Network Neutrality and Why You Need to Know About It.
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006Josh Marshall at TPM turned me on to this piece in the Washington Post. Telephone companies like AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon appear to be moving toward charging internet content providers like Yahoo and Google increased fees in exchange for premium service. In other words, if Yahoo pays more to the provider, Yahoo gets more air time on BellSouth’s network.
Advocacy groups, including Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and Free Press have lobbied Congress for the past year for legislation securing "network neutrality." To read more about their efforts check out PC World’s piece. Telecommunications companies also are lobbying Congress looking for new ways to pay for the expense of improving their networks.
How does this translate for consumers? If Verizon charges Apple more each time you download a song from Itunes, Apple’s cost will trickle down to you the consumer and you’ll start paying more per download.
The complexity of the problem grows deeper when you take into account that internet companies like Google are using more and more bandwidth without paying extra for it. Internet content providers pay a fee to connect their servers to the internet but currently they do not pay higher fees when they utilitize more network space.
If sites that pay higher fees to carriers enjoy greater access to networks, the information available to consumers may change drastically. Suddenly your search terms may not be the only factor in the equation.
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