We have come far from the early days of the Internet. During the past decades, Internet has changed the way we communicate and do business. It has enabled variety of new innovative business models that we couldn’t even imagine back in the days. But still, the era of Internet is a small glimpse in a larger timeline of human life. A lot has already happened and changed, but we are still in the early stages of this technological revolution. The future of Internet has yet to come.
One of the biggest questions, deciding the direction of the Internet in the future, is the question about net neutrality? What does that even mean? For most of the people the term ‘net neutrality’ says absolutely nothing. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers (ISP) and governments should treat all data equally, not discriminating or charging differently by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment or mode of communication. One way, we could think this as a question about who owns the Internet. Are ISPs the ones who decide which contents we are allowed to consume or should we think Internet as a pubic utility?
Earlier today, President Barack Obama took a stance to the matter of net neutrality. He released a statement where he says that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should reclassify Internet as a utility. In the statement President Obama emphasized the importance of open and free Internet for economy and everyday life. The rules, President Obama is asking FCC to implement, include: no blocking, no throttling, increased transparency and no paid prioritization. He also specifically mentions that these rules should be made fully applicable to mobile broadband as well. At the moment this is where Obama stands with net neutrality, but it doesn’t mean that we are going to see any changes in regulations. Like President Obama says in the statement: “The FCC is an independent agency, and ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
What does all this mean in practice? What would happen if there were no net neutrality? ISPs are the ones provide and sell the connection to the Internet. They build the network and charge us for using it. That’s their business. So far we have been living in the world of open and free Internet, which means that providers have been allowing consumers to use Internet as they want. Obviously Internet providers want more control over their product to benefit their own businesses. If net neutrality was required by law, Internet providers would be only responsible for providing the connectivity. And this is how things have been so far.
One of the application types Internet providers would like to implement is so called Internet fast lanes. This means that ISPs could make deals with web-based services and offer faster connections to these certain sites and slow down the competitive services. Another example is providing mobile data plans where you have unlimited access to only certain social media services. This doesn’t sound too bad or world shaking, but the idea behind it is nothing less than scary. If Internet providers were able to make these kind of profit-driven actions without caring about net neutrality, what other kind of actions could they make in the future? Maybe they could grant our access to content that is bad for their business? Even start censoring media? This is just the worst-case scenario, but there is lot to think about here. Would you like to give the power to consumers or the providers in the future?
As a consumer and marketing professional, my opinion is that Internet should remain as open and free in the future as possible. The Foundation of Internet is based on openness and freedom, and that’s what has got us this far. If people won’t recognize this and keep fighting for net neutrality we can say good buy to the Internet, as we know it today.
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