Magda Cichowski runs a travel agency in Linden, NJ, home to a sizeable Polish community. She sells plane tickets, custom trips and vacation packages there. Internet access is crucial in her business. She uses it to book flights and hotels, rent cars, and look for customer specific information i.e. the distance from the hotel to a tourist destination, points of interest near the airport or cultural characteristics for the place they are going to. "Preparing a vacation package for a client requires a comprehensive web search. Basically, all the booking and arrangements are done on the Internet now," Cichowski says.
Jakub Szymala is a business partner in Xanti Media LLC, a small company that is getting ready to launch a website where people will be able to get discount coupons for products and services offered by restaurants, boutiques, hairdressers, delis and other businesses operating in Manhattan's East Village. "The success of our venture will depend, to a great extent, on how many people view the website, log onto it and browse it for deals that interest them," Szymala explains.
Both Chichowski and Szymala are able to conduct and plan their businesses thanks to network neutrality, a fundamental principle that preserves the free and open Internet, making all websites and net technologies equal players. "Net neutrality has always been part of the Internet and has allowed people free access to information. It has also driven economic innovation, growth of democracy and free speech online," Free Press, a non-profit organization focusing on media reform and democracy explains on its website.
Thanks to network neutrality consumers can make their own decisions regarding their Internet experience, by going to websites they like or need, and businesses can prosper.
"Just 20 online companies generated over $89 billion revenue in 2009 and employed more than 121,300 workers," a report by Media and Democracy Coalition says. In few prominent cases such as Google, Facebook or Yahoo Internet's open format guaranteed the path to building a business empire.
Nevertheless, consumer advocates are warning that America's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner, looking for ways of generating more revenue, want to have the ability to control traffic by deciding which websites, content and applications are available to customers.
"What the big danger is that they would charge start up companies, businesses and entrepreneurs that have websites to make their information travel at a faster rate on the Internet," says Chancellar Williams from Media and Democracy Coalition, an alliance of over 30 organizations that, among others, advocate and educate on the issue of net neutrality. Content providers who cannot afford to pay the fee would have their websites load slower than others or not available to users at all.
Such scenario would mean end to network neutrality and Internet as we know it. "End of network neutrality would make the Internet look like Cable TV. Consumers would be forced to choose between ISPs like Verizon or Comcast based on the websites that are available in their offer," says Scott Holladay from the Institute for Policy Integrity, a New York based non-partisan advocacy organization and think tank dedicated to improving the quality of governmental decision making, and co-author of The Value of Open: An Update on Net Neutrality.
"This would be an absolute revolution and an attack on free market and democracy," says Leszek Sadowski, co-owner of three Internet businesses printberries.com, wypadki.com and bluberries.com, who finds it hard to believe the end of network neutrality would be constitutional and that America; that a country that prides itself on free speech and respect for liberties would allow for it. "It would not only be a blow to entrepreneurs but also a great one to customers, who would have limited access to information," he adds.
Economically speaking, entrepreneurs would be among the hardest hit by the end of net neutrality. Without network neutrality, in his marketing plan, Szymala would have to account for negotiations with each Internet Service Provider, possibly in each state, to have his website available and delivered at a conveniently fast speed to customers all over America. Moreover, it would also mean additional expense – a fee for having its website delivered. If he can't afford the fee he will run a risk of losing ground to more affluent competition or even having to forgo plans of starting his online business.
"Such a scenario would mean another barrier, on top of a myriad formal and financial ones, a start-up company has to overcome in order to be able to launch and grow," Szymala observes.
For businesses like Cichowski's travel agency, the end of network neutrality may mean losing easy access to certain websites that they rely on, and as a result losing customers because of not being able to provide a good quality service.
"That means that the innovators, people who are up and coming, will have much less opportunity to benefit from the Internet," says Chancellar Williams.
The end of network neutrality, as sketched above, may also potentially greatly impede the ethnic communities' access to websites from their home countries. "We don't know for sure what it would look like, but if, say, the Polish websites have to negotiate with ISPs to reach their subscribers in the United States then it would obviously be extremely difficult. Some websites may be able to afford it others won't," says Holladay.
He also points out to another consequence of the loss of open and free net, which may hit immigrant communities who rely on voice and video Internet transmission to communicate with friends and family in their home countries. "If you use Skype to communicate with people in Poland there is some risk that this service would become more expensive or would just disappear," he explains.
Most Internet service providers do not currently engage in traffic prioritization or price discrimination tactics that infringe upon network neutrality; however, some have demonstrated the ability to do that. In 2007 DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) technology, which in recent years has become increasingly advanced, allowed Comcast to identify peer-to-peer uploads and restrict the size of shared files to its liking.
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC), an agency that regulates communication, caught Comcast blocking the uploads and censured its practices. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, however, ruled in April 2010 that within the currently adopted framework, federal regulators lacked authority to prevent Comcast for interfering with subscribers' Internet traffic. The decision potentially limits the government's power to protect network neutrality in general.
The FCC will be able to reaffirm its authority over the Internet so that it can ban activities like those Comcast engaged in, which are harmful to customers, by reclassifying the Internet from the "information service" to "communication service."
"Reclassification will give the FCC the authority to write and enforce a strong network neutrality rule that can protect consumers and protect small businesses and entrepreneurs," Williams explains.
For months now, the atmosphere among consumer advocates has heated as they pressed on the FCC to exercise its authority to undertake steps towards providing protection of a free Internet. Although the issue was becoming more and more burning, the FCC showed a lack of action in the last months. Finally in a December 1st announcement, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski put the discussion of the open Internet on the agenda of the next FCC meeting scheduled for December 21st, assuring the agency's commitment to preserving "the open Internet as a platform for innovation, investment, competition and free expression."
The FCC is directed by five commissioners. There are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms. The President designates one of the commissioners to serve as chairperson. Decisions are made by the majority of the vote. Although not all commissioners seem to be on the same page regarding network neutrality, one of them, Michael Copps, has spoken in support of the issue and in the most recent statement on Internet freedom and openness he promised to "work tirelessly with stake holders to seek to ensure real network neutrality that protects the online freedom of all Americans."
"At issue is who will control access to the online experiences of consumers – consumers themselves or Big Phone and Big Cable gatekeepers," he said.
"Policy makers should make a decision: do you protect a narrow interest of a few companies that are very profitable and have sustained profits during the recession, or do you take action to protect consumers, entrepreneurs and small business owners, who are the lifeblood of this economy, and are the sources of new jobs and innovation?" Williams asks, adding that people should now use all means available to encourage the FCC to protect net neutrality.
One of the ways to pressure the FCC to take action is through talking to local legislators who can help put the issue on the national agenda. Offices of New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Yvette Clark (D-NY) are in the process of looking into the issue and preparing their positions. Many others already recognize the importance of access to Internet.
"For the established small business, high speed Internet can expand a firm's client base using a company website, social networking or other forms of online advertising. Firms can utilize voice and video communication as a low-cost method to connect with customers around the world – and reach previously untapped markets," said Rep. Nydia Velazquez in her press release on "Small Business and Broadband: An Engine for Economic Growth and Job Creation."
Once we allow the ISPs to slowly take over the management of the web, we will lose network neutrality. This process will be irreversible. "Internet infrastructure investment is a long-term investment. Once ISPs invest based on expectation that there will be no net neutrality, it will be very difficult to go back," Holladay says.
