Wednesday, November 19, 2014

'Net Neutrality' - Don't Buy the Con

If you love smooth-streaming music and HD movies or videos over the internet, chances are you will hate 'Net Neutrality' — a government internet regulation proposal that is as big a con in packaging as 'The Affordable Care Act'.

As explained here and here, the proposed Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality regulations will force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all internet traffic equally, giving the same priority and speed to text, video, audio, and interactive content, whether consumers like it or not. 
  • Net Neutrality is a bad deal for consumers.  Because internet bandwidth space is finite, ISPs must pay for every megabyte of bandwidth their consumers use. ISPs currently pays those bandwidth costs by offering higher-priced product differentiation packages to on-demand video services such as Amazon and Netflex so that the end users (you and me) can enjoy fast lane, smooth movie streaming at a relatively low cost without slowing down their neighbours' internet connections. 

    If Net Neutrality becomes law, ISPs won't be allowed to do that, and movie viewing is likely to become a choppy, unhappy experience. Worse, if ISPs can't charge big user companies like Amazon and Netflex for bandwidth use, ISPs will likely begin charging consumers (you and me) for the bandwidth they actually use, just as cell phone carriers charge consumers for data they use.   
  • Net Neutrality is a bad deal for web companies.  ISPs shouldn't be forced to treat all web companies equally. Currently the bigger, established companies are paying a greater share of the cost because they use far more bandwidth than smaller, less established companies. However, "Net Neutrality effectively forces startups to subsidize the bandwidth requirements of established companies, by equally distributing the cost of service to everyone, even those who do not benefit from faster speeds."  
For more, read:

Here's What 'Net Neutrality' is ... and What to Think About It
Rebutting the President on Net Neutrality

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