What Facebook Taught Me About Net Neutrality

[Commentary] Strong network neutrality rules don’t just protect companies — they also protect you as a consumer and ensure that you’re getting the full services you’re paying for. If an internet provider slows or blocks a site that you want to look at, it is denying you the right to freely choose the content that’s important to you. To see this more clearly, it’s crucial to understand that net neutrality concerns the delivery of data only once it reaches your internet provider’s network, which is only a small part of the internet as a whole. To create an invisible “fast lane” for someone else, your provider is slowing your connection to the internet.  Opponents of net neutrality argue that prioritization, blocking and throttling will actually increase innovation. Certain services, they say, require a special channel that can be shielded from congestion. What they fail to mention is that it’s already possible to create dedicated internet links that guarantee a highly reliable connection, and that this is commonplace today within the framework of a neutral internet. In fact, we do it at Philo to ensure uninterrupted delivery of television feeds from content providers to our servers.  The truth is that these arguments are a cover — what internet providers opposed to net neutrality really want is the ability to extract payments from companies that simply want their consumers to have equal access to their services.

[Andrew McCollum is the chief executive of Philo, an internet television company.]