Take a look at this image… This is a “mockup”, if you will, for service offerings for internet service post net neutrality. The basics of net neutrality is that everyone should have equal access and equal right to the internet, as it is today. It has been suspected that the big shareholders of the internet infrastructure are working towards is a tiered internet service. If exaggerated, it might look like the image above. You would also have to add a business and enterprise level of service to this chart. Both of which would be significantly higher than the prices reflected above.
So here’s my take on this stuff. If you look at television as, quite possibly, the closest reference, the above structure would be about right and I am happy to admit that I am not a fan of over priced, over advertised television channels. I watch my fair share of television, but find the packages irritating and want so badly to be able to pay for a few a la carte channels that I like the most and leave the rest behind. That being said, a packaged internet service will never happen. It’s not possible. Why? Because the internet is a living breathing network of computers and code. How would I be able to buy a domain and start a new site with this kind of system? Would I have to submit my site to the providers, for a fee, to be listed and made available in one of the packages? That’s the most retard internet related thought I have ever had…
Here’s the deal, the difference that providers seem to be ignoring between television and internet service is this… Any average Joe can’t just register a channel and start broadcasting to it from home for everyone to see. But that same average Joe can do that on the internet. That’s how it was built, that’s how it runs today and if ANY legislation is ever passed that locks down the way things are done in an attempt to make things look like the above picture, the whole thing will collapse and we will have a veritable internet prohibition on our hands.
For me, as much as I love technology and the internet, I would never subscribe to something that looks like the above image. I am willing to bet most people are in this boat, which I why I hope our “pals” up in Washington are plugged in enough to make educated and wise decisions regarding this “issue”.
I would also like to point out that the people putting sensationalist images, like the one above, together is not really helping to properly “inform” the general public. Unfortunately I understand that scare tactics and sensationalism seems to be the only way to get the attention of people so used to seeing it daily on our news channels, but it is my opinion that sensationalism does a disservice to the actual cause. But that’s a whole separate topic to tackle at another time.
More than likely, if net neutrality is taken away and a layered or tiered internet access is introduced, it would be more of a favoritism system rather than a package based system. Meaning this, businesses and the elite would pay a premium for faster, more direct access. Home based systems would take a backseat to this access and for their dollar get second level service from providers. In a way, this is already how it works, but my speed of access is only based on my monthly service plan. My connection to YouTube has the same priority as a connection to YouTube from a fortune 500 connection. Without net neutrality, my connection would be held up, so to speak, to make more room for the much important corporate Joe trying to get his stupid animal videos fix.
It’s actually sad how low on the broadband totem pole the US is compared to many other countries. So what do ya say Washington, why don’t we dive a little deeper into the broadband race to get more speed and more access to more people and stop letting the almighty big business dollar try to run things…
This is a great post, Kamen. I’ve read a lot about this in the past, but had no idea we could be facing a tiered website package choice. How would that ever work, considering there are billions of websites? How do you categorize them? I hope they never figure out how. They’re being very sneaky about this, too. I’m not sure if you heard, but there was a public hearing about net neutrality in Washington D.C. late last year where the public was encouraged to comment and ask questions. Comcast very sneakily hired audience members to sit in on the conference and fill all the seats in the auditorium so no one from the actual public had any chance of coming. Even the media was turned away because of the sheer volume of people in the room already. That makes me sick. Evil, greedy corporations!