The Incredible Shrinking Internet

Net neutrality has become a topic of much interest recently, thanks to a number of threats to the freedom that users currently enjoy in both access and usage of the internet. Many internet service providers have recently been looking to exploit their near-monopoly as many users’ ISP. Verizon in particular has come into view for attempting to lobby to dramatically restrict content, throttle download speeds and charge websites for “access to their customers.”

What Verizon is looking to do as they go before the FCC, is to charge website owners extra if their sites cause a lot of traffic, requiring more data to be transferred. “If lots of their customers are getting data from site A then site A is a problem. If only they didn’t have to connect their customers to it, or maybe if they could charge the site a premium!” Or, to view it another way, it’d be as though the Florida turnpike would extort money from Disney by threatening to block exits near Disney World, unless they pay them extra. Many users are against this idea, and would much rather have net usage be neutral, and not based on where users go or what they do while online.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs), meanwhile, additionally continue their attempts to throttle internet speeds by putting caps on their services, in a near perfect demonstration of monopolies exploiting systems to their benefit. Google fiber, a recent venture of the internet search company, has promised speeds of 1 Gb/s (claiming to be “100 times faster” than a majority of American users’ current internet speed), and though most performances do fall short of that thus far, the average speeds it can achieve are still much better than the current national average of somewhere around 18.2 Mb/s. Indeed, many developed countries have faster internet speeds (The US currently ranks in 9^th place) and for a cheaper price as well.

Many of the big name ISPs have been working against allowing new, faster, or cheaper services, working to ensure they stay the main or only providers for towns or cities, or working to instill laws to cripple any efforts to introduce new ISPs. Indeed, big name ISPs seem to be very resistant to change with their footholds firmly in place. The telecommunications act of 1996 provided all kinds of breaks, money and incentives for phone companies to expand and build up their infrastructure. Yet, “Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That’s $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it.”

It is worth noting that fiber optic technology utilized in the higher speed services such as google fiber and verizon’s FIOS, expansion of which has now been abandoned by Verizon, would require a decent bit of money and effort to implement, probably indicating why so many companies are resistant to installing it. Why cut into profits when they can keep things the way they are?

The introduction and wide customer interest in vastly improved systems such as google fiber are another good example, in this case of why open competition is good for both customers and technology as a whole. At&t has made an effort, recently, to match the new system and ‘ultra-high speed’ internet planned by Google, starting in Austin, Texas, in attempt to keep their territory. With a threat to the stagnation and status quo that the monopolies rely on to keep their profits high, a new competitor that offers customers a better, more desirable system will drive them to either keep up or fall behind and be forgotten. Either way, the customers can greatly benefit from such an increase in quality.