NET NEUTRALITY GONE, INNOVATION IS NEXT

Ice Age for the Internet

By Atique Naqvi aka Syed Atique Hussain, Boston, United States

The United States might be entering the Internet ‘Ice Age’ after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) killed Net Neutrality on December 14, 2017. Professor Timothy Wu from Columbia Law School coined the term Net Neutrality in 2003, and he sees the latest de-regulation by the FCC as the advent of the ‘Ice Age’ for the Internet users - 326 million in the United States.

All the big guns from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) spectrum, Comcast, Verizon and AT&T et al, have come out in full force saying the recent FCC move won’t affect the Internet users in the US. So, why the so-called ‘mainstream media’ has been creating such a ruckus over this issue? We should believe what ISP firms are telling us because corporations don’t lie and if they do, they are held accountable by the strong justice system. Remember 2008 subprime crisis and Goldman Sachs!

The motto of the current US President Donald Trump is: “I’ll undo what was done by Barack Obama.” Ajit Pai, born to Indian parents, was designated by the current US administration as the FCC chairman, and his views on the Net Neutrality is well known. He doesn’t give a two-penny consideration to millions of requests from the Americans who opposed killing the Net Neutrality. 

And the video which Mr. Pai has posted on YouTube promoting his decision singing and dancing is sad and hilarious and is akin to the dancing of hunters around the kill. The creators of viral hit ‘Harlem Shake’ are threatening to take action against Mr. Pai for the unauthorized use of the music in his dance-video.

As the context is clear, let’s check out what Net Neutrality is. Until December 14, the government was responsible for ensuring that Internet Service Providers do not favor any particular website or digital platform.

Imagine yourself in a huge open-concept supermarket, all aisles and shelves are within your reach, you can select and buy whatever YOU want. But all this is about to change. Now supermarket will make decisions for you, because either you are not capable or supermarket will push products that it manufactures or the products with which the supermarket has a profit-sharing deal. Good luck, finding what you want in such a supermarket.

The supermarket will still sell the products that you like but they’ll be either stashed away in a separate room or they’ll be in aisles that are out of your physical reach so you might have to pay to enter that special room or you have to rent a ladder to reach to the products of your choice. 

Basically, you’ll have to pay more to get the products of your choice.   

With Net Neutrality in place, the supermarkets (analogy for ISPs) weren’t allowed to give preferential treatment to certain products. But with the latest FCC move, the ISPs are in the driving seat.

If your ISP has a special deal with Hulu, then your provider might slow down your Netflix, which is a competitor, or charge you extra for uninterrupted and faster speeds for Netflix.

In February 2014, Netflix signed a deal with Comcast, and the user experience improved with the speed. Check the infographic below.

Also, check out how many media platforms are owned by the Internet Service Providers in the United States.

Let’s see some more statistics on the speed of websites and how it affects them. Amazon ran a few tests and found the company would lose $1.6 billion a year if its website slowed down by just one second. A website will lose 40 percent of its visitors if the homepage takes more than three seconds to load.

Also, if your website is slow, you won’t appear in Google search engine as there will be fewer crawlers from the search engine tracking your website. What does this mean for innovation or startups? Generally, startups run on tight budgets and if most of the bandwidth is hogged by the big digital sharks, there won’t be any option left before startups but to pay ISPs to speed up their digital platforms.

If the Internet was not democratic, we won’t have Facebook, What’s App, Spotify, Amazon, Twitter, Tumblr or even LinkedIn. The abolition of Net Neutrality is set to strengthen roles of ISPs as Internet Gatekeepers, where they can decide whom to let in, who should go to the fast-track lane, who should spend time waiting in the queue.

Customer will continue to be the king, but he/she will have to pay a heavy price to be a king, especially in the United States where there is hardly any competition in the broadband spectrum. Probably, that’s the reason that Americans vehemently opposed killing the Net Neutrality.

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Do you see iceberg formations in the Internet world? Well, that’s Ice Age.

Infographic Courtesy: Statista