We’ve all been there: Sitting at your desk waiting forever for an email to open, or counting up the seconds it’s taking Netflix to stream that new Trailer Park Boys special — Can you believe it’s taking this long?
Waiting for the Internet to perform properly is something many of us do multiple times, every day. We’re used to fast lanes, fast food, one-click purchase, high-speed Internet. So, when you have to wait five more seconds to watch that clip of the naked guy with a beer gut on a wrecking ball a la Miley Cyrus, you really feel it. And, according to studies, you move on. One in four people abandon a page that takes more than four seconds to load, reports the Google Research Blog. And people will visit a website less often if it is more than 250 milliseconds slower than a competitor, according to the New York Times.
On the web, as in the Olympics, seconds are everything. A fraction of a second could cost an athlete a medal or an Internet company its customer base.
This is why net neutrality is of vital importance to our economy and our personal wallets. “Net neutrality” is shorthand for the debate going on in D.C. and across the nation over whether and how the Internet should be regulated.
At issue is whether Internet service providers like Verizon FiOS and Comcast can create an express lane that would allow providers like Netflix and Yahoo to pay a premium for delivering their product to the consumer faster. Similarly, consumers might be allowed to buy speedier access for themselves, putting some people in the fast lane and the less affluent in the slow lane.
Leading this debate is Federal Communications Commission Chairman and former telecommunications lobbyist Tim Wheeler. In his draft plan, which was leaked in May, Wheeler was ready to fork over the Internet to telecommunications companies and let them charge what they like. This led to an uproar and a planned vote on the future of the Internet was delayed until December. Just last week, the FCC pushed the decision to sometime in 2015 when the GOP will have control of Congress.
On the one side, there’s President Obama and big tech companies such as Google and Amazon who want the Internet declared a public utility. That would require the public to pay for some of the Web’s infrastructure, but also ensure that everything arrives at the same speed. In a Nov. 11 statement, Obama said he also opposes blocking sites; “throttling” (slowing down a particular content provider unless they pay a premium); or barring a site from popping up in searches.
On the other side are the Internet service providers (ISPs) and their lobbyists, notably Comcast, Verizon and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. As the Internet has grown, so too has the demand for bandwidth — wider lanes on the information superhighway. The ISPs argue that nobody should keep them from charging more to bandwith hogs like Amazon Prime.
There’s a hole in this logic, however. At the heart of it, Comcast, Verizon and the telecommunications association are asking us to trust them not to exploit what would become their legal right to block messages they deem unworthy or competitive, throttle companies that don’t pay a high enough premium and increase rates to customers to obtain the high-speed access that is increasingly central to everyday life.
They must think we’re stupid.
We know Internet service providers would exploit this loophole because they’re already working on it. In January, Verizon FiOS won a court of appeals case that overturned the 2010 Open Internet Rule, which barred ISPs from blocking, throttling or prioritizing content. Verizon asserted that the FCC had no authority to regulate the Internet because it is not a public utility.
A bit before the court ruling, Netflix subscribers had started to see a dip in their streaming speed. The company alleged Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast were intentionally slowing down speeds in an effort to get Netflix to pay more for delivery.
In May, Level 3, a communications company that helps connect large ISPs to the rest of the Internet, accused five major American ISPs of deliberatively degrading the quality of Internet services using the Level 3 network.
And in October, Verizon abandoned its wildly unpopular plan to slow down service for some unlimited 4G data users.
If start-ups and political dissenters can’t thrive online because their message is drowned out by companies with faster speed, or if access to quality Web infrastructure is determined by a neighborhood’s income levels, it will stunt economic, scientific and cultural growth. Fighting that bleak prospect is worth at least a few extra seconds of your time.
Interested in supporting net neutrality? Check out Northampton-based Free Press, a nonpartisan group that promotes responsible journalism and unfettered communication. Free Press has a webpage dedicated to what individuals can do to support a free Internet, at www.savetheInternet.com/what-can-i-do. •
