Will the Internet be free or fee?

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 02/21/2006 - 10:16

Stephen Levy is a knowledgeable technology columnist for Newsweek, and his article on network neutrality is short and articulates the issues clearly. As Levy puts it, the Internet may end up with two classes of service: "steerage and first class," with nothing in between.

Such a split would stop the development of new services, and create de facto monopolies for the companies that are already big--think Google, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN. All four of those companies were tiny once, and the reason they were able to grow was because network neutrality allowed them to.

Once the Internet is split by access providers (the telephone and cable companies, for the most part) into free and fee-based classes of services, Levy, Vint Cerf (one of the original Internet developers), and many other believe innovation and competition will come to a halt.

What worries me is that there are too many calls for legislation. Do we really want Congress deciding how the Internet should be run? I don't think so.

The solution is to break the infrastructure stranglehold that the telephone and cable companies have over communities. Community infrastructure investments will not only get them to play by community rules, but as One Cleveland has shown, they can make money using community infrastructure.