RESEARCH PAPER

Network Neutrality

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet, an uninterrupted access to the whole wide world was made possible. Millions of websites having all kinds of material is being browsed everyday throughout the globe. The world has been made a global village in the real sense. The internet now serves an essential purpose in our lives, one without which life is impossible to be imagined. Despite its universally acclaimed benefits and utility, there are some underlying interests that undermine the freedom of the internet. This paper seeks to look into the concept of network neutrality (net neutrality), throw light on the role of Comcast in this regard, realize its significance as well as provide a review of the current laws on the topic especially from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The future implications of such laws will also be assessed and based on that, we will see whether net neutrality is justified or not.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Network Neutrality4

Concerns with Net Neutrality4

Comcast and its Actions for Broadband Internet Customers6

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) actions against Comcast7

Court's response to FCC7

Future of Net Neutrality8

References9

Network Neutrality

Introduction to Network Neutrality

Network Neutrality is a concept regarding the internet traffic being “neutral”. This implies that all the internet traffic should be treated equally. The internet should be a platform providing equality in terms of access to different websites, content, and modes of communication. The Internet Service Providers and government should allow a non-restricted access to the internet and every website should share in same levels of entry in terms of internet-connected services. While the concept seems to reinforce the freedom of the internet, making it more vast and broad; it certainly has some aspects which need to be analyzed. The term “network neutrality” might be new to the world, but the concept is not. It is basically a principle of network design that encourages all the content, websites and platforms of the internet to be treated equally and the network to support every bit of knowledge, information and application.

Concerns with Net Neutrality

The key to Net neutrality is to maintain the guarantee of equal access to content, no matter what content is what service is used to manage data or what connection device making the request. Yet there can be some reasons as to why we have to be concerned about network neutrality. Let us see some of those concerns here:

Parties who support the concept of network neutrality suggest that governmental control over the internet is necessary to avoid dominance in the marketplace by few giant commercial websites. This could lead to the suspension of other websites who are unable to reach the target customers. There have been many laws in the world to protect the concept of network neutrality as they believe the competition on the internet networks should not be choked off.

There are still other ISPs, and commercial websites who believe network neutrality is not applicable and should be condemned. They suggest that net neutrality is an unrealistic objective, since many network systems are ...