For Being Neutral, You Sure Are Angry

"And so we have to change the business model. And then we don't need to have net neutrality..."

France Telecom Chairman Didier Lombard in an interview with Steve Forbes

There are two general models followed in the Internet service business, usage-based and unlimited. Under the usage-based model a customer purchases an allotted amount of data that is permitted to flow through his connection every month; very similar to typical wireless phone service (voice only). Once the limit for a month has been reached, much like your wireless phone service, the customer is charged for the excess data transerred over his connection. The usage-based model is used by larger business customers, institutions, web hosting companies, and web service companies (like Google and Yahoo).

Consumers' access to the Internet, on the other hand, mostly follows the unlimited model. Using this model the average consumer pays a flat, monthly fee (it may vary by level of "speed") for access to an unlimited amount of data usage. And until recently this model has worked. Consumers received a speedy connection and the ISPs earned enough of a margin to fund improvements to their networks, which were being increasingly taxed by usage-based customers.

What happened? Youtube, Skype, Google Docs, DropBox, iTunes, [Insert data-rich web service here] happened. Consumer Internet traffic transformed from text, images and email to movies, music, documents and video chats. Did the unlimited data model change? Nope.

The net neutrality debate could quickly fade away if the business model serving the consumers were to change. Think about it, if consumers were to pay for their access based on actual usage ISPs would not have any incentive to throttle access to high-traffic, data-rich sites as those sites would become revenue producers. On the consumer end of things, low data users could see their access costs drop and regions with high-data users could see improvements to network infrastructure as the ISPs work to make it easier for you to use more data.

oh COME ON!

The web is meant to be open and free! How can companies limit access to something that is put out there for the public to browse for FREE!? how do you limit the WORLD WIDE WEB? In that sense I definitely do not agree that companies have the right to charge for access to certain sites. As far as certain speeds go though, I think that can be understood. I like the example the writer gave in the SFGATE-BUSINESS INSIDER article, about the post office: You pay more for overnight or 2day shipping. If you want the higher speed broadband then you simply pay slightly more. That’s business. That is the Internet providers personal service, not them blocking out someone else’s website/business.

I am not exactly sure how net neutrality should be legally applied to the web. I think the Internet should remain neutral all around–the end. Even after reading all of our articles, I don’t understand why the government would want it either or why companies would try to do this. I just don’t understand WHY. If website content is free then why limit us to that free website by charging us a fee?

I think it is going to be impossible to do this anyway. Seriously, every single day, every single hour, people are coming up with ways to get around websites and emails and viruses and hacking and the list goes on and on…Even if net neutrality was to be triumphed upon, there would be a way around it. The Internet is an open source, the millions of users would just thrash it one way or another. Do we really need to deal with more legal issues with something like the Internet, when we’ve got bigger issues to kill? I mean, they’ve already got us being tracked and privacy issues are being challenged, so much openness with so much blockage doesn’t work. It’s one or the other. You track us or block access. I don’t know, just a thought, the worldwide web cannot be limited. It is infinite.

New prompt: Net Neutrality

Since the moment of the realization that the Internet could become a commercial arena, the issue of net neutrality has been an issue. Should the web remain open and free, or do companies have the right to charge for access to certain sites, or at certain speeds?

This week, take a position on this long and hotly debated issue. Be sure to demonstrate you understand the widespread implications of net neutrality, but create a short argument for how you think net neutrality should be legally applied to the web.

Is it important to free speech, democracy, and the economy that it remain open to all? Or is it fair in a capitalist system that companies should charge for access to certain sites, or charge more for higher-bandwidth uses, especially considering that some users use far more bandwidth than others?