Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Net Neutrality: House Amendment Shot Down
Tonight Ars Technica reported, "In a 23-8 vote, the [House Energy and Commerce] subcommittee [on telecommunications and the Internet] defeated an amendment proposed by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that would have enshrined the principle of network neutrality into US law. Such legislation would have prevented telcos and other ISPs from selectively throttling or passing through IP traffic on their networks."
This could be a huge deal for any provider of online content or services, especially major media organizations. If you haven't paid attention to the network neutrality issue, it's time to start caring. This could significantly affect your ability to reach your markets.
"Network Neutrality" is a guiding principle of network design which, according to Wikipedia, "asserts that, in order to promote innovation, network service providers such as telephone and cable internet companies should not be permitted to dictate how those networks are used."
...Well, it's a guiding principle for Internet users and geeks, at least -- not necessarily for telcos and ISPs.
Network neutrality has many implications, including one biggie: if net neutrality goes out the window, AT&T (or any other major telco) could decide to make some providers' online content or services a "higher priority" than others, and charge fees for the privilege of gaining priority. This could affect the speeds at which AT&T internet customers could connect to lower-priority sites -- or perhaps even their ability to connect at all.
Would telcos want to do that? Perhaps, especially if they could make more money that way. On Jan. 30, 2006, the Financial Times quoted AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre as saying, "I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network -- obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees -- but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud."
Sounds like a shakedown to me... What are your thoughts? Please comment below.
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