Senate hearings on Net Neutrality tomorrow

As reported at ZDNet news,  the Senate Commerce Committee released a revised version of the Telecommunications bill that includes no Net Neutrality Regulations. There may be a revision to include Net Neutrality later in the week.

As it stands today, FCC will be authorized, ONLY to monitor and report incidents that are considered as violations of Net Neutrality principles. The committee might put the final version of the bill on 20th of June. So, probably we won't hear much about it until later of the week, where a revision that include Net Neutrality is available, if any.

Mean time, Washington Post in its editorial revealed itself to the public that its Broadband network means a lot more than the principles behind the whole Net Neutrality battle. Read its twisted arguments revealed at 'Post Editors Get Slippery on the Facts'.

How come they missed the whole point?

The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. ..... If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest -- and the provider would lose customers.

As pointed out by the posting at http://www.savetheinternet.com, not many of us really have a choice to move around. I have stayed in 4 different neighbourhoods in the last 2 years within Texas. I never had a choice to choose my ISP, because there is only one sevice provider available. Even at my current location, we only have Verizon for phone and DSL and dish network for television. The net quality is so bad, that we almost complain every weekend. We have no choice, but to live with it.  To add to it, now they have 1 or 2 year contracts making it difficult to switch even when a choice is available.

The weakest aspect of the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors.

We don't even know if this is already happening with my service provider. How can a common consumer detect that his traffic is differentiated?  Read MULTIPLE PLAY: PRICING AND POLICY TRENDS published by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), for some facts and statistics about already enforced Bit Caps around the world. And why would a body like OECD mentions the following if there is nothing happenning?

Bit caps (data usage restrictions on broadband connections) could be used to provide an unfair competitive advantage for infrastructure operators, provided the services obtained from independent service providers count towards traffic limits but services from the network operator do not. Today, some operators block ports for security or marketing reasons. Others have left open the possibility of blocking outside services in the future as a way to increase security and control bandwidth usage. By blocking ports or Web sites, multiple play providers could potentially create a "walled garden" whereonly the operator’s own services would be available to subscribers.

The real problem if Net Neutrality not as a Law is that normal subscribers would never realize that they are being subjected to differential treatment. They think that the website itself is loaded, so responding slowly, but never that their traffic is being gated.

We need Net Neutrality essentially as a legal assurance that common consumer will not be exploited and to safeguard the free market, where consumer will have final choice and freedom to choose what he/she wants.

Tags: Net Neutrality, Telecom, INSPIONS, OECD, bitcap