The complex policies that shape the way technology is regulated in the US can often seem too distant to have any real impact on your daily life. However, one has come to the forefront of a heated battle between its advocates and opponents in recent years: Net Neutrality.This one aspect of US law has the potential to impact everything from online censorship to broadband pricing. It can also impact the quality of your streaming services. Read onto find out how, exactly, and whether it affects them for good or for bad.
What Is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is a concept that has made headlines on and off for several years now. But, you may still be unclear on just what it represents. At its core, it is a policy that requires that all data being transmitted across the internet should be treated equally.
This means that your video stream should be given the same level of priority as your neighbor’s video stream, and both of those should be given the same priority as your local government’s email blasts, and none of them should be subject to governmental censorship or commercial throttling.
While this may seem like an obvious and egalitarian way of managing the internet, the concept has its opponents, primarily the ISPs (Internet Service Providers), mobile carriers, and network owners that stand to gain dividing the web up into restricted areas.
How Net Neutrality Impacts Streaming Services
As things stand now, a person in the US can access essentially any streaming service they wish and expect the service to work at its optimal capacity. Of course, there are limitations based on the user’s broadband speed, network congestion, and other potential technical glitches. However, these are natural factors that affect all services, universally.
A lack of Net Neutrality protection makes it legal for ISPs, content providers, mobile network providers, and any of the companies that own a portion of the delivery hardware your streaming services travel over to artificially introduce obstacles and limitations.
As mentioned above, this could come in the form of throttling the speed of a competing provider’s services or prioritizing the traffic of their own services above all competing products to artificially inflate their own performance.
Attempting to access a competing, de-prioritized service in this scenario would be lower resolution video playback (as seen in the comparison image above), more buffering, longer load times, and a generally degraded viewing experience for you as a customer.
This "paid prioritization" is generally seen as a form of anti-competitive behavior that US regulators are generally tasked with squelching. It is also at the heart of what Net Neutrality is trying to combat: the creation of an internet divided up into many little walled gardens with content providers and network operators holding sway over whatever portion of it they can manage.
Taking things one step further, ISPs could completely block data from providers that have not paid them, or transmissions from companies they are directly competing with. This may all sound like a dystopian future, but it is something that several network providers have attempted to move towards the past, and a reality that would stand to massively increase their potential revenue streams.
Can Paid Prioritization Have a Positive Impact?
There are, however, some who believe paid prioritization and similar schemes can benefit you as a subscriber.
Services like T-Mobile's Binge-On utilizes what is know as zero-rated data, a practice similar to a traditional 800 number that shifts the costs for the data used from the customer to the provider. Streaming services that have signed up for Binge-On pay T-Mobile to allow customers to use their apps and sites without incurring any usage against their monthly limits.
While some see zero-rated data as a great money-saver for the end-user, others see it as a slippery slope that reduces healthy competition in the market and will ultimately lead to higher prices for consumers.
How Has Net Neutrality Been Enforced in the US So Far?
Until 2015, Net Neutrality hadn’t been enshrined in US federal law. That changed when then-FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Chairman Tom Wheeler spearheaded the passage of The FCC's Open Internet Order, a piece of legislation that designated the internet as a utility, giving the agency the power to enforce its Net Neutrality guidelines.
Under these new rules, it became illegal in the US to offer paid prioritization of online services. This essentially forbade companies from slowing, blocking, or detrimentally impacting a competing company’s services via their control over the hardware that powers the internet.
Federal support would not last long, however. In 2016, Ajit Pai, the Trump Administration’s selection for FCC Chair, mmediately dismantled Wheeler’s Open Internet Order and replaced it with his own Restoring Internet Freedom Act.
The new legislation was a complete repeal of federal Net Neutrality regulations, removing essentially all legal penalties related to the throttling or blocking of access to competing online services.
The impact of Pai’s repeal has been greatly limited by several state legislatures passing their own laws, requiring ISPs and carriers to continue supporting net neutrality if they wanted to operate within those states’ borders.
Why Is Net Neutrality Making Headlines Again?
With the departure of the Trump administration and the resignation of Ajit Pai as FCC Chair, President Biden chose Jessica Rosenworcel, a known proponent of Net Neutrality, to serve as Interim Chair of the regulator. Many consumer advocates saw this as the starting gun of a race to once again support the concept at a federal level.
This perception of the Biden administration's agenda came to pass quickly when President Biden signed an executive order in July 2021 that included the adoption of "Net Neutrality" rules similar to those previously adopted..."
While this is obviously an important first step, any full reinstatement of Net Neutrality at a federal level will require the approval of FCC leadership working at its full capacity.
Although there are still several steps required, Net Neutrality finds itself closer to being supported at a federal level than any time since the 2016 election, resulting in the current upswell of renewed interest and support.
How You Can Sway Net Neutrality Legislation
Net Neutrality's path to once again becoming federal law lies with the FCC. Specifically, within the Biden administration’s obligation to nominate and confirm a fifth FCC Commissioner, providing the full leadership panel required to enact major policy changes. Currently, that office remains vacant following the ascension of Jessica Rosenworcel to the role of Chair.
To expedite progress in this area, organizations like Battle for the Net have begun collecting petition signatures and encouraging the Biden administration to quickly nominate a fifth Commissioner.
Interested citizens can visit the organization’s site to sign one of their petitions or find out more information about how to contribute to the cause.
Aside from the efforts of Battle for the Net and consumer groups like it, the passage of new Net Neutrality legislation can be swayed by constituents across the US contacting their congressional representative or senator and making it clear where they stand on the issue.