Well, it was pretty clear that it was coming, but now it’s confirmed: the United States government has announced that it plans to abolish net neutrality, which will empower American telecommunication providers to charge more money and block access to certain sites.
Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced his extensive plan to roll back Obama-era protections of net neutrality:
Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet. Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate.
Net neutrality, to put it simply, are the policies and approaches which underpin a basic idea: internet access should be entirely equal, and providers don’t have the right to deny you access to certain websites or domains based on how much you pay for them.
The fight to save #NetNeutrality is the fight to save the internet that we know and love. pic.twitter.com/DC5GWbltat
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) November 21, 2017
The rules put forward by the FCC would enable an ISP to, for example, split up their internet offerings into packages – kind of like how subscription TV works. So they could charge you a basic package which only gives you access to social media, and you’d need to pay more to access streaming music like Spotify.
It also means that ISPs can charge platforms like Netflix or Facebook more for their speeds, costs which would likely then be passed on to the consumer.
As you might expect, the ISPs have lobbied hard for these changes over in the US, whereas content and platform providers like Google, Amazon and Facebook are against it, as they’re the ones who stand to suffer from ISP policy and products.
Now, obviously this doesn’t directly affect Australia. In fact, Australia has never had any kind of net neutrality rules. Technically, the policies some of our ISPs have to give free data for certain services are in violation of net neutrality provisions as they were originally laid out. Overall though it hasn’t been too awful for us.
But that’s in no small party because we also have fairly robust consumer protection laws which act as a barrier to the worst practices. The Australian Competition And Consumer Commission would not look kindly upon blatantly anti-competitive actions by ISPs.
We also have a fairly healthy competition between service providers. If you don’t like the policy of one provider, you can jump ship to another. In many regions of he United States, this is more difficult.
Obviously, the U.S. is home to many of the online services we use in Australia, including streaming services and social media platforms. It’s possible that the axing of net neutrality there will have follow-on effects here, but its impossible to know until it happens.
Welp! Sorry ’bout it, America.
