"Net neutrality" could be the most potent rallying cry for internet regulation in years.
It's also something of a surprise. Six months ago, few outside of internet policy wonk circles were aware of the issue. Now, the best-known brands on the net are flexing their lobbying muscles for and against it, and lawmakers have responded with a raft of competing bills. As the debate reaches fever pitch, it seems fair to ask: How neutral is the net right now?
Not very, it turns out.
"Net neutrality" has many meanings, but in the broadest sense refers to a cooperative principle whereby everyone on the net is supposed to make the same effort to help deliver everyone else's traffic. In fact, pushing bits through the network-of-networks that makes up the internet is an anarchic business and frequently an ugly one. ISPs must often fight to get their data carried on neighboring networks, and those who are willing to pay extra reap immediate benefits in the form of faster and better service. Vast amounts of traffic are rerouted and blocked every day. The system, while successful overall, seems to ride on the very edge of chaos, insiders say.
"I don't think the internet has ever been perfectly equal or neutral," says Khaled Nasr, a partner at venture-capital firm InterWest Partners. "There has always been some level of inequality." Seconds Matt Tooley, CTO of broadband optimization firm CableMatrix: "I don't think it's as egalitarian as people would like to think it is."
Arguments over net regulations are nothing new. But they have taken on fresh urgency as the industry absorbs a wave of megamergers and the internet rapidly evolves into a high-bandwidth pipe capable of replicating -- and perhaps even replacing -- both traditional telephone and cable TV services.
A dwindling list of corporate giants that control the pipes into consumers' homes are jumping into the video and internet phone businesses, creating an unprecedented threat to online competition, consumer advocates say. In a worst-case scenario, some speculate, a carrier like AT&T might launch its own internet video service and then conspire to hurt the performance of competitors, such as Google, Amazon.com and YouTube, at least where its own customers are concerned.
"They have been talking vocally about these new business models they're going to try out once they get these mergers done," says Alfred Mamlet, a telecom and intellectual-property lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson. "That's what's got the Googles and Yahoos concerned."
Opponents of regulation counter that examples of significant abuses have yet to be found, and any cases that do arise can be handled using current laws. The Federal Communications Commission can already stop discrimination and anticompetitive behavior when broadband gatekeepers go too far. Last year, for example, the agency fined Madison River Communications for blocking Vonage's voice-over-internet-protocol service.
However you feel about it, net neutrality has become a flash point. No less than six competing bills on the issue are currently being weighed on Capitol Hill, varying from a hands-off approach that would have the FCC adjudicate disputes to a House bill that cleared committee last week and would force internet service providers to offer everyone the same level of service (see chart, left).
The debate appears to have polarized into extreme positions. But a hard look at the current situation seems to show that both sides have a point, and the best long-range solution may well be a compromise. Giving the cable firms and telephone companies free rein to do exactly as they wish is almost certainly a mistake. But micromanaging their businesses by forcing them to treat everybody exactly the same would also be a blunder.