Barack Obama discusses Net Neutrality

[kyle62]

I read an interesting article about net neutrality where Senator Obama discusses Senators Snowe and Dorgan's legislation to protect network neutrality on the internet. I wonder how this would affect VoIP?

It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge.

But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it. They say that they want to create high speed lanes on the Internet and strike exclusive contractual agreements with Internet content providers for access to those high speed lanes.

Everyone who cannot pony up the cash will be relegated to the slow lanes.

[barryb]

Hats off to Barack Obama for having the right attitude on net neutrality. I really worried that if telecomes and corporations are giving the opportunity to implement a tiered type of internet that small players will forced out of the market and much of the freedom the internet has enjoyed will be lost!

[ingr1]

I think the bigger problem is that if the net does not remain neutral, it will stifle market forces that lead to technological innovations that concern the internet. One of the great things about the internet has always been that anyone, anywhere can start a website, build a company and enjoy the freedom to use the internet as you would choose. Yes, pirating software, hacking and other negative activities could be more limited by government intervention but what would be lost?

[sammy44]

Actually I read that the chief wiseguy at the MPAA said that anyone who is for Net Neutrality is just promoting pirating.

[kyle62]

Can someone explain what Net Neutrality is? How is this related to voip service?

[Paul]

Well net neutrality is basically about who controls traffic on the internet and who priority it is giving over other types of traffic. The best analogy that I can think of at the moment is the concept of a "car pool" where people who car pool are giving their own lane on the highway and thus priority over the other people using the same highway. Think of the highway as a public transportation system with a fast lane for those that "pay" for this priviledge.

Here is how is relates to voip. If there was not net neutrality, big telecom company A could agree to give priority Corporation B. This means that they could give priority to Company B to use their internet bandwidth to deliver voip and slow that your telephone conversation to make sure Corporation B has the priviledge of getting that data delivered first over you.

If government is allowed to tier the internet, your important voice conversations over Skype or other voip providers network might be given the lowest priority and thus the technology would not be viable. Its like a "pay to play" type of scenario, much like the wireless carriers control the radio frequency spectrum and thus if you want to use a cell phone pay their price. Make sense?

[bionicman]

Well I am not sure I agree. Keep in mind that the internet is a big web of agreements between different telecom and communications players who have agreements to connect their networks to others and pass data traffic between them. I mean isnt net neutrality kind of just like saying lets agree to send certain types of information faster and some others slower?

[Paul]

Yah, I guess so but it would change the way the internet operates and thus change how businesses have to operate, it would in my opinion put control with whoever can afford to get their traffic to their destination faster. Hey its a public communications system, why do we want corporations to control it?

[Ricomake]

I think anyone who is against net neutrality is not operating with all pistons firing if you know what I mean. I live in a small town and guess how many choices I have for my telephone and cable service? Oh and guess what, if I don't like my telephone provider do I get to choose another one? Nope. All these big companies are going to do is try to control the internet like they control telephone, and cable services and then force us to purchase from them and squeeze out the little players in the market. Yeah, no thanks dude.