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It is not often that managed service providers face a public policy issues that is prominently discussed beyond the technical channel community. The last time this happened was over a decade ago when BPO was a hotly debated topic, often confused with offshoring; something many MSPs tried hard to distance themselves from. Today, the issue of net neutrality brings some fundamental public policy arguments squarely in front of the MSP community. The debate over net neutrality, however, is not an easy one to understand. So, I thought I'd try and summarize some of the core issues and the potential impact to MSPs.
What is Net Neutrality?
Not sure what net neutrality is? I wrote an article on net neutrality back in 2009 but the issue, at that time, was more an academic one, since the FCC was not truly serious about implementing any of their proposed rules. Here's my best attempt at defining the "net neutrality" issue. Net neutrality is about the attempted regulation of the Internet (including Internet Service Providers) in an attempt to create a level playing field for ISP services, more specifically, ISP services which do not play favorites and treat all data equally.
Great, who wouldn't be for creating a level playing field and treating all data equally? Not so fast. Saying you want to keep the Internet free is one thing, but how you go about doing it can create an entirely opposite effect. Net neutrality, as it stands today, involves US federal government oversight of the Internet. Specifically, it would mean classifying ISPs as telecommunication carriers (i.e., phone companies). The outcome of that federal involvement does NOT guarantee a certain outcome. After all, all one has to do is look at the US telephone market and see what happened to those companies after they were classified as a public utility. Many people would argue that telephone service and competition did not get better after they were treated as a utility.