by Al Canata
June 21, 2006

The current fight to preserve “net neutrality”—that is, to forbid any preferential treatment of anyone’s traffic—is a curious one. Opponents decry a “two-tiered” Internet, or fearc cyberspace turning into a toll road. But sorry, Moby and Larry Lessig: The Internet is already a private toll road. Everybody pays for access in one way or another. I pay to access via cable and used to pay for dial-up. During AOL’s early days, customers paid by the hour.

The basic idea of net neutrality—under consider this week by the Senate Commerce Committee as part of comprehensive telecommunications reform—is that no packet of information should be treated differently than any other. That sounds benign enough—but putting the force of law behind this idea creates unforeseen consequences, not to mention the violation of property rights. Essentially, the builders of Internet’s would be told what they can and cannot charge for and what they can and cannot build.

That would limit consumer choices. For instance, would an online retailer who wanted to offer his customers premium bandwidth that is faster and more secure than a normal server connection still be able to do so? What if a commodities trader wanted a connection that was unlikely to lag or go dead for even a short period of time, which can cause huge losses in commodities trading? Or what if someone wanted to buy a special Internet line to monitor a dying relative or an expectant mother? All of these options would be suspect under fears of a tiered Internet.

The worry that a tiered Internet is coming is simply silly—because it’s already here. DSL pricing is a perfect example. The slowest speeds—which are still more then 10 times faster than dial-up—sell for as little as $12.95 per month (by comparison, AOL goes for about $25 per month), and if you want a faster connection, you can buy one for a higher price. Six years ago, area DSL and cable modems went for no less than $40 to $50 a month. The declining prices have led to more people being able to obtain high-speed Internet access.

Many content providers are scared that Internet service providers (ISPs) would slow down—or even shut out—websites that don’t pay them extra fees. If a provider were to do something like this, expect consumer revolt. Moreover, this stance is disingenuous: many of the content providers who support net neutrality take large monies in ad revenue—ads with more prominent placement mean they are more costly. This is two-tiered advertising!

Net neutrality supporters’ fear that the telecom companies will control what you see and do is unfounded. For starters, no CEO has voiced such intent. As Walter McCormick, President of United States Telecom Association told the Senate Commerce Committee:

Today, I make the same commitment to you that our member companies make to their Internet customers: We will not block, impair, or degrade content, applications, or services. That is the plainest and most direct way I know to address concerns that have been raised about net neutrality.

If they reversed course after telling Congress they had no intent to limit what people saw, then an all out consumer revolt would ensue.

Telecom companies have a good record on giving consumers greater options on what to do with their Internet connection. Consider this: Peer-to-peer programs such as BTorrent or Kazaa have eaten well north of 50 percent of major providers’ bandwidth; in some cases as much as 70 percent. When Napster came on the scene, many college networks were overwhelmed. To combat this crunch, many schools turned off access to Napster and basically made it against school policy to run peer-to-peer software.

By contrast, Internet access providers have eschewed such drastic measures. In some cases they’ve kicked users off for running a file server—which you’re understandably not allowed to do under most ISP contracts. Today, with services like Google video and YouTube adding to the crunch, allowing users to use the network as they please is indicative of the need to expand bandwidth and find new ways of doing it quickly, not to impose neutrality on today’s clearly sub-optimal network.

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