Is Google your primary search engine? If so, why do you use it? If you’re anything like me, it’s because Google helps you find what you’re looking for, and it’s fast. As a Google user, can you imagine switching to Yahoo search as your primary search engine? Considering just speed for a second, how slow would Google have to become compared to Yahoo before you decided to make the switch? That’s a question you may have to ask yourself again in a few years if telephone companies start charging for prioritized bandwidth on their networks.

Washington Post reported last week (The Coming War Over the Internet) that “… you may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly responds much faster to your inquiries, overriding your affinity for Google. Or that Amazon’s Web site seems sluggish compared with eBay’s.” Under this scenario, a company like Yahoo could pay for prioritized bandwidth, causing their site’s content to be delivered faster than Google’s. Communications companies, including AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth see prioritized bandwidth as a way to generate new revenue from content providers. This is a hot issue deserving attention from internet users because congress is updating the 1996 Telecommunications Act this year.

Not sure how this would effect you? Marketwatch.com has reported that BellSouth’s CTO, Bill Smith, “suggested that Apple Computer might be asked to pay a nickel or a dime to insure the complete and rapid transmission of a song via the Internet, which is being used for more and more content-intensive purposes.” Would Apple happily absorb that dime per download, or pass along the costs to you, the consumer? The answer is pretty obvious. But more importantly, aren’t we already paying for this content with our ISP bill? Doesn’t this degrade the quality of consumer’s online experience? As Randall Stross put it in the January 15th New York Times (registration required),  “Woe to us all if the Internet’s content is limited by the companies who also handle the plumbing.”

The break from network neutrality does nothing improve internet performance for consumers, and will lead to increased costs passed on from companies being charged an additional bandwidth toll. Is this a good thing?

Yes, according to Mark Cuban, who provides a compelling example of why we need prioritized bandwidth:

That’s certainly a compelling argument for multiple tiers - especially compared to charging a toll on iTunes downloads - but who decides which services are mission critical? A case can certainly be made for protecting mission critical web applications, such as medical diagnostics equipment without turning the web into a set of basic and premium channels like we have with cable TV today.

Major web sites, including Google and Yahoo share the belief that network bandwidth costs are currently shared by themselves and consumers. They pay for bandwidth leaving their buildings; consumers pay for bandwidth entering their homes and businesses. They’re lobbying for “network neutrality” and they seem to hold the high cards in this debate, as Jeff Pulver explains:

Yes, I do believe Google has a better hand to play.

So, what’s the answer? How do we provide faster, more reliable, and cheaper access to consumers? Do we bow to companies that have failed to provide bandwidth speeds comparable other countries - Verizon’s $20/megabit connections vs. France’s $1.80/megabit - to selectively improve the quality of our infrastructure through additional tolls, or do we legislate network neutrality like other countries have done? Here are a few quotes that connected with me while studying this issue:

Lawrence Lessig: Broadband is infrastructure ?¢Ç«®Çƒ˘ like highways, if not railroads. If you rely upon “markets” alone to provide infrastructure, you?¢Ç«®Ç—¢ll get less of it, and at a higher price.

Om Malik: “[the] consumer, not Yahoo or Apple is [the telephone company's] first and primary customer.”

Christopher Stern: “The Republican-led Congress is struggling with the issue. On one hand, it has taken a deregulatory approach to the Internet, but on the other, it can’t ignore the concerns of Google, Yahoo and eBay, some of the most successful companies of the last 10 years. These companies alone have built up businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars on an unfettered Internet. Moreover, unfettered Internet access has come to be seen by Americans in general as not just a privilege or a product, but a right akin to free speech and free association.”

Vint Cerf: “The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation.”

Tying those together:

1. I want to see Yahoo beat Google by providing a better service rather than prioritized bandwidth.

2. I want to see network providers compete for my business by regularly improving my bandwidth at a competitive price.
3. Due to the heavy concentration of internet service in the hands of a few providers today, a lack of regulation has more potential to create poor service than legislation mandating network neutrality.

Is legislating network neutrality a must-have? Possibly not, but how could it hurt? Let’s add network neutrality to Telecommunications Act so we can get back to creating and delivering great content rather than squibbling over this anti-growth internet strategy?

Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts below, and call your elected officials to make sure they know where you stand on this important issue.

Share This