Yesterday night, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to for stronger Net Neutrality rules and for more choice in broadband providers - for Americans. You may ask why we, in India, or elsewhere have to be worried about what is happening in America,
It does matter. If third world countries are often (sometimes misguidedly) termed as human guinea pigs in clinical trials for vaccines, the US is the laboratory where critical technical issues are decided which can affect the way people in other nations live and interact, with Americans and even within them.
If Net Neutrality is overturned in America and internet 'fast lanes' had been approved, how long would it have taken the ISPs in India to adopt such practices? Days I would guess. Even without any precedence, we have the recent example of a major ISP and Mobile Service Provider trying to add on VOIP charges (in addition to the subscribed Data Plan) on consumers using Whatsapp and similar clients to make voice calls.
It is also not one of those decisions by the 'WASP' Americans alone. Indian-American Ajit Varadaraj Pai, an FCC Commissioner voted 'against' the Net Neutrality proposals. The vote was carried 3-2 in the five member FCC. It was that close.
Just think about it. In the words of Fight For The Future [https://www.fightforthefuture.org/]
Here is the graphic from their page - with the top section showing the the FCC commissioners and how they voted (from the [www.battleforthenet.com] website).
#internetcountdown worked. FCC voted to keep #netneutrality
Read more at the link http://j.mp/1wnRf0w
It does matter. If third world countries are often (sometimes misguidedly) termed as human guinea pigs in clinical trials for vaccines, the US is the laboratory where critical technical issues are decided which can affect the way people in other nations live and interact, with Americans and even within them.
If Net Neutrality is overturned in America and internet 'fast lanes' had been approved, how long would it have taken the ISPs in India to adopt such practices? Days I would guess. Even without any precedence, we have the recent example of a major ISP and Mobile Service Provider trying to add on VOIP charges (in addition to the subscribed Data Plan) on consumers using Whatsapp and similar clients to make voice calls.
It is also not one of those decisions by the 'WASP' Americans alone. Indian-American Ajit Varadaraj Pai, an FCC Commissioner voted 'against' the Net Neutrality proposals. The vote was carried 3-2 in the five member FCC. It was that close.
Just think about it. In the words of Fight For The Future [https://www.fightforthefuture.org/]
The FCC just… voted... to pass… strong... net neutrality rules. The rules Comcast tried *everything* to stop. Reflect on this, for a moment:
President Obama had dragged his feet for years. We still won.
He appointed a former cable lobbyist to run the FCC. We still won.
We went up against the most powerful lobby in America. We still won.
They bought broad support from both parties in Congress. We still won.
The list continues below, for posterity, but you get the idea: We had to clear every hurdle. All the cable lobby had to do was stop us once. And yet… we still won.
Google has also been talking about its support for Net Neutrality on their Take Action With Google pages [https://takeaction.withgoogle.com/]. They have released a graphic as a show of support for FCC vote endorsing Net Neutrality.#internetcountdown worked. FCC voted to keep #netneutrality
Read more at the link http://j.mp/1wnRf0w
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