What does the FCC net neutrality mean to us?

Published on: March 05th, 2015

The quick answer is I do not know.  More my opinion is actually mixed as to whether is it a good things or a bad thing.  I’ve seen some arguments on both sides of the fence here.  This going to probably get a little political which I try to avoid in most my Business discussion.  My personal political line (at least I think so) are neither Republican nor Democrat.  I do tend to be more Republican minded in business matters and Democrat in Social matters.  As this is going to be more of an Editorial, I felt a needed to disclose that before going into this.

PC magazine has written what I think is a pretty good article on this.  You can read it here.   I do believe they take a positive spin to it.

On the Con side of this ruling with what I have seen mostly argued by republicans.  The argument is by classifying ISPs (Internet Service Provider) as a utility, opening the door for regulation, means once again government is preventing “free trade”.   That leads to more taxation, less innovation, and less people wanting to invest.  Which in turn mean slower or no advancement in technology.

On the Pro side of this, it is creates an equal and fair playing field for competitive trade.  As well as protects the consumers rights.  Lets be honest here, how many end consumers know all that is involved in getting that “internet services” delivered to you.  How many know that the ISP can set specific limits on what you can do on the service they provide?  Even if you are paying for the absolute top tier of service, did you know they could still limit you, either based on what your downloading (ex. Netflix), or even how much you have downloaded in a period?  This link is an article that covers some of the limitation some ISP have place on their subscribers.  Please keep in mind that article is a little dated and many not be currently accurate, it is just to support that ISP can and have placed limits on our service.  In Austin, Texas, we have it good.  Google fiber is threatening the dominate two (At&t and Time Warner Cable) and that is driving both the prices down and service offering up.  However, that is not true in most places – many places do not get a choice at all, there is only one provider.

Net Neutrality is more then about bandwidth capping, however.  It is also about the potential for ISPs to sell “fast lanes” or Toll lanes to internet services.  The common example given is Netflix, but it could be anything really.  Any video streaming service, or music streaming service or a particular web site.   Is it fair for ISPs to charge the consumer for a service but then also charge the other side of it as well?  Consider in the US on avg. we pay higher rates for slower service than in other countries – is that fair?    One argument on the dissenting side would be by allowing the service provider to sell “fast lanes”, it would lower the prices to the consumer.   If that truly would happen than maybe Net Neutrality is a bad thing.   That most certainly is true in other areas of technology.  Look a search engines such as Google, yahoo, and Bing or Social Media such as twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Not only do they give you a web site to find other web sites for free or post your most intimate personal information but they also now give you free email and cloud based applications.   Think about the majority of websites out there that sell no products or services but provide some sort of informative outlet all at no cost to the consumer.   Look at our mobile Apps, that we download for free on our iDevices, Android and Windows.  All for “free” or so the consumer might think.

On the other hand, how many consumers actually know that all that free stuff is paid for by advertisements? That ad that shows up on the top, side or bottom is what makes “free”.   How many consumers know that some of those sites, apps and services are not only delivering Ads to you, but they are also capturing information about you when you use them?  When you send that email using gmail or yahoo, or when searching on something on a search engine or posting something on Facebook, do you know everything is index and categorized?  Apps on your mobile device might capture your GPS location.  All of this so they can deliver “better  ads” to you.  Ads that are “relevant to you”.  Giving you “relevant ad content” allows them to charge the advertiser more.  Look at the windows PC market, not only has the price continued to be driven down by competition but the windows computer maker(HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, etc.) now gets paid to install benign forms of malware or trail-ware on your computer? Does some of this offer us a benefit in some way?  If I am shopping with my wife, she is in some women’s shop, I sitting outside holding her purse playing candy crush and an ad comes up that has an awesome price on an awesome computer at a store near by, is that bad?   Does the majority of consumers actually know all this and accept it much like we accept commercials on TV?   Does the consumer actually care or feel they should be at least told?

Is selling a toll lane fair to all consumers?  You like Netflix; Netflix has paid the toll for the fast lane to the ISP,  but I like Vudu or Hulu and they have not paid the toll – is that fair trade because every service provider could pay the toll – or – does create a situation were the ISP now dictates and controls which sites or services you use.  Does that create an environment where it is more coercion and monopolistic?

I’m left wondering is buyer beware good enough?  When it comes to signing up for internet service are they truly given in English that the average consumer can understand all the information? Are they told the limitations; is there a download cap; do you pay more when you hit the cap or is it throttled back; who has paid the toll for the fast lane; etc.   Are they truly given an informed choice or do they simply buy based on the advertised features and price?  Or is there no other choice?  Is all of this just to overwhelming for the avg. consumer to reasonably understand?  I think buyer beware and industry that is self regulated by informed buyer choice is ideal.  However does the choice exist and does informed buyer exist (commonly)? I am all for small government, for government getting out of the way  of business and less regulation.  In the end, I still want food service employees to wash their hands after they use the restroom and government to require it and regulate it.

I do not believe ISPs should be allowed to dictate or control what you have access to or if one site or service is allowed to pay for a fast lane.  The questions however are:

1. should it be government regulated or by consumer demand/choice?
2. is there actually a real consumer choice – that would regulate it?  (the choice of you either use the only internet service that is available and accept everything as it is – is not truly a choice)