IF
That is what they do.
The current malestrom of debate around mostly boils down to whether or not folks believe the FCC will truly forbear (waive) the vast majority of Title II regulatory requirements in order to focus on this rather important issue.
But the internet already works, how can this be anything other than a needless government power grab, or Obama over reach etc... ???? Glad you asked.
Let us talk about some examples of poor behavior in the business practices of ISPs with regards to the internet 'working' and this concept of Network Neutrality.
Corporate E-mail vs Private e-mail:
Back in the dark days before smart phones where a 'cool' thing we had an interesting state of affairs when it came to accessing e-mail on your phone. Work e-mail was different from personal e-mail according to mobile internet providers. To access your corporate e-mail you had to sign up for a corporate data plan which was more expensive. The technical differences of accessing Corporate e-mail vs Personal e-mail was.... anyone? anyone? Nadda, zip, zilch, zero, NOTHING. Yet one required a more expensive plan to move bits round between sources and destinations of internet traffic in precisely the same way as the other. This is an example of a non-neutral internet. This is not a post FCC ruling thing folks are worried about. This was, in some cases may still be, a reality of mobile broadband service offerings.
Tethering:
Current business practice of ISPs is that tethering your phone to another device for the purpose of that device to access the internet (ie use your phone as a wifi hotspot for your laptop) requires an additional charge over you basic access charge. This means you as a user cannot decide to use your (insert bandwidth amount of your choice within the limits of your plan) how you like. You MUST pay extra to use those bits to send data to your laptop. Again, in terms of the service provided to you on by the ISP there is ZERO difference between bits that stop at your phone and bits that stop at your laptop. This is a current example of a non-neutral internet. This is not a fear of something to be added post this FCC ruling. It is a fact of life for millions of US smart phone users.
App/File Download Limits:
Ever gotten a message when purchasing an app or downloading a file where it says something like "File to big, you have to connect to WiFi"?. So if you have paid for 5GB of data and you want to download a 500MB (or 10% of the amount of bandwidth you paid for) why can you not do it? Again this is not a state of affairs people are afraid this move by the FCC will cause. It is a current reality\limitation imposed by Mobile internet providers. Again this is an example of a non-neutral internet.
Service Blocking:
Apple Facetime was not allowed on mobile networks by both Verizon and AT&T at launch. Numerous other services have faced a similar fate. Often terms of service of broadband providers has a clause about 'streaming' content. You know like Netflix video, Pandora Radio or pretty much the most common kinds of things folks use when accessing the internet. Do you know what the technical difference is between download 1GB of data and "streaming" it in terms of the ISP system? If you guessed "nothing" you would be correct. This is another example of how ISPs restrict your ability to utilize data allotments you pay for. This is an example of how we currently do NOT have a neutral internet.
Throttling of Unlimited Bandwidth plans:
Beyond an arbitrary limit it is standard practice to throttle users with unlimited plans to lower rates. That is you pay for a service that says it is unlimited and then they introduce artificial performance reduction once you past a number (5GB is a common threshold). If someone pays for an 'unlimited' plan is it fair to artificially limit their level of service because they actually use it as 'unlimited'? Balancing user load is a core function that must be managed by ISPs. When there are to many users and not enough bandwidth to go around it is ok to reduce service across the board in order to continue providing service to all users. It is not fair to single out users based on how much or how little of their plan they choose to use. This is yet another example of how we have a non-neutral internet now.
How does this move help?
These examples all have something in common. They are cases the FCC has already been pursuing against broadband providers on the behalf of users. They are all cases at the ISP level and related to ISPs trying to differentiate between the various types of services being used by a customer instead of treating all passage of internet traffic as the same.
To boil it all down as far as I know how you have to remember a very fundamental thing. No matter what you are doing with your internet connection, in the end it is all about moving 1's and 0's from one point to another. Net Neutrality is about making sure 1's and 0's move equally regardless of what requests/services etc... are driving them.
To make matters worse in many cases the ISPs have competing services. Take Netflix vs say on demand content provided by Comcast or Comcast partners. Comcast has a vested interest in having customers paying for their on demand content vs Netflix content. There are numerous documented cases where Comcast (and other ISPs) artificially limited customer access to services like Netflix where no similar constraint was placed on access their on demand (or that of a favored provider (read Netflix competitor)). This is a classic conflict of interest where the FCC seems intent on making sure that providers are not allowed to pick which services to support. Without Common Carrier status imposed on them there is no legal reason why Comcast cannot chose to deny a particular service, or worse, sabotage them. The particular case of Netflix is one worth a post on its own as it does a good job bringing up a lot of the complexities involved in this debate. Here is a taste. If Comcast reduces service levels of Netflix traffic at the same time it increases/prioritizes traffic to its own On-Demand content who do you think the customer blames when their netflix stream doesn't work (or works poorly) and the other content runs without a hiccup? Is it fair for Comcast to not inform their customers they chose to intentionally lower Netflix traffic capacity in such a case?
Why do they think they have to regulate it now?
The FCC has been trying to enforce the idea of a neutral net for many years. Had the ISPs made moves and changed practices to uphold a neutral internet service it is likely the FCC would never have passed a rules change to re-classify them as title II common carriers in order to have the necessary legal powers to force them to behave. Put another way, for about a decade now the FCC has been counting to three like a parent trying to get a misbehaving child to correct themselves before more drastic action is required. They didn't, and the FCC reached 3.
Don't get me wrong. I am not a fool to think more government intervention is a good thing. I am by no means thinking the FCC should be given a blank cheque on this issues. So long as they stick to what they have already been trying to enforce and do not start making Chinese government (or UK for that matter) type of noises about internet content I think this is a good move. I look forward to the release of the full draft of changes so that a more educated debate of its merits (or flaws) can be had.
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