Net Neutrality

The subject of net neutrality is one near and dear to my heart.  I was involved in the creation of the world’s first VoIP platforms and services.  VoIP as an application would not work well on a dial-up modem, due to the slow speeds. Broadband Internet was the only way to deploy VoIP.  I was involved in creating networks connecting several different countries to US based traditional switching services.  The government PTT’s, within several of those countries tried to stop the spread of VoIP, for the fear of losing revenue and control of their resident legacy telephone services. Packet switching was merely replacing circuit based switching technology.  Legacy telephone companies held onto 100 year old technology in order to hold on to the revenue stream it produced. Then along came the internet, which threatened their positions of power control and money.

I gave a talk at Stanford, to a group of PTT directors from South America in 1998.  They walked away knowing that they could not hang on to their legacy circuit switched networks, without modifications toward packet switched technology entering the picture for voice traffic over data lines.  The Internet was coming and so was VoIP, like it or not, they had to embrace it.

The reason that I bring this up is that we are going through the same thing now, but it did not take 100 years to get here it only took 15 years.  Entertainment content is currently delivered by cable, satellite and terrestrial radio/ TV broadcasting.  Several monopolies exist, or rather oligopolies.  They are afraid of losing their legacy system of billing customers for content delivery.  They want to keep power, control and the money associated with this legacy system. They are trying to put the genie back inside of the bottle; the bottle that they helped expand and create. 

Broadband Internet can be accessed in several different ways.  Directly through a T-1 line; from network service providers, digital subscriber line (DSL) services; from your phone company, wireless/satellite and mobile services (yes, there is s difference), or a cable modem offered by your local cable company.  The connectivity and bandwidth required to deliver cable television programming is similar to provisioning broadband Internet services.  Broadband Internet can also support the delivery of rich media content, not unlike the same content provided by cable and satellite TV services.  There in lays the problem; the cable and satellite companies do not want to give up their hold on delivering this rich media content, so they must stop the open Internet from being the conduit for accessing entertainment and information media; not unlike the phone companies trying to stop voice from going over the Internet. 

Open access requirements must be kept in place in order to allow for innovations in rich media technology to occur.  Legal bottlenecks create an artificial shortage which monopolistic companies can exploit.  Free the Internet and keep it free from regulation, is the idea behind the concept of net neutrality.

Net Neutrality is the idea that restrictions created by internet service providers or government controls on access to certain service demanded by the consumer, which ride on the Internet pipes. Net neutrality prevents these restrictions from occurring. 

If companies and governments can restrict the kind of data flowing upon the internet into your home or business based upon their selfish needs, the Internet will stall in its development.  The repercussions without net neutrality will create artificial bottlenecks in media rich and high bandwidth usage content.  Streaming media, file sharing, peer-to-peer communications (P2P), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), Internet radio, podcasting, multimedia applications, video blogging, and Internet TV will all suffer in both usage and development as a result.  The VoIP world is a great example of how this should be handled.  VoIP is just another form of data flowing over your Internet connection.  Streaming and other media rich content is just that; another form of data riding over the Internet.  Let’s keep it that way.

The only winners in restricting this flow are the artificial monopolies that will be created.  This will be short lived due tom substitutes in technology.  It will not prevent people from accessing media rich content and similar programming over another source provider, in the long run. The customer will be the looser and people will leave in droves toward a newer undefined technology.  It may take 100 years, but it will happen, as it did with the legacy phone companies.  So the word to the wise people at Comcast and other broadband providers.  You have no business restricting controlling my content.  Get out of my business and work on providing me with fast reliable internet services that can handle your programming as well. Compete on content delivery, by any means, by any carrier, and not run to Uncle Sam to get them to make it so you do not have to compete; it is totally un-American for you to get your uncle to fight your battles.