Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is all over the internet right now and most of what is being reported on it is that Ajit Pai is ruining the internet. He doesn’t understand how it works and no one will be able to stream the content they love anymore.

While it is true that by returning net neutrality to the laws that were created during the Clinton administration internet service providers will be able to bottle neck bandwidth as they see fit. It is also true that the consumer has the ability to find a new ISP. People argue that in rural areas there is typically only one ISP to choose from so finding a new provider is not an option.

Under the net neutrality laws created during the Obama administration the ISP’s were fully responsible for the costs of the infrastructure of the network making it so smaller companies were unable to afford to compete with existing ISP’s. By removing the regulations companies such as Google may be required to pay for their content to not be bottlenecked. This will allow smaller companies to invest into the infrastructure to bring more options to those without options.
The other side to this coin is internet streaming startup will lose their even playing field because they do not have the ability to pay the ISP’s not to bottleneck their traffic. However, when the consumer has a choice of ISP then bottlenecking bandwidth for certain sites could cause them to lose customers.

In the end the free market is always better than having the government step in with regulations.