Net Neutrality - A Real World Comparison Is About To Begin

From the May 24th issue of the Financial Post...

"Is the U.S. about to kill the open Internet and will Canada save it? The new chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to jettison America’s “net neutrality” regulations and replace them with guidelines. The New York Times, in a spirited editorial headline last month, summarized it like this: “FCC Invokes Internet Freedom While Trying to Kill It.”

I don't know about you, but I needed a refresher about what net neutrality is all about. The commentator, Kenneth Engelhart, provides the lowdown

"The term was coined by Columbia law professor Tim Wu in 2003. He noted that the Internet treated everyone’s content the same way; no app or user got special treatment. Neutrality, Wu writes on his website, is what “a maximally useful public information network aspires to.” However, Wu was concerned that ISPs would start to play favourites."

The FCC under the current administration will largely ditch net neutrality giving anyone interested in the topic a great opportunity to gauge what, if any, impact these regulations have on consumers, internet service providers and the Internet as a whole.

While Mr. Engelhart, who is a Toronto attorney specializing in this field, has his own views on how this plays out, how do you think it will develop.

Regardless, let the experiment begin.