Net Neutrality and influence of Internet.org

Net neutrality, or Open Internet, is the Internet’s guiding principle that preserves individual’s rights to communicate and access all the content freely online, regardless of the source. This means that Internet service providers should provide us with open networks and should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. 

Currently, there is no regulation of how ISPs should treat traffic from different websites. In 2010, the FCC’s  Open Internet Order was built with three principles:

• No Throttling: ISPs should be open about how they handle traffic. They should not degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, or non-harmful devices.
• No Blocking: As long as the content is legal, an ISP is not allowed to block access to any site, application, service or non-harmful devices.
• No unreasonable discrimination: ISPs are not allowed to favor some lawful traffic Internet traffic over other lawful traffic. In other words, “no fast lanes”.

For example, it doesn’t offer faster transmissions for Netflix videos than it does for those from Amazon Prime.

In future, with Net Neutrality an ISP will be prohibited from slowing the delivery of a TV show simply because it's streamed by a video company that competes with a subsidiary of the ISP. An ISP can manage the type and speed of Internet traffic (customers pay for different speeds), in order to maintain network quality for consumers.

Net Neutrality for Future Generation

Net Neutrality is particularly important to internet startups, small business owners and entrepreneurs, who argue that strong protections are necessary for the next generation of tech companies to grow and flourish. Their business rely on the open Internet to launch, create market, advertise their products, service, and distribute products to customers.  

Without Net Neutrality, small companies and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) could be harmed the most. The content companies could be forced to pay the amount of traffic they generate. SMBs and NGOs do not have the ability to pay these costs and this might lead to the reduction in Internet traffic. This would hurt both telecom and Internet companies. While it’s understandable that the telecoms are seeking to protect the current and future investments they need to make but no one, especially small and growing businesses would like to pay extra fees and risk their future vitality of their business.

The purpose of net neutrality is not to regulate the Internet, but rather to retain our current freedom of expression. What we expect from Net Neutrality is that members of low-income communities and SMBs should have the same access and freedom to information as our wealthiest citizen and multi-billion dollar corporations.

Internet.org as launched by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook

Internet.org project launched by Mark Zuckerberg offers various mobile application in different parts of world such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia; is facing criticism and defection over alleged violations of net neutrality guiding principles.

Through partnerships with cellular carriers, the app provides free access to a few websites like Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Wikipedia, AccuWeather, Bing Search, BBC News, ESPN, and other, that has been selected by the social networking company. While the app itself doesn't provide access to the entire Internet, users could still access the rest of the Web if they have a browser and data plan.

Many claimed that internet.org is favoring the services offered by Facebook over the others websites that  clearly shows differences on the use of the free access they are sharing. Facebook as a trading Company has commitment to its shareholders and the question is are they doing this for making Internet widely available or to tap into the future developing economies? May be if the Internet.org was launched by an independent body which qualified the applications eligible for the free use then the commitment behind it will be less questionable. And what happens to those small time app developers who can’t get the deal with big telecom’s to get their apps on such platform?

Facebook was once a startup but now it may be making the launch of new startups more difficult in the growing economies by launching an exclusive platform for the big players of Internet (.org)