One of the biggest surprises this week was the net neutrality announcement from Google and Verizon (Googizon). The New York Times covers the announcement here and the situation raises significant concerns about future control and innovation on the Internet.
Background
Net neutrality relates to freedom of accessing data on the Internet and it suggests that all Internet content should be treated equally and that ISPs have no right to limit access or bandwidth to specific sites or content types. ISPs like Comcast, Time Warner or even AT&T Wireless argue that they should be able to control access to certain types of data or sites that could impact their network. Some ISPs have already implement technology to prevent access to certain technologies like BitTorrent. it is in the context of these concerns that Googizon announced their net neutrality proposal.
The Googizon perspective
The document put forth is restrictive and clearly favors the ISPs. The Huffington Post has a good article discussing the document. To summarize, the key points are:
- No net neutrality on wireless networks
- Proposed net neutrality rules on wired networks are so weak as to be pointless
- ISPs could split their pipes and charge separately for each thus creating a two tiered system. One for content providers who pay them (and get better performance and reliability) and the other for content providers who don’t pay them
- The FCC becomes a worthless watchdog Continue reading Googizon and Net Neutrality