Net Neutrality

Net neutrality means that the telecom/cable/satellite/wireless networks that connect you to the Internet have to allow you to access anything on the Internet equally, without making it easier to connect to one site vs. another.

But first, let’s break network neutrality down into a real world example.  Say you’ve just launched a website that focuses on delivering the best reviews and news about apps, games and devices.  Pretend you call it AppConsumer.com, like I did mine. Let’s say the traffic is going thru the charts in just the first few days, blowing away even your highest expectations for the site.

And then let’s say since you use Google Ads and since Google searches are starting to drive traffic to your awesome app review site that somebody at Google says, “Hey, we should get into the app, game, and device reviews and news business like those guys at AppConsumer.com.”  Google also knows just how huge the growth in searches for app reviews and news that I’ve cited on here many times lately is.

Anyway, the point is, let’s say Google decides to start a direct competitor to your company.  Google starts adding lots of very expensively-developed technologies to their app reviews website, but the networks are clogged because of people still coming to your site and other small-business-owned app reviews and news websites, so Google says to Verizon and the other carriers: “Look, we’ll pay you if you’ll carry our content and make it work better on your networks than anybody else’s.  Especially those damn rebels at AppConsumer.com!” (http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2010/08/12/net-neutrality-explained/)

History

By 1907, the US government openly agreed that the “One Policy, One System, Universal Service” model touted by AT&T President Theodore Vail could best provide the telephone to the public without the trouble of competitors developing incompatible systems. And the rest, they say, is history.

Throughout the next 70 years, AT&T would enjoy its status as a government-sanctioned monopoly. Through control of telephone manufacture and connection, 22 Bell Operating Companies, the decisions of local municipalities, government encouragement and insurmountable incumbency, AT&T was unmatched until its empire crumbled on January 8, 1982.

In 1974, the US Department of Justice alleged that profits from the dominant phone manufacturer and wholly-owned subsidiary, Western Electric, were being used to subsidize AT&T’s network in violation of antitrust law.  The ensuing United States vs. AT&T case stretched eight years until the winter of 1982, when Judge Harold H. Greene decreed that AT&T’s 22 Bell Operating Companies would be split and reorganized into seven separate Regional Bell Operating Companies, or RBOCs. The monopoly breakup took effect on January 1, 1984, and several big names in corporate history were born: Ameritech, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell, Bellsouth, Bell Atlantic, Nynex and US West.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major rework of US telecom law since 1934. The TCA was at the time considered an act to provide a new competitive telephone market in the United States.A 1995 House report optimistically wrote that the Act was “to provide for a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework” designed to rapidly accelerate information services deployment “by opening all telecommunications markets to competition.”

Unfortunately for consumers, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had several fatal flaws that continue to have a chilling effect on US telecom policy.  Foremost, the act was primarily concerned with the traditional telephone. Neither broadband nor cellular services were substantial at the time the bill was created. This means that a patchwork of FCC rulings, minor legislation and snap judgments have served in place of real policy for nearly a decade.  The act also draws a distinction between a “common carrier” and an “information service.” Carriers that offer information services, e.g. broadband, are not subject to the interconnection and pro-competition clauses of the act. (http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/a-net-neutrality-history-lesson-how-us-telecom-became-such-a-trainwreck/)