How being Net neutral can be competitive
Net neutrality is a buzz-phrase currently flying around the Internet and scaring a lot of people. There are many whose tiny website livelihoods, right up to corporate empires, are built on the fact that ISPs cannot treat different types of Internet information in different ways. Similarly, there are large communications companies who are decrying the need for Net neutrality because their business profits hugely from its elimination.
Common carriers
The Internet in the United States has always been content neutral, meaning that service providers must treat all information flowing over their networks equally. U.S. phone companies cannot remove your ability to call other phone companies, or anyone else for that matter, and then sell that access back to you or your business. These common carriers must not examine what you are sending and why; they must not prioritize the delivery of information from some over others; they must just do their job of delivering the message. This is how the Internet was designed, and in most of the world, this is how it continues to work.
2005 Federal Communications Commission ruling
In the U.S., most Internet services were covered by this common carrier law, because they were mostly carried by traditional telephone infrastructure. In 2005, the FCC reclassified DSL Internet service as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service, and imposed four Net neutrality principles to prevent discrimination of access. This move encouraged large companies to begin looking for ways to use their Internet infrastructure to make more money through various types of access restriction or preferential access.
Telecom tyranny
The large telecommunications companies in the U.S. have a monopoly or oligopoly position for Internet service provision to both individuals and businesses in their geographic areas. While this remains the case, it is hard to understand their lobbying position that regulating the way they provide the service to ensure non-discrimination is anti-competitive. The market cannot be free until there are multiple ISPs available to all. Therefore, as with all communications services, they need to be closely regulated to prevent unfairness and price gouging. However, as they are so large, they spend a lot of money to lobby government representatives. These public servants often have only a rudimentary knowledge of Internet structure and the fundamental issue of retaining freedom of access for all is easily obfuscated by an avalanche of technical jargon.
Competition
When Net neutrality is fully preserved, there is far more free-market competition. Many people are encouraged to enter the Internet marketplace because their startup costs are low and the playing field is level; their barriers to reaching their customers are exactly the same as those of large corporations. Without Net neutrality, large companies can pay for a huge variety of types of preferential treatment for their data, making it much harder for startups to compete and therefore reducing the choice available to consumers.
Future of Net neutrality
There have been several attempts to pass legislation in the U.S. that would set this issue to rest, but to date no bills have been successful. All parties seem to be opposed to more legislation, but disagree on how to achieve fairness for all without it. Alternatives continue to be proposed, some more elegant than others, but the highly effective lobbying power of the telecommunications giants must first be neutralized by some extremely strong leadership.
