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Glossary
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- Net Neutralitysearch for term
- Net neutrality is the concept that Internet users should not have to pay extra fees to access certain sites. Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon have lobbied Congress to allow a tiered service model, in which there would be two types of sites. There would be those paying the regular fee, and there would be sites who would choose to pay the Internet carriers an extra fee to allow high-speed access to their sites. Essentially, carriers like AT&T would create revenue by requiring all those who wanted easy, fast access to their sites to pay more, lest they be abandoned by customers frustrated by the slow load. Net neutrality is a movement that advocates that there should be no such tiering of the Internet, but that all sites should be allowed the same level of access and at the same speed of upload. Such an approach would mean that wealthy corporations and individuals would not be provided with preferred access at the detriment to smaller, companies, and bloggers with unequal funds. Proponents of net neutrality argue that if a tiered service model was adopted for the Internet, sites like Google that started on a shoestring budget, would not have been allowed to flourish. Essentially, net neutrality is an egalitarian approach to the supply side of the Internet. It maintains that every site has the right to exist and have an opportunity to attract users on its own merits.
