Why We can't Forget About Net Neutrality

As millions of Americans move to remote jobs and work-from-home solutions, the network neutrality debate becomes more important than ever. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are seeing unprecedented growth in data usage and connections during non-peak hours. Companies looking to send their employees home need to be sure that they have adequate internet speeds to work effectively. Net neutrality just became an element of productivity.

What is network neutrality?

Network neutrality, or net neutrality, is the concept of equal access to content by users on the internet and that all internet traffic should be treated the same, regardless of the source. It is the idea that Internet Service Providers cannot engage in differentiated pricing based on the amount of bandwidth consumed by the content being delivered to the user.

Why has the Internet operated under net neutrality up to this point in time?

In the US, net neutrality was protected by the FCC’s Open Internet rules, which mandated that all internet traffic be treated equally by ISPs and blocked them from requiring payments to access certain sites or services online. These rules were struck down by a federal appeals court in January 2014.

To preserve net neutrality, the FCC reclassified high-speed internet as a telecommunications service affording users strict protections against bandwidth throttling and blocking of content. In October 2019, the same court upheld the decision to allow the FCC to change the classification again, rolling back these protections at the Federal level, but not at the state level (Mozilla v. FCC, 2019). States like California, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington have already enacted legislation to protect net neutrality.

Why does this matter now?

Proponents of net neutrality include consumer protection groups, like the “Electronic Frontier Foundation” and the ACLU; companies whose services require large amounts of bandwidth, like Netflix; and internet companies who develop open-source solutions, like Mozilla. They argue that if ISPs were allowed to impose pricing scales, users would be prevented from accessing companies with greater bandwidth usage and that smaller companies wouldn’t be able to compete against established web businesses.

If ISPs switched to a tiered service model, individual users may be forced to pay for “packages,” similar to cable television, that contained the types of services that they wished to access or pay premiums to access high bandwidth users. Now that millions are performing work-related tasks at home, ISPs could create a "business tier" for individuals to keep adequate bandwidth for projects. Collaborative software like MicrosoftTeams and Zoom also require large amounts of bandwidth and companies could see an impact when trying to use those services.

ECommerce is also exploding due to more people sheltering in place. Small ebusinesses and startups could be forced out of the market as they may not be able to afford to be accessed by users or prioritized by the network owners. Larger companies may be blocked or slowed by ISPs to drive users to choose their own competing services and be priced out of reach of consumers. Government services online could be affected as they will be unable to compete with corporate pricing and would be spending citizen’s tax dollars to secure user access.

Without net neutrality protections, ISPs are allowed to slow down websites and services and charge both the content providers and users to connect with each other. Overall, prices would likely rise for consumers, while ISPs also charged companies and governments to use bandwidth and be visible and accessible.

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