Net neutrality is the concept that every Internet Service Provider (ISP) treats every piece of data equally. Net Neutrality effects everyone and is crucial for small business owners, startups and entrepreneurs, who rely on the open internet to launch their businesses, create markets, advertise their products and services, and reach customers. We need the open internet to foster job growth, competition and innovation.
Here’s a hypothetical example, using real-world players: Comcast is the biggest ISP in the country. More people get their internet through Comcast than any other company, and most of them don’t really have any alternatives.
If they want to get online, they have go through Comcast.
Comcast also wholly owns NBCUniversal (as in NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, and many other media channels), which also gives it a 30% stake in Hulu. Essentially, in addition to owning the data network, Comcast also owns a lot of the media that their network carries to consumers.
Now, in comes Netflix, who is not owned by Comcast. As an entertainment service, Netflix is a direct competitor to Hulu and many of Comcast’s other holdings, so Comcast would much prefer if people watched Hulu instead of Netflix.
However, since Netflix isn’t a massive ISP, they have to go through Comcast’s network if they want to get to most of their users. And this is where the problems start appearing.
In a world without Net Neutrality, Comcast can manipulate its network in a way that de-prioritizes people’s connection to Netflix and favors their connection to Hulu.
They can slow the connection to the point where Netflix’s quality drops, load times are long, etc, you get the idea. Meanwhile, they can also make sure that Hulu always has a fast, crystal-clear connection, even if that means slowing other connections when the bandwidth gets tight. Long story short, ISPs gets to use the fact that they own the infrastructure to unfairly undermine their competition. It’d be like if Verizon purposefully gave you poor call quality whenever you called somebody who used Sprint.
However, in a world with Net Neutrality, internet service providers cannot discriminate the services it provides a connection to….even their competitors
Legally, they have to treat Netflix, YouTube and everybody else in the same way that they treat Hulu. They don’t get to play favorites. Thus, you (the consumer) end up benefiting enormously, because you can pick whatever service you like the best and can’t be forced into watching Hulu because your ISP wants you to.
Net Neutrality keeps the internet free from the manipulation of the people who run it, who don’t always have your best interests at heart. For comparison, phone carriers have been subjected to similar regulations for years; they can’t prioritize certain calls over others based on who’s calling who. Obviously, this hasn’t caused any huge problems for phone carriers, so the only reason why ISPs are fighting against similar laws for the internet is because they don’t want to lose the gravy train.
Net Neutrality lowers the barriers of entry by preserving the internet’s fair and level playing field. It’s because of Net Neutrality that small businesses and entrepreneurs have been able to thrive online.
No company should be allowed to interfere with the open marketplace. ISPs are the internet’s gatekeepers, and without Net Neutrality, they would seize every possible opportunity to profit from that gatekeeper position.
What can you do?
Battle for the Net
