Net Neutrality

Re: Net Neutrality

 

On the Net Neutrality link I provided, for those who are still unclear as to what this is about, there are really good articles out there. The short answer is this: without Title 2 oversight of ISPs, your Internet provider, Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, whoever is free to do several things they currently can't. One is to block sites they have decided are places they don't want you to visit. More importantly, they can throttle data back to the 2400 baud days on certain services and sites, should they choose to. So, if you have (the mythic) Zowie Internet service, maybe they make a deal with Google, so if you're not using Chrome, things slow down for Opera, Safari, Firefox, MSEdge, or they make a deal with Microsoft so Edge and Bing work like magic, but Yahoo is a turtle.

 

And . . . if you want to visit ESPN, CNN, and another handful of sites, you can buy a monthly bundle! Think of the current TV streaming options on Sling, Hulu, YouTube Red, and probably a bunch more, and suddenly besides your normal connection fee (let's say Zowie charges you $50 a month for "Zippy!" at 50 Mbps) but only for those sites on their internal "approved list," and if you go off that list they cut the speed to 10 Mbps. You find that the latency on all the online games you play, Warcraft, Battlefield, world of Tanks, etc. is killing you, but if you pay $5 month for the Game Bundle, it's going to go to 20 Mbps, but for the "Elite Game Bundle," it's back to 50! So, another $5 a month gets the TV bundle, then another gets the movie bundle, the streaming sports bundles, etc.

OK, simple example, but that why I use the phrase, don't let them turn a freeway into toll roads. Those in favor of abolishing Net Neutrality have all sorts of BS reasons to explain why, but the answer is simple. It gives them another way to monetize the service and make more profits. Great for stockholders. Not so great for end users.

 

So, let your Congress creature and the FCC know you want no part of this!