I saw a short article about it this evening, but tbh I didn’t pay much attention to the Net Neutrality stuff from years ago so I don’t fully get it. What are the effects if it changes (or doesn’t)?
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Here’s a real-world example from Canada:
When I first hooked up Internet service in my home, I was with a company called Shaw. I was mostly satisfied; the only problem was that the monthly bill was outstripping my budget.
I cancelled service with Shaw and moved to another company — a wholesaler, that used Shaw’s ‘pipes’ to provide their service.
To my surprise, this new company offered the same service level that I was getting with Shaw at a lower price — *and* I found that my download speeds were *significantly* faster*.* I’d had 1 or 2 mB/s with Shaw; this new company was a steady 10 mB/s.
Now, the argument that the big telcos in the United States have consistently given is that they *own* the pipes, so they should control how they’re used. Net Neutrality says ‘no, that’s not how this works; you’ve got to offer the *same* quality of service to *everyone* that’s paying for it, without preferential treatment’.
There’s a very real fear that revoking Net Neutrality will result in the creation of a ‘tiered’ Internet, where an ISP charges a fee to have someone ‘bumped up’ to a higher-quality tier, where their data is treated preferentially over that of those that can’t or won’t pay.
So, if Sam’s Small Start-Up begins to look like a viable competitor for Barry’s Big Business, Barry can just pay the fee for the higher tier of service and his site will operate more efficiently than Sam’s, making Sam’s company the less-preferable option and driving customers to Barry’s website simply because it’s better than slogging through Sam’s slower-loading site on the ‘lower’ tier.
That has the potential to stifle competition, because smaller start-ups are less likely to be able to *afford* the faster tier, and big companies like Google have *billions* of dollars to support it.
If the FCC maintains Net Neutrality, that will not happen. Service providers will not be permitted to make that kind of deal; if Sam’s Small Start-Up pays for service with their local telco, Barry’s Big Business will have to compete with Sam on an equal footing.
They’ll both load at approximately the same speed, so they’ll both have an equal chance to compete in their market.
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