After the FCC’s decision to “roll back” President Barack Obama’s Net Neutrality guidelines, many, perhaps Millennials most of all, are somewhat up in arms about the decision. When news first came out in 2014 that ISPs would be “experimenting” with high speed lanes and were shown to be reducing the speeds of platforms such as Netflix, some of us were dismayed that the Obama administration didn’t act quickly enough. Here we are, not four years later, and the new administration is hell-bent on reversing any and all possible Obama era decisions. While access to Netflix may not be vital to the success of our country and planet, the access to information provided by a free and open internet is.
The extreme views that support the FCC’s decision throw insults at anyone concerned about Net Neutrality, claiming that market forces will continue to protect and improve the internet as we know it today. Those of us that grew up with the internet are well aware that we do not have the competition necessary in this country to protect the open and free internet. Consider this (anecdotal, I know): when I was living in Clarksville, TN (about 45 minutes from Nashville), the statement from Google that they were considering offering Gigabit internet service in Nashville resulted in an overnight doubling of internet speeds. Competition still works, but I could write (or link: Fortune, arstechnica) multiple articles on how the major telecoms have worked very hard to prevent a competitive environment, because competition means they have to invest resources into improving their product rather than maintaining their comfortable status quo.
Currently, ISPs are aware of the heat around the decision, and are concerned about the backlash. Many people report their ISPs’ customer help lines having a message about protecting the free and open internet, but many of us worry that it’s just a matter of time before they believe the heat is off and they can start transforming the internet to better themselves. Improving competition may be one response to the immense focus on the issue. Multiple states, cities, and municipalities have responded with plans to offer gigabit service to their constituents in response to the FCC’s decision. Perhaps smaller scale start-ups may re-emerge to fill the competitive void in other areas. They’ll be in for a very challenging uphill battle, as previous efforts to provide internet and phone service were met with regulatory challenges originated by ISPs, telecoms, and conservative PACs (wired, above linked articles), or they were simply bought up, reducing meaningful competition(technologizer).
While some locations were already exploring and implementing municipal broadband, the Net Neutrality decision should be an impetus for more communities to go this route. In the middle of last year, Fort Collins, CO scored a big victory in the quest to maintain a free and open internet, with the city council voting unanimously to provide a municipal broadband solution. The implementation will take 3-5 years, and likely be fraught with legal opposition from Comcast, but it’s certainly a move in the right direction. According to a Harvard study (Vice, Report), municipal broadband is typically cheaper, sometimes as much as 50% cheaper (for the lowest service that qualified for the FCC’s former definition of broadband) than the equivalent service from an ISP.
An additional benefit of municipal broadband would be that it further decentralizes the internet beyond where we are today, much in line with the intent of the original architects of the internet. Decentralization prevents mass outages, which is a benefit to the population because we are less likely to experience problems, and beneficial to the government because an attack on the infrastructure will be less likely to cause significant or catastrophic harm.
If competition doesn’t fit the void, there’s an even more exciting solution to the monopolization (oligopilization is a little awkward and cumbersome) of the internet: mesh networking. Rather than everyone in a city relying on one or two ISPs, nodes could be formed where neighborhoods connect to the internet together. Houses could be connected to one another wired or wirelessly, and would communicate to each other or routed through one another, connecting to the internet through “supernodes” and decentralizing access. Currently, the technology is in its infancy, supported by hobbyists with fewer people utilizing it than there are Ham radio operators.
So in general, where we stand right now with our current level of competition (or lack thereof), the FCC’s Net Neutrality decision stands to increase censorship and reduce the quality of Internet Service in our country. However, active involvement of the population is necessary to explore new technologies such as mesh networking, promoting and developing startup ISPs, and/or seeking municipal broadband. Increasing access to and distribution of knowledge will allow us as a country and as a planet to utilize the potential of every individual on the planet.