Namecheap Net Neutrality video simplifies the message to the man in the street.

Net Neutrality as a subject could provide enough posts for a stand alone blog. Probably does somewhere. There are certainly enough posts on the subject on this site including this recent one from Pete Farmer. Was chatting to Matt Russell of  hosting and domain name co Namecheap (and trefor.net) this morning who mentioned that a Namecheap Net Neutrality video was going live this afternoon. The above YouTube video is the outcome.

The Net Neutrality debate has to a large extent been the demesne of industry. Network operators and content providers in the main. This Namecheap video is a very good attempt to get the message about Net Neutrality across to the man in the street who probably doesn’t understand the issue. The issue, if you are one of those men in the street, is that telcos want to charge content providers for delivering their content reliably to you. Telcos want to do this because delivering an ever greater amount of content is costing them money. There is a very recent example where OTT video provider Neteflix has had to pay telco Comcast to provide sufficient bandwidth to meet their streaming needs.

This was not a very good precedent but Netflix were caught in a difficult position.  They needed to be able to guarantee a certain quality of picture to their customers. Comcast also provide their own video services so arguably this could be seen as being anti-competitive. The point of course is that the customer, in this case of both Comcast and Netflix is already paying for the bandwidth.

The biggest issue is that this could be just the tip of the iceberg. We could end up with a multilayer internet where some people who can afford it get a better service that others. This is certain to stifle innovation in internet services where start-ups might be unable to pay to guarantee the delivery of their product.