Net Neutrality

The Net Neutrality issue, shorter for Network Neutrality, raises the question to know whether it is more neutral to allow all Internet users to access whatever content they want, equally; or to let Internet Service Providers (ISP) discriminate in order to make more money. Different views oppose in this national concern. Some preach for the status quo on the Internet, whereas others ask for a regulated Internet. Finally, a third view is to let ISP charge websites so they have a larger bandwidth, and thus a better visibility on the web. The Net Neutrality debate raises financial, legal, and social questions.

The Telephone Companies (Telco) want to use their direct access to the cable or fibber that brings Internet to our houses to limit the speed at which we can load a page of a big bandwidth hog (Google, Yahoo, Amazon to name but a few) on our Internet browser. And to have a more acceptable bandwidth a website (let’s say Amazon.com) would have to pay a fee to the Telephone Companies, which already receive a monthly fee from the individuals using its services. The ISPs claim that they need more money to develop the networks. They argue that a protection of Net Neutrality would ‘inhibit their ability to co-ordinate traffic flows and guarantee quality of service’ (Business week). It is true that 71% of the Americans are using the Internet (S. Biagi, Media/Impact: an introduction to mass media), and with the apparition of video websites like YouTube (youtube.com) or the explosion of social networks like FaceBook (Facebook.com), which has more than 200M members, the ISP are solicited more than ever to grant a perfect access to the users.

The Defenders of the Net Neutrality are of two sorts though. On the one hand, we can find the Giants of the Web, Google for instance, that are fighting for their own interests, and the ones of their users, on the other hand, stand those ‘hostile to market based approaches’ (Armed & Dangerous) who are opposed to ISP, collecting money from both sides of the pipes, the users, and the content providers. Google, on a dedicated webpage of its Help Center, explain that the lack of Net Neutrality would forbid people to freely reach any content they want on the Internet. It would therefore penalize both the users and the company, which would have to pay to provide its content with a satisfying quality. Those companies want an act to be voted by the government to protect the Net Neutrality, basis on which Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. But at the same time, besides some statements coming from the Telco in which they emit the idea of controlling the bandwidth, there is no proven evidence of a market failure, nor that a bill would solve all the problems. Moreover, determining whether the FCC can regulate the control of data transfer would make jurisprudence, and it could be a reason why the Internet Freedom Preservation Act 2008, designed by Republican and Democrats senators to protect the Net Neutrality, has not been voted by the House of Representatives yet (opencongress.org). Some would rather see no governmental intervention on the Net Neutrality issue. Internet Protocol (IP) co-founder states that a law, regulating the Net Neutrality, would interfere with the work of developer, and limit the innovation that could appear on the web (theregister.co.uk). Meanwhile, associations, like savetheinternet.com, are leading actions to prevent the rights of the consumers.

I would define myself as a partisan of the Net Neutrality. I see the web as a free place to access to whatever I want, whenever, and wherever. I think the Net Neutrality debate is first of all a financial concern for the different actors of the Internet. The Telco want to make more money by taxing the users on both side of the fibber. At the Q1 of 2009, AT&T earned more than $3B, so do they really need more money to improve their facilities? At the same time, the giants such as Google don’t want to lower their revenue by paying something they’ve always had (no charge for providing content), while they’ve earned some $5.5B during the Q1 of 2009. Google by not paying this hypothetical fee to the Telco would probably see their frequentation decrease. It would then be a windfall, for let’s say Yahoo! who by paying the fee would still provide a good quality service and attract the frustrated former Google users. But the smaller websites, with lower amount of cash, would be those who would suffer from this. That echoes to the Payola story, in which the biggest music major would pay radio DJs to have their latest hits played more often, here the biggest companies would pay to keep their audience. It also reminds of the model used by Cable TV, in which the user only pays for the channels he wants to see. Could the Internet use such a model? ‘Oh, I just paid for Google access this month; I don’t ‘watch’ Yahoo! that much!’ Not even imaginable. The strength of the Internet resides in the diversity and the democracy it offers.

The Telco are trying to cool down the debate right now. They pretend that they won’t do anything, because as AT&T CEO, E. Whitacre, explains, by blocking access to content, an ISP is inviting customers to find another provider (ZDNet.com). Nevertheless, a status quo would leave time to the telecommunication giants to coordinate their actions; as an alliance, or an agreement between them cannot be excluded on the policy to follow (just as did the three French Mobile operators by defining a common policy for the prices in the late 1990’s). Actions must be taken to protect the weakest: the consumers, and the smallest web content contributors. But the major concern is still for the Internet users. By blocking or limiting the access to websites, the ISP could have the opportunity to decide which content a user can access. At long, it would be a risk for opinion diversity. And it would more likely enhance the current trend of media conglomerates. Time Warner, which owns AOL (Internet Service Provider), and CNN.com (one of the most read news blog) won’t have any difficulty keeping its ‘web customers’. But the web consumers may lack a balancing point of view. Or, as Tim Wu, the first to use ‘Net Neutrality’ as an expression suggests on Slate.com, how to transform the meritocratic land that is Internet into a discriminatory (cyber)space.