I normally don’t like wading into political issues, but this one has got me really distressed. With the FCC’s decision to get rid of the rules for Net Neutrality, It has left the US in a situation that they may not realize that they’re in. Firstly not maintaining Net Neutrality is going to be hugely bad for business in general and It also comes within a hairs breath of a freedom of speech issue.
Let’s start with exactly what Net Neutrality is. When they HAD Net neutrality, it meant that the end consumer could freely surf the net and not be inhibited by what they had. People could go on Netflix and watch movies there, they could search ANYTHING on Google, and they could order whatever they wanted from Amazon (as a set of examples). Now with no net neutrality the cable companies can decide what streaming services you can use, what websites you can go on, and what online stores you are allowed to purchase from. The reason that cable companies can decide this is because they now have the ability to effectively “turn down” the download speed of certain sites. This means that if you’re with Comcast in the US and Netflix doesn’t have a deal in place with Comcast, then your streaming of Stranger Things will be horrendously slow. With internet demand being what it is, if you’re internet isn’t fast at a specific site or streaming service, you’re likely to go somewhere else.
Now I said that this could be a freedom of speech issue, the reason for that is that if companies have to pay a premium in order to get into the cable companies good books then the people who don’t have the correct service will not be able to see all the programming they could have access to. more over….If a news website doesn’t pay up, then they might not get the news in an unfiltered manner. If you can’t get then you won’t be able to see what’s actually going on in your nation or the world. This is an incredibly slippery slope.
The reason that this is very bad for business is two fold. Firstly, there is so much business done over the internet that hampering the people’s ability to use the internet will inevitably cause a downfall in business. If you, for example, are with Comcast and they don’t have a deal with Amazon that would give Amazon the ability to provide the best features of their store to Comcast’s customers. This would mean that Comcast has the ability to slow down Amazon’s download speeds so people will go somewhere else.
The second reason that this is bad for business is because of the innovation of Business Disruption. The Internet has been a quantum leap for people who would like to provide business solutions online. Mom and Pop shops have been able to access a market that they couldn’t have believed possible because instead of having to work solely with Brick and Mortar stores which make it so you have to rely on local patronage, they have been able to access a global market place. With Net Neutrality gone these mom and pop stores will not be able to pay what could possibly be the extremely high fees to have their sites run at the speeds required to do proper business.
Another example of business disruption causing good is a case like Netflix. Back in the day Blockbuster was how we got our movie rentals, full stop. When Netflix came along it didn’t so much turn the tables on the market of renting videos so much as it flipped the table over, set it on fire and danced around the embers. If they were to start in a world where Net Neutrality doesn’t exist then they would fail not so much because their service was bad, but because they will have to pay a possibly high fee to the cable companies even to exist that the business would become not profitable.
This is a fairly short post because this is all very fresh and quite frankly none of the things that I have mentioned here have come to past as of this posting. I am deep;y concerned about this spreading. If the internet isn’t a place where we can spread information as quickly and efficiently as possible then it will become a breading ground for misinformation and propaganda. I am so grateful that Canada supports Net Neutrality and the CRTC (Canadian Radio Television Commission) has previously taken efforts to preserve net neutrality.
What is your opinion on Net Neutrality?
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