Unplugged? Net Neutrality

The repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules, announced by the FCC on March 14 and voted in along party lines, wiped out regulations that prevented Internet service providers from blocking or slowing some websites, and charging more for others to run faster.

Despite the clear desire of the public to maintain network neutrality, the internet lost its status as a utility as established by Obama in 2015 and now threatens to be a market commodity, where a chosen few dictate access to the internet.

We now depend on an oligopolistic market not a democratic market. The mantra is trickle down. What is good for the rich is ultimately good for all of us?

Politics for the well off rather than public good has been driving legislature more than ever. Therefore reliance on Congress to do the right thing and protect the internet as a public utility is not wise. It is wiser to remove the internet from skewed politics and find a safeguard that promotes democratic ideas and helps even the most vulnerable live their lives better. Unfortunately, political and the economic agendas of self interested individuals rather than public good define the federal government.

In protest to the FCC decision, large Internet companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix planned strategies to combat the regulations in Congress and the courts.

However, appealing to large providers is not a solution. The evidence across the board over time has shown globally that large corporations cannot be left on their own when it comes to matters of equity and ethics. Corporate greed and a desire to grow whatever the cost trumps serving public good.

The courts will be busy. As in other areas of life these days, the courts have taken on a greater importance in defending public good more than ever before by engaging in threats to the environment and society in general. The jury is out as to how this will go given a freshly packed court that errs on the side of the mighty.

Most important, is local action with the capacity to achieve a more sustainable and equitable solution beyond political whims.

Variations of public options are happening in terms of some start-up internet service providers that leverage publicly available fiber backbone. There is growing political support for local-government owned networks such as in Sandy Oregon and Chattanooga Tennessee.

Though there are challenges such as linking municipalities’ internet infrastructure to rural areas, the public interest movement is there. In 2015, Colorado communities addressed the issue of opting out and worked to reclaim local authority through ballot measures. Local autonomy was approved by wide margins.

ADSC (the Advanced Digital Sciences Center) an affiliate of the University of Illinois based in Singapore is working on models for workarounds in oligopolistic markets through establishing a Public Option ISP. The claim is that this alternative will work better than legislation that is subserviant to political regimes rather than constituencies.

Ideally, the public option approach would enable more potential ISPs to enter the field and encourage new business models that can produce more novel services and higher user utility with an eye toward basic needs and carry their own network neutral policy.