• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 15, 2006

When I first heard the term "network neutrality," it sounded like some sort of content policy where bloggers and editors would agree not to take sides in the Iraq war. Or on the issue of abortion rights. Or on the question of if Jack had used/abused Audrey just one too many times in 24 hours to forgive him again. But then I learned it meant that without such neutrality, my ISP could decide which content I see and which I don't, so I grabbed my musket and powder horn and headed for the barricades (well, decided to write a column about it, anyway).

Here is a good summary I lifted from XP News: a network such as the one run by your ISP treats all types of traffic the same way. One type (whether a specific protocol such as VoIP or content from a specific provider such as Microsoft or e-mail from specific addresses) doesn't get priority over any other type. The worry is that ISPs such as your cable company or phone company and services such as AOL can use technology called Quality of Service (QoS) to give some of the data that passes over their networks priority. Corporate networks have been doing this for years. Packets generated by mission-critical applications can be given preference over less important traffic.

This could be a money-maker for service providers because they can strike deals with content providers to ensure that those content providers' data gets delivered more quickly than that of other content providers who don't pay the fees for this priority attention. For example, Verizon could contract with Google to give their search services priority over Yahoo's or MSN's search. This would make Google more attractive than its competitors to those who use Verizon as their ISP, because it would be faster. In addition, the money that Verizon got from Google could be used to keep their prices for Internet service lower than those of an ISP that doesn't engage in such contracts.

What does it mean to you as an ISP customer and user of the Internet? If ISPs are allowed to make discriminatory deals, at the extreme they could actually block the Web sites that compete with their partners. That is, in our example of Verizon making a deal with Google, they could prevent Verizon customers from accessing the Yahoo or MSN search sites. This is not what any ISP is proposing to do at this time, but it's certainly technologically possible.

Don't you just want to smack your ISP upside the head and say, "And you wonder why everyone hates you!!"? The problem is, most ISPs have something of a geographic monopoly--at least the cable companies do--and the DSL and satellite vendors, although they can underprice cable, can't (yet) match its baud rate. There are many parts of the country that are still stuck with dial-up and will probably never see a back-hoe coming down their street laying fiber-optic. It is not as if consumers have enough choice to be able to say to their ISP, "If you don't stay net neutral, you can kiss my $50 a month bye-bye."

The Internet has become an essential utility, much like the electrical grid. As much as I hate to involve the Feds even more in our lives (now that they know I've called that sex-chat line every day for the past three years), I think that since most of the Internet infrastructure was built with government dollars, our fine elected representatives (at least the ones not in jail or rehab yet) should step up and enforce the ISPs to stay net neutral. That would finally be legislation we could all agree on.