We’ve been debating Net Neutrality for more than 20 years. In that time, the internet's gone through substantial changes, and maybe those old concerns about an open and equal internet might no longer be a concern?
Not even close.
If anything, the concerns of 1996 are of greater importance and urgency today, as media-conglomerates like Comcast and Verizon take control of both the pipelines for internet access and content with alarming regularity. Then there's the last champion of Net Neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission, with their new chairman: Ajit Pa, who's made it crystal clear that he's got no love for the FCC Net Neutrality Rules enacted in 2015.
SEE ALSO:Under Trump, dark days ahead for net neutrality and the open internetWhether or not it's true, it’s time to face facts: Net Neutrality's as good as dead.
Not to be doomsayers, but it's time to buckle up: There's a load of impacts, many of them not good, that can happen the moment ISP’s can choose which content they want on their networks, what speeds they want to serve it at, and how much they want to charge you for content they own versus content other people own.
Here's a look at what life is like when Net Neutrality's no longer the law of the land:
Broadband's filling up with companies that own both the pipes and the content that flows through them. Think back to the early days of cinema, when movie studios owned the theaters their movies played. It was an unhealthy alliance that shut out smaller studios who didn’t own theaters from distributing other films, and competing with, for instance, Paramount Studios on a level playing field. The U.S. government stepped in in 1948 and broke up this monopoly.
But a new monopoly's being created now. When ISPs and wireless service providers also own broadcast networks (Comcast and NBC/Universal) or even Google Fiber and YouTube, it can lead to them favoring access to their content over other independent shows and movies.
This is why people are freaking out about "zero rating." If you don’t have to eat up mobile data to stream this week’s episode of NBC-Comcast's This Is Usbecause you’re also a Comcast customer, you may wonder why you don’t get the same benefit streaming the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait. CBS is put at an unfair disadvantage here, because you're now incentivized to watch only NBC shows, thereby starving the competition of viewers and, potentially, ad dollars.
With that in mind, think of a company like Netflix, which, by some measures, accounts for more than a third of the internet’s bandwidth usage, could find that fewer people are tuning into the next season of Stranger Things because it’s costlier. And so on.
So what's Netflix do when they start losing subscribers, because their content is more expensive to watch? They charge their shrinking subscriber base more money, of course.
Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video might also find that service producers want to start charging them more for their excessive bandwidth needs. That cost will be passed along to consumers, as well. In the meantime, the ISPs and wireless providers that have content partners may give all of them a free pass, creating a massive content highway imbalance.
Those smaller content platforms like Crackle? Hope you enjoyed them while they lasted. They're gonna be hard-pressed to pay ISP carrier fees, and their choices will be to sell out to conglomerates, or fold up altogether.
Amazon's the world’s most popular online shopping site. The New York Timesis the preeminent news source. Netflix is your go-to-binge site. And so on. One day, long after Net Neutrality's dead and buried, you go online through your phone or desktop, and every time you type in “Amazon,” the web browser opens the Home Shopping Network (HSN). As a Charter Communications customer, you’re confused, until you realize that Liberty Media owns a minority stake in Charter, and owns 100% of the Home Shopping Network. HSN isn't Amazon, but surely, it’ll work for you.
Extreme? Maybe, but there will soon be nothing stopping ISPs from building Amazon, NYT and Netflix knockoffs whose service they legally can prioritize over the other websites.
If a media conglomerate decided to stream a major sports event to all its customers, it may prioritize that bandwidth over other streaming content. Don’t like the Super Bowl? Fine, enjoy some 2G-speed Netflix, or some stuttering multi-player video-gaming. Have fun with that.
No one in this world's truly neutral. So why wouldn’t we expect ISPs to have a point of view? Without the FCC and Net Neutrality rules to stop them, ISPs could offer better access to some websites over others—maybe right-leaning or left-leaning sites over one another. Maybe it pulls all the content it doeswant you to see onto an accessible proxy server, while leaving everything else lost in the open internet wilderness.
Proponents of ending Net Neutrality will tout de-regulation and greater competition, which could—theoretically—lead to greater innovation and lower prices for online access. That may be somewhat true for mobile broadband providers, where there's decent competition, and plenty of programs tailored to foster our mobile binge-watching habits, regardless of who provides that content. But fixed broadband offers regional consumers few (if any) competitive choices.
In addition, ISPs and carriers clearly aren’t satisfied with serving bits and bytes to consumers. They want access to the more lucrative and dynamic creative side, as well. In the space of two years, Verizon's acquired AOL and Yahoo. Both companies deliver content that could compete with websites, media companies and cable networks that remain unaffiliated with broadband companies.
And broadband and wireless service providers will continue buying content companies, while media orphans increasingly struggle to find open, agnostic ways to access audience. They'll be stuck in neutral.
And this will be our new net reality. Get ready for what's to come.
TopicsNet Neutrality
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