PROGRAM SUCCESS – JULY 2010
Net Neutrality For
The Internet - Don’t
Believe The Hype
By: Robert M. Spooney, Th.D
Executive Director/ CEO of the African American Chamber of
Commerce of Central Florida and the Associate Pastor of
Christian Education at Fellowship Baptist Church of Pine Hills
in Orlando, Florida
The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is in the process
of determining how it can regulate the Internet. The focus of the
FCC, unfortunately, is not on what is on a website but rather how
to get to a website. It wants to control how Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) allow consumers and businesses to access Internet
Content Providers (ICPs or websites). I believe that such control
will have a devastating and negative affect on how small
businesses, especially small minority businesses, access the
Internet.
In a nutshell, the FCC is proposing a rule on “Net Neutrality
Regulation”. This rule will supposedly prohibit Internet Service
Providers from interfering with the free flow of information and
certain applications over their networks.” Currently, ISPs can slow
or block certain types of content, such as file transfers which use
peer-to-peer software and have the ability to consume as much as
70 percent of broadband capacity. Since bandwidth is a finite
resource, overuse of bandwidth can slow or cripple Internet access
for the rest of the ISPs customers. In today’s environment heavy
users of broadband capacity pay more. That’s how it should be. As
congestion threatens to impede quality of service, some ISPs have
responded by prioritizing traffic streams and by varying the price of
network access on the basis of the transmission capacity and traffic
volume.
This is a concept based on usage sensitivity or you pay for exactly
how much you use. It is the same as paying for driving on a toll
road, the more you use it, the more you pay. The concept is called
Traffic Prioritization and it keeps a content provider from utilizing
too much capacity without paying extra. In order to keep an even
flow of data moving, ISPs routinely monitor their networks to
ensure that all content have equal access. Net Neutrality Regulation
will prohibit ISPs from controlling the flow of traffic.
Now how does that affect small businesses?
The answer is simple. In today’s business environment minority
entrepreneurs are often content providers (website owners) that do
not have the financial resources of larger more established
companies. Major mainstream companies are now beginning to
increase their offerings of high-bandwidth products like movies and
music. Large volumes of streaming video and music files require
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large amounts of
network
capacity.
B r o a d b a n d
availability is not
unlimited so it is
conceivable
that
many
minority
companies that are
content
providers
(website owners) will
have to wait for
b a n d w i d t h
availability, due to
traffic bottlenecks, in
order for their content
to be delivered to the consumer. To add insult to injury,
the delivery may not be in a timely fashion. In other
words by instituting “Network Neutrality Regulation”
and blocking traffic prioritization, the FCC would
eliminate the ability of minority entrepreneurs to gain
entry and scale by partnering with ISPs to ensure that
their content is delivered at competitive speeds. Without
the ability to take advantage of ISP partnerships and
incentive programs that are a bi-product of traffic
prioritization, many minority digital entrepreneurs will
not be able to take full advantage of the transformative
power of broadband and afford the network access
needed to deliver their content to the consumer.
As I see it, the FCC’s push for “Net Neutrality
Regulation” is not good for small businesses. What can
you do? You should encourage the FCC to adopt a
flexible traffic prioritization policy that would preserve
business relationships and reduce the cost of services for
consumers. This can be done if ISPs have the latitude to
create ways to recoup a fair share of costs from the large
content providers and heavy Internet users. Write to the
following address and express your views:
The Honorable Julius Genachowski
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW, Washington, D.C. 20554
Dr. Robert M. Spooney is the Executive
Director/CEO of the African American
Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida
and former Staff Manager/Competitive
Analyst- BellSouth Business Systems (Now
AT&T)