faster data, an extra price for that service.

DIAL IT DOWN AND KEEP IT SIMPLE 

Internet Service Providers (ISP's) are basically now allowed to charge more for smooth access to sites. In most cases this will be passed onto the company that offers the service (Hulu, Netflix, Skype, Facebook, etc.). There are some rare cases where you might have an ISP (AT&T) who enables your phone where they can charge you more for the faster access that FaceTime requires - i.e. charge you a "FaceTime Fee" essentially, although I'm sure they wouldn't call it that directly.

Consequently, when these service companies get fees, they will pass those fees onto their users. What this does is create a fast and slow lane for the internet. There will be blazing fast speeds and access to all of the information so long as you pay up to the almighty ISP that wants to charge you for it. In this case, you are likely in an area that only offers Comcast now, since AT&T has a very spotty broadband network and Comcast just bought TWC.

The short of this is that Comcast will basically now have the right to charge more money for access to sites that require faster usage - never mind that you are already paying them for a "faster connection" in the first place. Since they operate over 50% of the market and own the availability to much more than that with their availability, it's unlikely that even AT&T can oppose them, and will likely follow suit.

The end result is that we as consumers will be given slower internet with less ability to see places like Reddit, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, and so on unless we pay a fee. So when your kid wants to go to the internet and get information for a paper, you should make sure they don't need to get anything that would require a bigger or faster connection, or you'll pay more money. If you don't, they won't have the information...so what happens to their grades?

Remember when you could research a paper online? Gone unless you pay.

Remember when you could video connect with people? Gone unless you pay.

Remember when you could watch videos to educate yourself? Gone unless you pay.

Remember when you could exchange ideas with people abroad? Gone unless you pay.

Who will you pay? Most of us - Comcast. Others - AT&T.

Today is the day that Net Neutrality suffered a huge blow and with the open element to the FCC over the next few months we need to DEMAND that these fast and slow lanes are not allowed.