• San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, April 6, 2006 10:30 AM

Lawmakers will vote on the Net Neutrality bill today, and their decision could change the Internet as we know it by creating a separate "lane" for Web publishers willing to pay for faster delivery of their content. The San Francisco Chronicle says the issue of net neutrality, or network neutrality, "represents the most sweeping overhaul of telecom law since the Telecommunications Act of 1996." Why? Well, if AT&T, Verizon and other telcos have their way, ISPs will have the ability to create a "class" system out of the most democratic medium the world has ever known. As Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ed Markey tells the Chronicle: "The Internet could be fundamentally altered by this. The more people learn…the more they'll understand we're heading toward a system of informational apartheid." That may be over-exaggeration, but naysayers and others worriers contend that telecom providers plan to flood their existing networks with bandwidth-swallowing broadband content, effectively forcing other broadband content purveyors to pay for faster access. The teleco companies maintain they have no plans to favor certain publishers over others. However, with a "faster lane," a site with enough money to pay for faster delivery immediately has an advantage over its competitors. Would Google have been able to rise if Yahoo and MSN had paid for faster delivery? No, probably not, and that's precisely why the telecos should lose this battle.

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