Published in News

Trump to ban free and open internet

by on26 January 2017


Must be ruled by the US telcos

Shy and retiring US president Donald (Prince of Orange) Trump is almost certain to hand over control of the internet to the US comms companies and abandon the net neutrality which has made the technology great again.

The Trump administration yesterday named Republican Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission. Pai is an outspoken critic of net neutrality. He will be replacing Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who most famously used his majority to pass what is informally known as the Open Internet Order. That order classified broadband internet as a telecommunications utility, though did not subject internet-service providers to the intense regulations that other common carriers suffer.

The Open Internet Order was designed to enforce a net neutrality which basically ignores what network you are connected. It also means that the Comm companies are not allowed to slow down or speed up your connection and you don’t have to pay for long-distance fees either.

This hacked off the US comms companies considerably. They wanted to charge those sites, such as google and youtube which sucked up more bandwidth. It also wanted the power to throttle users who they didn’t like very much.

It could also mean that some customers might not get a very good service because a company cannot afford to pay every telco in the world protection money for its traffic.

Ajit Pai however thinks that an open internet is a terrible thing. Pai wrote a 67-page rant when the Open Internet order was adopted. Now he oversees the FCC, and he has said that net neutrality’s “days are numbered”. This means that the telcos will be allowed to do what they like. It will be interesting to see what happens in more civilised countries which do not allow their corporations to do what they like. It is possible that the rest of the world will have a good open internet but it will be rather uneven if you try to connect to US sites.

 

Last modified on 26 January 2017
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: