In the United States, the political atmosphere in 2020 was extremely testy and one element that we typically keep our eyes on is the net neutrality rules that seem to change every few years or so. Today, we thought we’d revisit the issue and tell you what to expect over the first few months of the new administration.
So, What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is the theory that the Internet should be viewed as a utility and therefore be regulated in a way where use of it is fair throughout. The debate rages between pro-net neutrality people and pro-business people who believe that by having so many rules in place, innovation of Internet-based technology suffers. Some variables that are part of the argument include how the services are deployed, how telecommunications companies set prices and service packs, and how to get the Internet to everyone who needs it (which is everyone these days).
The Federal Communications Commission, led by FCC director Ajit Pai, successfully oversaw the repeal of the net neutrality regulation in 2017, which effectively re-categorized Internet services from being a utility to an independent service. Of course, this was met with extreme frustration by the masses, who overwhelmingly believe that the Internet should be a universally regulated entity, just as electricity and water services are.
Where We Stand Now
The Internet has been extraordinarily busy in 2020 as people socially distance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. ISPs, to their credit, did rally to provide some value to customers during the start of the pandemic. Months later they put together a list of how they’ve “Gone Above and Beyond” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
If net neutrality were still in place, who knows what would have happened, but you could bet that the FCC, as a regulatory body would have done what it could to ensure that lines of communication weren’t obstructed because of profitability issues.
What Will Happen with Net Neutrality in 2021?
Some people believe that net neutrality will be revisited in 2021; and, while that could happen, with everything that is going on today, and the changes in the FCC mandate, it will be interesting to see if the new administration thinks that it’s a big enough issue to address early on. First thing is first, a new FCC director will be named and that process could take months to iron out. One thing is for sure, the Internet has shown that it is extremely important today and should be protected against any entity that can make it difficult for people to gain access to it.
What are your thoughts about net neutrality? Are you of the belief that ISPs need oversight to maintain fair practices or do you think that the natural market competition will keep ISPs from taking advantage of their positions? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Net Neutrality in the United States has been a hot-button issue for almost anyone that uses the Internet. 2018 saw the 2005 principles governing the preservation of an open Internet repealed completely, leaving control over the Internet in the hands of huge companies that deliver Internet services to people. Today, we’ll go back over Net Neutrality and provide an update of what has happened since the Federal Communications Commission repeal of net neutrality laws.
Commercially available Internet services have been available since the early 1990s, but as broadband was being implemented, the Internet, and investment in the medium was strong. In an attempt to keep control of the Internet distributed among the people that utilize the service, and not massive corporations looking to gain control over it, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under chair Kathleen Abernathy adopted neutrality principles “to preserve and promote the vibrant and open character of the Internet as the telecommunications marketplace enters the broadband age” in 2005.
For seven years, lawmakers attempted to pass bills in Congress that would secure an open future for the Internet. All of these attempts failed, leaving the future of who would control the Internet up in the air. The fear was that ISPs, which are typically huge multinational conglomerates, would be able to control bandwidth with cost, as they do with their television services. Internet freedom advocates considered the price discrimination that would arise from “local monopolies enshrined in law” to be at the helm of what has proven to be the most remarkable invention in human history, counterproductive for the establishment of an open and useful construct.
Years of litigation followed. Cases such as Verizon Communications Inc. vs. FCC, which ruled that the FCC had no regulatory power over the Internet because it was, in fact, not actually a utility, and thus, governed under Title I of the Communications Act of 1934. Immediately after this ruling, the FCC took steps to reclassify Internet delivery services into a public utility, which are governed under Title II of the Act. In February of 2015, the classifications were officially challenged as voting members agreed that Internet services met the criteria of a utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 and the more recent Telecommunications Act of 1996. In April of 2015 “net neutrality” was upheld by officially declaring Internet services as a utility. The rules officially went into effect the following June.
The “final rule” turned out to be short lived, however. In April of 2017, the FCC proposed to repeal the policies that governed net neutrality, and return control to the corporations that invest in and provide broadband services. The proposed changes were met with heavy consternation, with over 20 million people providing comments during the public discourse phase of the process. It was later found that millions of the comments made in support of net neutrality repeal were made fraudulently by foreign actors. Despite the overwhelming dissention of the mass of people, the FCC repealed the net neutrality policies and followed it with a hefty amount of propaganda material claiming that the decision was “restoring Internet freedom”. The repeal became official in June of 2018.
What Is Going on with Net Neutrality Now? Almost immediately after the change was made there have been several lawsuits filed and they seem to keep coming. States, advocacy groups, neutrality lobbies, and companies have all started lawsuits against the FCC both for their handling of the situation and for the repeal of net neutrality itself.
One way to ascertain if it has been a benefit is by looking at the claims the FCC made before dismantling the mandate:
Net Neutrality is hindering broadband investment. In 2018 what is known as the Big Four–Verizon, AT&T, Charter, and Comcast–collectively spent less in broadband projects than they did in 2017. It was the first time in three years that investment has dropped.
It doesn’t make sense for ISPs to throttle Internet traffic. The Big Four reportedly slowed internet traffic without telling customers not more than six weeks after the repeal. Sites like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime were the most targeted. Verizon was especially culpable as it was found to slow data speeds that led to slower EMS response times; a major problem as firefighters were battling massive fires in California.
The issue isn’t totally devoid of common ground, however. Almost everyone believes that ISPs shouldn’t be able to flex their muscles, so to speak. One way this is happening is that there is a push to restore older FCC mandates that prohibited ISPs to enact anticompetitive and harmful practices. Basically, everyone wants a fast, open, and unobstructed Internet, but the disagreement, usually on party lines, is who is responsible for the regulation.
An extreme majority of people support net neutrality. Most people want to return oversight over the Internet to the bureaucracy, as they believe that corporations whose stated purpose is to make profit aren’t the best organizations to manage something as important as access to the Internet, despite being the companies that sell that access. Time will tell who is right.
If you would like to do something about it, go to https://www.battleforthenet.com/ and sign up. Do you believe market forces will keep ISPs honest, and the Internet open? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
There has been a lot of buzz about the term net neutrality in the news, on social media, and around the water cooler lately. The FCC is preparing to end net neutrality on December 14th, 2017, and it’s causing a major stir. From activist groups encouraging people to call congress with their concerns, to headlines exclaiming that the Internet as we know it is dying, there is a lot to sift through to really understand what the stakes are. Our goal is to make sense of net neutrality without the sensationalism, and explain how it can affect small business owners.
Plain and simple, net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) need to treat all data on the Internet the same. Regardless of how you connect to the internet, your provider isn’t allowed to prioritize certain types of content, websites, or online services for you. This also means they can’t decide to limit or restrict certain types of content.
For example, let’s say your internet provider also has their own on-demand video streaming service. They would much rather you use theirs instead of Hulu or Netflix, so they could put limitations on how much Netflix you could watch (or block it entirely) to try to encourage you to use their service. Since most Americans have very limited options when it comes to choosing an internet service provider, this really leaves us helpless when it comes to what content we can consume.
A lot of people are using similar examples like this to explain net neutrality, but as much as it would be undesirable for your favorite video streaming service to become harder to access, life goes on, right? There is a whole other side to consider…
The Internet Isn’t Just About Consuming Content for Entertainment
This Netflix example is just scratching the surface. The same problem could happen more frequently at smaller scales. It’s not just entertainment and media that could get prioritized, but any and all web content. Social media, search engines, ecommerce and banking, and small businesses who rely on their online presence could eventually see an effect from this.
If your business relies on online traffic to generate leads, abandoning net neutrality means that your internet service provider could make it harder or impossible for some customers to get to your website. Your ISP could prioritize and otherwise interfere with traffic simply because they have partnerships or get paid by businesses who compete with you. This may sound a little extreme, but it has already happened:
Real World Examples of What Net Neutrality Protects Us From
In 2010, DSL provider Windstream Communications admitted to hijacking search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users thought they were searching on Google, but instead were delivered results through Windstream’s own search portal.
We’ve also seen cases where service providers were blocking other services on their network to attempt to get users to use their own:
Between 2011 and 2014, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile payment system, which competed with Isis, a competing mobile payment system that the three carriers each had a stake in developing.
Over the last decade or so, other cases have come up where ISPs had blocked various VoIP services, including Skype, Google Voice, and Vonage. The most notorious case was in 2012, where AT&T announced that it would disable FaceTime, a video messaging app on iPhones, unless subscribers paid additional fees.
While many of these earlier cases happened before net neutrality rules were officially in place, net neutrality enforces ISPs to keep the Internet open and transparent. The net neutrality rules were a result of these cases.
The Argument Against Net Neutrality
Myth: Net Neutrality Hurts Small Businesses Although the argument for net neutrality is pretty simple–keep the Internet open, the argument against it is a little more complex. FCC chairman Ajit Pai (who formerly worked for Verizon) claims the rules are “heavy handed” and “all about politics.” His argument states that small internet providers were hurt by regulations. Net neutrality does prevent Internet service providers from charging more or less for different tiers of internet, capitalizing on advertising revenue and partnerships by redirecting traffic, and throttling competing services, but it also prevents smaller businesses from being excluded from a fair, open online ecosystem.
Myth: Net Neutrality is the Government Regulating the Internet Another argument against net neutrality is that regulation always gets in the way of progress. However, the net neutrality rules aren’t crafted to regulate the Internet and how consumers use it, instead it regulates how it is delivered and how the businesses that deliver it can manipulate it. Imagine UPS prioritizing your deliveries based on the brands you buy or the stores you buy from. You’ll make decisions on what to buy and where to buy from if you knew you could get it faster. Next, imagine ordering a Samsung phone, but UPS has a partnership with Apple and swaps out your new device with an iPhone before it gets to your house. It sounds silly when put that way, but this is exactly what we’re fighting to prevent.
Myth: Tiered, Lower Cost Internet Will Benefit Low-Income Households One of the strongest arguments against net neutrality is that enabling ISPs to create tiered Internet packages will allow more users to get access to the Internet. This sounds like a very strong point–we want to give poorer families the same opportunities and resources. The idea of an ISP coming out with a cheap, barebones broadband service designed for households who simply can’t afford or struggle to afford current plans tugs at the emotions. However, limiting the open Internet can lead to limitations of the value of the Internet itself. If lower-income households were given access to an Internet without the same perks and resources, they still miss out. These families will inevitably choose Internet packages that limit the experience, and thus limit the amount of opportunity both economically and educationally they could have otherwise. Children growing up with a limited, restricted Internet might not be able to watch tutorials on YouTube, take free online courses for programming, or gain the skills to use the Internet to reach a wider audience through marketing and social media. They won’t even know the opportunities are there because the only Internet they know is the restricted, limited tier.
There are long-term ratifications to this that we simply can’t predict, but it’s clear that there is more to gain from an open Internet.
Abandoning Net Neutrality Stonewalls Content Creators and Small Business
Let’s go back to how abandoning net neutrality affects business owners. In the example above, where Internet Service Providers could start offering a cheaper, limited Internet tier, this potentially limits small business. If a percentage of your audience dials back their Internet tier to a plan that prioritizes the ISP’s partners and agenda, this could make it harder or impossible for those users to find and engage with you. The money that you put into online marketing won’t go as far, or even have an effect on these users. Smaller businesses and content creators might not have the resources to get past all of the barriers when reaching deals with carriers to have a fair shot at getting in front of customers.
As business owners, we already pay for full access to the Internet. We likely pay other companies for services beyond just Internet access – mobile data usage, email hosting, web hosting, online marketing, VoIP, cloud storage, and the list goes on. If telecoms and ISPs prioritize the delivery of the Internet to us and our audience, we all lose.
On December 14th, the FCC will vote to abandon Net Neutrality and Title II rules. Our only hope is if congress puts a stop to it. Many members of congress have come out against the plan to end net neutrality, but many are for ending it. We need to band together and speak out.
The best way to do this is by reaching out directly to members of Congress and telling them about your concerns. By writing and calling those who can save net neutrality, we’ll help them understand that we depend on an open, transparent Internet.
Fortunately, the people behind https://www.battleforthenet.com/ make this easy. You can compose an email to Congress from the homepage, and even dial Congress members to tell them that you are concerned with the impact that killing net neutrality will have on your business.
If we all work together on this, we can help preserve the open Internet. Please, we urge you to take a few minutes out of your day to go to https://www.battleforthenet.com/ and make your voice be heard.
