The Web is Not the Internet

by Tim Lee on February 16, 2006 · View Comments

Today’s USA Today editorial on network neutrality exemplifies many of the things that are wrong with that debate:

Much of the Internet’s appeal is that no one controls it in the way that, say, a grocery store decides which brands to stock. Within its virtual walls, a start-up such as MySpace or Craigslist can surge to prominence entirely on the power of an idea.

Now, some very old-school companies want to change all that. Using market dominance achieved through the relative scarcity of lines into people’s homes, phone companies such as BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T are eyeing a system that would demand that operators of search engines, e-commerce sites and other Web applications pay them fees or be relegated to the slow lane.

In the first place, these companies have no ability to change “all that.” Each of them controls a fairly small share of the US residential broadband market. The Internet is bigger than residential customers, and it’s bigger than the United States. There’s no threat that AT&T, Comcast, or anyone else will change the way the Internet as a whole operates.

Secondly, the web is not the Internet. And in fact, the web is largely irrelevant to the debate. The bandwidth that’s available today is already more than enough to browse the web comfortably. Network neutrality regulations, if they are necessary at all, are required for next-generation services like video and voice, not web sites.

View Comments Posted in: Broadband & Neutrality Regulation

  • Clayton Nash
    This threat strikes me a very overhyped -- what would stop a competitor from running ads about the "Unlimited Internet" access they offer and decimating the incumbent's DSL installed base?
  • Tim
    rockstud:

    I agree that network neutrality is a good thing. However, I think that the threat is being over-sold, and more importantly, I think a regulatory cure is worse than the disease.
  • rockstud
    The problem is one mainly of collusion. If any one of Bellsouth, Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T; become non-network neutral, big deal. Users just flee to the others.

    But if all four (plus others) collude, they *do* effectively change 'all that.' And not only the web -- they can decide to also block all non-http traffic on ports 80/443 (getting rid of pesky bandwidth hogs like FTP, spam email, bittorrent, etc), and block all ports aside from those for end users. In fact, it is only when they do this that they can effectively force content providers to pay their extortion fees.

    Network neutrality is important. It may not be important for government to get involved with regulating it, but it is important that consumers understand and rise up against those who violate it.

    It seems that Congress wants to get involved precisely because most users don't understand what is at stake, and they are hoping to play their favorite role, as benevolent parent to uneducated child (us).
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