Last Friday, December 15, we woke up to the news that the United States had passed a law ending Internet neutrality.
In Geotelecom we explain what this means and how it can affect Internet users.
What is Net Neutrality?
Since its birth, the Internet has meant the democratization of content. Net neutrality is the principle by which Internet providers and the governments that regulate the network treat all traffic equally. No content provider has priority over another.
This means that all content is treated equally and all have the same consideration.
In the United States, during the Obama era, net neutrality was guaranteed as a basic service for users. The Internet was classified as an information service. This meant that the Internet had the obligation to democratically allow access to all content providers.
This principle prevents first-class content and second-class content.
In the Trump era, this neutrality seems to have come to an end. The abolition of Internet neutrality jeopardizes the spirit of content accessibility with which the network was born.
How does this affect Internet Users?
The new law gives network operators in the United States the power to block content. This allows operators to impose their own rules for certain content based on their private interests. Operators will now be able to slow down certain content in order to give their own private interests. priority to others, and may impose the payment of services on a part payment basis.
The only obligation of the operators will be to publish that these contents are being slowed down or blocked. To make this clearer we will give an example:
An operator that commercializes audiovisual content could slow down the content of other audiovisual platforms. in favor of its own contents.
Other of the main affected would be the Start Ups that could assume over costs to reach the users. They will have a high barrier to access the network. This opens the gap that benefits content providers with more economic power over other more modest ones.
The European legislation that blocking or blocking some content in order to give priority to other content is illegal.
However, the U.S. regulation sets an important precedent for content access,
In countries such as Spain and Portugal, some operators are already using the '....Zero Rating' . This means that the operator offers a package of services that do not consume data rate. This directly affects the user behavior on the Internet and the way they consume content.
We will have to wait to see the real consequences that the end of neutrality will have on Internet.
And you, what do you think?
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