Today in Salon.com, Farhad Manjoo has a typically excellent article that frames and discusses why network neutrality is such a critical issue clearly and concisely: The corporate toll on the Internet: “Telecom giant AT&T plans to charge online businesses to speed their services through its DSL lines. Critics say the scheme violates every principle of the Internet, favors deep-pocketed companies, and is bound to limit what we see and hear online.”
LA Times: Phone, Cable May Charge Dot-Coms That Want to Race Along the Internet: “As Internet traffic starts to clog, the telephone and cable companies that control the nation’s telecommunications networks are considering charging dot-coms such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. extra to make sure their data gets special treatment — zooming along faster and more reliably than anyone else’s.”
Here are the three key points about why network neutrality is critical to the information age:
- A neutral internet is cheaper.
A preferential, proprietary internet requires more expensive routers that move preferred packets into an HOV lane. As bandwidth gets cheaper and cheaper, it is probably cheaper and more cost effective for the individuals, small businesses and large companies who use the internet to pay for wider information superhighways than adding an HOV lane to the existing networks. Unlike with real highways, creating more bandwidth does not take away from existing real property. Wheres there is a fixed amount of land available, the world of networks is not zero-sum. - Internet access has monopolistic characteristics.
Consumers may have the choice of access through a cable provider or a telephone (DSL or fiber) provider. Currently, the internet access market generally relies on incumbent wireline infrastructure. Satellite has enough drawbacks that it is an acceptable substitute for other broadband in remote areas. Broadband over power lines may exist as a third option, but again, it relies upon the local power monopoly. Wired access may in fact be a natural monopoly and as such needs to be regulated. A free market in internet access may not be competitive. - Neutrality promotes free speech
The threat of a non-neutral internet is that monopolistic local access providers could charge a premium for major content and service providers to connect to their network. If Google wants to reach its customers who use Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner customers over a non-neutral internet, Google could have to pay a connection fee to Verizon and to AT&T and to Time Warner in addition to the fees it pays to its own internet access provider. Tony Soprano would be proud. And this wouldn’t just affect Google, or Apple or Microsoft. It would affect Homestar Runner, YouTube, Typepad, the Internet Archive, the New York Times and everyone who is sending bits of information to the internet at large.
Network neutrality is not just a question of telecommunications policy, but a question of the freedom of speech.
