A Tiered Internet ... The New Digital Divide

During the National Community Wifi Summit this past weekend we discussed the Telecom Bill quite a bit. Bill Callahan has a good summary on his blog. Jeff Chester has a more in depth analysis on his Digital Destiny blog.

An important piece of the bill is Net Neutrality. For those of us in the community technology arena, an important question is... Why should we care about Net Neutrality? To get there one must start with what Net Neutrality is all about. In its simplest terms, Net Neutrality is about keeping content on the Internet equal; that is not having one site delivered faster than another site because they happened to have a business arrangement with an Internet provider (most likely by having transacted large sums of cash).

If this "pay to play" is legislated, our Internet service will be tiered like our cable and we will have created a new Digital Divide. I have enough work trying to bridge the current Digital Divide… a tiered Internet will keep even more folks from accessing portions of the "Information Superhighway". Oh wait, there’s more… it will not only create inequal access from the consumer side but also make new business entry to the Internet more difficult. ‘Cause we know most new small businesses will not have the funds to “pay to play”. E-commerce is providing folks from all arenas an equal business opportunity, including folks with disabilities. Withdrawing that level playing fields just to boost bottom line of the Internet providers seems anti-economic development and downright Un-American.