The US Congress is currently in the process of rewriting the 1996 Telecommunications Act. One of the issues under debate is the issue of Network Neutrality. Network Neutrality or Network freedom is basically the following 4 ideas expressed by the FCC in an August 2005 policy statement:
Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and
Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
The debate is that ISPs want to move to a 2-tiered broadband system. Where you'd have Tier A at 1 speed & Tier B at a faster "premium" speed. Consumers would have access to both tiers, but websites like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, even the .org would have to pay ISPs money to access the premium speed tier. So for example, if Yahoo paid an ISP (such as SBC) to get on the premium tier & Google did not, consumers would have faster access to Yahoo than they would to Google. The ISPs argue that they need the content companies to pay because the ISPs have high costs with expanding their infastructure and providing faster speeds to customers in the future.
Do you support the 2-tiered system where content companies would pay ISPs for access to the premium speed tier?
Discuss?
Here are some links on Network Neutrality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700430.stm
http://www.publicknowledge.org/cont...whitep-20060206
http://www.democraticmedia.org/issu...neutrality.html
http://faculty.virginia.edu/timwu/wu_lessig_fcc.pdf
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