The Pros and Cons of Net Neutrality

摘要

Most of the readers would now be aware of the raging debate on Net neutrality, but let's anyway do a quick memory refresh. The principle of free, unrestricted access to any data on the Net is referred to as net neutrality. An ISP does not control the traffic that passes through its servers. When a user connects to a website or web service, the user is promised exactly the same experience. There is no discrimination on using data whether one is using YouTube or WhatsApp or Facebook. Theoretically users can access any legal website or web service without any interference from an ISP. Additionally, since majority of the Telecom Service Operators (TSP) are also Internet Service Providers (ISP), there was no perceived discrimination on the usage of data. From the time Internet has kicked off in the early 1980's, there has not been any fixed rule on this.