Exploring the possible abandonment of net neutrality and the costs it could have for students and the Athens area
Today’s college students probably can’t remember a time without the Internet. And it’s unlikely that a single day goes by when they don’t use the service to check emails, watch videos or write papers.
But the freedoms allowed by the Internet are in jeopardy as the Federal Communications Commission looks to enact new regulations that threaten the principle of network neutrality.
The term “net neutrality” simply means all data has to be treated equally regardless of who created it. It’s the lever that allows start-up companies to compete with established companies. It’s how Facebook could dethrone Myspace. It’s how Vimeo can compete with YouTube.
But some FCC proposals aim to do away with this equal treatment of data, so companies that push excessive amounts of data would have to pay for additional bandwidth. Therein lies the debate.
Should services such as Netflix, which accounted for 34.2 percent of downstream usage during primetime hours, be allowed to use more than a third of the nation’s entire bandwidth and not be charged?
Or will the FCC allow Internet service providers to offer “fast lanes” for large amounts of data, charging customers for extra bandwidth usage and effectively doing away with the Internet’s core principle of net neutrality?
Internet Service Providers
Consumers rely on Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon to deliver a high speed broadband Internet connection to homes. If you live off campus in Athens, chances are that ISP is Time Warner Cable or possibly Frontier Communications.
However, that might not be the case for long.
Comcast, the largest ISP in the nation, is expected to buy Time Warner Cable, the second largest ISP in the nation, in a historic $45 billion acquisition that gives Comcast a massive share of the market. A similar $67 billion deal is being hashed out between AT&T and DirecTV that would make AT&T the second largest ISP.
“The media system we have in this county is a monopoly in a lot of ways,” said Jeremy Saks, a third year Ph.D. student in the Scripps College of Communication. “There’s very little choice in terms of television or access to the Internet through cable, around here.”
If Time Warner Cable and Comcast merge, Time Warner Cable assets will be sold to Charter Communications, giving them near exclusive access to the Athens and Ohio markets. About 70 percent of Americans have only one or two choices when it comes to high speed broadband connection.
“If everything goes through and these transactions are approved, we’d be looking to do the same thing in all of our territories,” said Justin Venech, vice president of communications for Charter Communications.
When Charter brings those services to Athens, most Time Warner customers will see faster service, for cheaper. Customers on Time Warner Cable’s “Standard” internet-only package for $34.99 with speeds of 15 mbps would see speeds quadruple for $5 cheaper per month.
While that’s an improvement over the current situation, consumers don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
“You go outside of Athens ... where Time Warner Cable doesn’t serve outside of city limits you don’t have much choice at all,” said Trevor Roycroft, associate professor in the Scripps School of Communication, who has prepared comments filed with the FCC and researched this area for 14 years. “Because of the lack of competition in Broadband markets consumers are facing either an outright monopoly or a duopoly, the best case scenario is something like a duopoly.”
Without competition consumers have seen a trend of increased prices and lower customer service.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s customer service is notoriously bad, receiving the lowest scores of not only every ISP but the lowest customer service score of any company in the U.S., according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
“We see our service as good but something we’re focused on improving,” Venech said of Charter Communications’ customer service. “We’re rated slightly better than Time Warner Cable, but that’s not something we’re happy about. We want to continue improving.”
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Internet: an educational tool
In this age — the Internet is required for many tasks, including learning.
“You can make the argument that (Internet is) a necessity,” Roycroft said. “Anyone with a child in school, you need that service in order to make sure they have the full potential with regard to their education…”
Public universities in Ohio, including Ohio University, use OARnet as an infrastructure backbone to connect to the Internet. OARnet can be considered a highway, which connects schools statewide to the larger interstate connections provides by the ISPS said Jamie Abel, communications director for the Ohio technology consortium.
Professors and students also have access to Internet2, the national research and education network, which acts as a fast lane for research since it has its own bandwidth separate from the standard WiFi connection on campus.
“Internet research came to a standstill when it was commercialized … it made it difficult for people like me who do research on the Internet,” said Shawn Ostermann, associate dean for research, graduate studies and planning. “(We can) use large amounts of bandwidth without someone saying ‘Oh, my, Netflix doesn’t look so good.’ ”
If the FCC allows Netflix and other companies to adopt a premium “fast lane,” it could be modeled after Internet2. But Ostermann said he’s doubtful students would even notice a fast lane plan.
“It affects students when they’re dealing with video,” Ostermann said. “That’s where the students are going to notice it, the’re either going to notice poor quality or lots of pixelization, they’re not going to notice it in their email and they’re not going to notice it in their web traffic.”
FCC rulings won’t likely affect OU’s Internet connection in any great capacity since it uses OARnet, said Sean O’Malley, I.T. communications manager.
However, it might affect students and faculty attempting to access university resources from outside of the OU network. This poses a problem for professors who travel a lot or work remotely.
It could also hinder innovation on the Internet. It would be difficult for startup companies to compete on the Internet when larger companies have more bandwidth — and faster speeds.
“It’s a key issue I believe to OU students and anyone who has an idea, be it a blog, a video or a new technology that uses the Internet,” Roycroft said. “For example, take the new app that’s sweeping college campuses across the country, Yik Yak. The success of Yik Yak thrives on network neutrality. If the inventors of Yik Yak had to come up with a few million dollars first before they could make their application work then likely Yik Yak wouldn’t be there.”
Ostermann disagrees. Just because there’s a fast lane doesn’t mean the rest of the Internet traffic will slow down, he said.
Moving Forward
The FCC has not decided on these new policies and the mergers have not yet been approved.
However, the mergers appear to be all but a done deal at this point and the latest news reported by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal this week announced the leak of a FCC hybrid model proposal that would seek to keep net neutrality principles in place, but possibly on only half the Internet. It would split the Internet into “wholesale” transactions, which would receive utility-like regulation and “retail” transactions, which would be more open and free.
It’s one of several options the FCC is considering and it’s heavily taking into consideration the record breaking 3.7 million comments submitted to the commission by individuals and organizations regarding net neutrality rules.
“My perception from what I’ve been hearing from people who are in D.C. every day, is that it looks like the commission has moved away from (the fast lane model,)” Roycroft said. “Big carriers like AT&T and Verizon and Comcast are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying right now on this matter and the pro network neutrality forces don’t have the same deep pockets, and money unfortunately still has power in D.C.”
Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman appointed by President Obama, is also a former lobbyist for cell phone and cable companies.
Roycroft said there is a glimmer of hope in Google Fiber, a service the corporation is rolling out in select cities working on a local level to run cables to customers homes, which would provide Internet speeds double what most competitors can offer.
@Wilbur_Hoffman
wh092010@ohio.edu
