”Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers treat all data on the Internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.”—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
The net neutrality principles say, ISP should provide access to all content, that is without favoring or blocking any information regardless of the source. It insists ISP’s treat all internet traffic equally. Net neutrality was an issue in US agenda for many years, but we can say this is an issue that affects people all over the world.
Net Neutrality And Internet Providers
The term net neutrality was introduced by a Columbia University law professor Tim Wu in 2003. There were many common issues he can point to be as an example for net neutrality at that time, such as Comcast, banned home internet users from accessing virtual private networks (VPNs), whereas other ISP giants like AT&T, banned users from using Wi-Fi routers. He was concerned about this internet providers tendency to restrict new technologies would hurt innovation in the long term. The FCC, Federal Communications Commission took the first pass in Net neutrality rules. The FCC, Congress, and other leaders and communities debated hardly many times whether and how to protect network neutrality. In 2008, FCC ordered a rule asking Comcast to stop slowing connections for BitTorrent software, which is using for digital piracy, but Comcast defended FCC by stating the agency had overstepped its bounds. In 2010, the Obama-era FCC passed a detailed net neutrality order that it hoped would stand up to legal scrutiny.FCC passed a more detailed net neutrality order in 2010, but that was again sued by Verizon ISP. The court also ruled against the agency stating they didn’t have the privilege to implement net neutrality regulations on any services that weren’t considered as common carriers. FCC approved new, stronger network neutrality rule in February 2015, which regulate internet access like a public utility. The Federal court finally sided with the agency, ruling that 2015 rules are legal. But things were changed when in 2017, President Trump appointed Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai as the agency’s new chair. He came up with a new plan to reverse the 2015 net neutrality rule. In 2017, the 2015 FCC rules were thrown out and new rules came in action. The new rules only require ISP’s to disclose their network-management practices information. ?
HOW THE NEW FCC RULES AFFECT NET NEUTRALITY?
Giant Tech companies like Google and Facebook and other consumer groups support net neutrality rule fight against these new rule changes. The 2015 net neutrality rule prohibited the internet providers from blocking or slowing down the traffic and banned their attempts to provide fast lanes to companies who pay extra. But the new rule changed all this. FTC, Federal Trade Commission would be the new authority to regulate broadband providers. FTC lacks the rule-making authority of FCC. Their regulation only applies to companies’ voluntary public commitments, so unless the broadband providers and carriers make a mistake in writing basic net neutrality principals FTC is not allowed to take action.
The repeal of FCC also took of the ban which stops the internet providersfrom charging an internet service, such as Netflix or YouTube, an extra fee for delivering faster speed to customers. This is one of the major point net neutrality supporters fight for, as this can hurt startups who cannot afford such large internet fees. ?
Death of Net neutrality
But Pai rejected all these arguments stating it is too restrictive and will create problems to ISP’s to try different business plans based on data caps. The only sector left behind from the earlier net neutrality rules are the broadband providers have to disclose how they manage their networks.?
FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT NET NEUTRALITY
- Net neutrality does not affect big companies like Yahoo and Google, as they don’t have to pay higher prices for higher bandwidth.
- Big broadband companies like Comcast have control of the market with less incentive to ?market with little incentive to protect Net Neutrality.
- FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who is in favor of repeal states that better profits to the broadband providers wil helps them expand internet services to the rural parts of America (Experts doesn’t agree with this opinion).
- According to a recent survey by University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, more than 80% of people are against the repeal of Net Neutrality.
- More than 70% of people in the survey opposed allowing broadband providers charging websites for more fast lanes.
- With the repeal, we can say Net Neutrality is officially dead.
- Without Net neutrality rules, we have to expect internet will change in the future, with higher rates, lower speeds and blocked content.
WHO SUPPORTS NET NEUTRALITY?
Net neutrality Supporters
Net Neutrality supporters still fight for the internet equality. They continue pushing state legislatures to pass their net neutrality measures. They have filed lawsuits to reinstate the old rules. Many tech companies like Vimeo, Mozilla, Foursquare, Kickstarter and Etsy, and several state attorneys general, also have launched lawsuits against the FCC to preserve the net neutrality rules. As a result of such net neutrality supporting activities, countries including California, New York, Connecticut and Maryland etc are considering to reinstall net neutrality rules in their borders. ?
INTERNET USAGE
The internet usage is increasing day by day, and which makes internet an inevitable part of our daily life. Internet providers are using this opportunity to get more profits with various internet packages according to our internet needs.
FCC Chairman, Ajith Pai
FCC chairman, Ajit Pai says that the extra profit earn by Internet providers will be useful for them in increasing their coverage to the remote areas of the USA, and that in turn will be beneficial to the country itself. Most internet providers shares great internet deals and offers to the customers at times, and also comes with various internet plans with different data caps. Refer Sites like Getprovider.com which help us know in detail about various internet providers in our area, pricing and packages they offer to the customers. We can easily compare the internet providers data to choose one among according to our needs. Net Neutrality makes ISP’s to treat all website traffic the same, irrespective of the source.
LATEST UPDATES ON NET NEUTRALITY
- US Senate voted to reverse the repeal of net neutrality rules by FCC. The discharge petition needs 218 signatures, and the recent news reports that they have earned 172 signatures from representatives and in short of just 46 votes…
- Whereas in California, the Senate passed the bill to impose strict net neutrality rules recently.
- The FCC approved a “notice of proposed rulemaking” (NPRM) making an open internet proposal available for public review and voting. FCC is encouraging people to participate in this survey.
- Those who are interested can submit their opinion to Docket 14–28: “Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet. Comments through email are also accepted to [email protected]
Note: You are submitting a document to FCC & any information you submit to this e-mail or portal will be publicly available via the web.
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