From Wikipedia:
Net Neutrality is a principle proposed for residential broadband networks and potentially for all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.
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Neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model more for the purpose of profiting from their control of the pipeline rather than for any demand for their content or services. Others have stated that they believe net neutrality to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms. Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, Tim Berners Lee, father of the web, and many others have spoken out strongly in favour of network neutrality.
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Opponents of net neutrality include large hardware companies and members of the cable and telecommunications industries.
Need a concrete example?
A 3 minute track download from iTunes: 79 p
A 30 second ringtone downloaded from an operator: £3
One of these services treats the 1s and 0s as equal. One of them treats them as a ‘premium’ service.
Can you guess which one?
This is why the AppStore is so attractive. A local developer was selling his app for mobile phones via operators for €6 and receiving about €1.50 revenue from it. The rest of it going to the operators. His app on the AppStore sells for £2.99 and he gets more than £2.00 from every sale.
One of these services treats the 1s and 0s as equal. One of them treats them as a ‘premium’ service.
Can you guess which one?
I think you’re getting two separate things slightly mixed up here.
The examples you give are just standard price premiums/differentiation. It’s the same as a a bar in the city centre charging more for a pint than one in the country. Different prices for the same pint.
Net neutrality is different. Net neutrality is insisting that nobody can be given faster or “priority” bandwidth just because they pay more.
A real life example would be auctioning off the use of the bus lanes to the highest bidder. In theory this would be the most efficient way to maximise the revenue from our road networks, but it wouldn’t be in the public interest.
Similarly if a big company like Amazon could pay to get the best speeds on all our broadband networks, it would limit competition as all new startups that try compete couldn’t afford to deliver pages as quickly as Amazon could. This would take away from one of the best features of the net, that any new business that’s good enough can thrive.
In theory there’s no reason that phone companies can’t auction off their best bandwidth to the highest bidder, but in practice stopping them doing this with Net Neutrality policies is necessary for the greater good.
No, Peter, I’m making a veiled point for a specific purpose. And it works both ways – not only about selling bandwidth to the highest bidder but taxing services which treat the operator as a dumb pipe.
Net Neutrality is also about not adding pennies of ‘usefulness’ tax to things we take for granted. It’s a statement saying that all 1s and 0s are equal – when they plainly are not.
Mobile operators like O2 and AT&T are blocking VoIP on iPhone for instance. That means we have to use our ‘minutes’ which eventually run out and we have to pay more – that’s adding a premium to the 1s and 0s of our digital communications.
What if they added a 10p tax onto every download from the AppStore?