Net Neutrality…A Disturbing Trend
September 18th, 2006 | Published in Misc. | 1 Comment
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand all the nuaces of Net Neutrality, but I do understand Propoganda when I see it. Last night on some cable channel or other I saw a commericial sponsored by cable and telecommunications companies urging people NOT to support Net Neutrality. It basically went something like this:
“Net Neutrality is Bad. Don’t let them fool you with BIG words and MUMBO JUMBO, Net Neutrality is Bad. Net Neutrality will cost YOU money. Net Neutrality is Bad. Don’t listen to anyone but us…we know what’s best for you. Net Neutrality is bad!”
Okay…so it wasn’t exactly like that…but pretty darn close. I don’t have an adequate answer to the problem of Net Neutrality. On the one had, I don’t want to see some websites or content providers getting preference when it comes to speed or accessiblity simply because they are the children of the access providers. Nor do I think that anyone deserves a free ride. What I don’t want to see, is users and content providers having to pay access providers to put content out there…and then pay again to access it.
What I will say, is that without content providers like Google and Yahoo — users wouldn’t pay access providers to access the network to begin with. Cable and Phone companies NEED Google and Yahoo (as well as all the smaller content providers out there). Without the content…why would I pay to access the network?
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Erica O'Grady is a New Media and Loyalty Marketing Specialist based in Houston Texas. Her turn ons are: Community Building, Design, BarCamp, and Twitter. Her turn offs are: Trolls, Spammers, and Folks who "Just Don't Get It". 
April 11th, 2007 at 1:09 am (#)
Its simply a way for the ISPs to bill people twice for the same bandwidth, because in reality, all the bandwidth is already paid for. The end-user (consumer, business, etc.) pays to access the net. Content providers (websites, VoIP companies, etc.) are paying to access the net. So basically, they are saying that they want to charge content providers AGAIN for the same bandwidth they are already paying for or else they will give them crappy service. Its a con job to charge more money is all it is.