Who knew that the slow Internet service some people experience from time to time on certain Web pages might be intentional? It’s also a bit of a political issue.
Here’s how: Internet service providers—take Verizon, for instance—could charge money to content providers to decide which services get streamed fastest to certain customers, but that would mean that other pages and content “would be slowed down,” a New York Times report explains.
That kind of cherry-picking doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, including President Barack Obama, who expressed disapproval for the practice on Monday. “We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas,” Obama said in a statement.
That telecommunications companies can tamper with the quality of people’s online experiences just to satisfy financial agreements they have with a select few content providers is not consistent with the Net neutrality concept that Obama and millions of Americans expect and support.
Obama cannot tell the Federal Communications Commission how to deal with the issue of Net neutrality, but his weighing in on the issue is a significant voice in a sea of many.
“Mr. Obama said that new rules under consideration by the FCC should adhere to several key principles: No website or service should be blocked by an Internet service provider; no content should be purposefully slowed down or sped up; there should be more transparency about where traffic is routed; and no paid deals should be made to provide a speed advantage to some providers over others in delivering content,” the New York Times reported.
Read more at the New York Times.