{"id":28701,"date":"2017-07-12T23:25:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T21:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/?p=28701\/"},"modified":"2018-02-07T18:58:34","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T17:58:34","slug":"interactive-guide-on-net-neutrality-affect-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/interactive-guide-on-net-neutrality-affect-your-business\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interactive Guide On Net Neutrality And How It Can Affect Your Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Net Neutrality<\/strong> has become a hot topic in the past few months, resurfacing after being left alone for a while. Today, tech giants are taking to the [virtual] streets and protesting<\/strong> against talks being conducted recently in the United States<\/strong> to abolish Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n

Website giants such as Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, Netflix and even Pornhub<\/strong> are protesting against this on Wednesday, July 12th<\/strong>. Reddit for example is doing it by slowing down loading speeds<\/strong> of it’s logo and giving a “bandwidth exceeded” warning to its users as seen below. Netflix<\/strong> on the other hand is adopting some real-time marketing strategies<\/a> to deal with this issue and in this case – so are we<\/strong>; read below for an interactive guide<\/strong> on Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n

\"Reddit

Reddit Logo Slowed: Protesting Net Neutrality Deregulation<\/p><\/div>\n

Why Net Neutrality is Important For You:<\/h2>\n

Net Neutrality is basically the concept that says that Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) must act as public servants<\/strong> in the sense that they can not discriminate against different websites<\/strong> on the internet based on a payment scheme. For example:<\/span> if Net Neutrality regulations are abolished<\/strong> and Google would pay AT&T $1 million\/month<\/strong> in Michigan and Bing would pay nothing<\/strong>, Google would load faster than Bing in Michigan just because of the money it is paying to “throttle” its speed<\/strong>. That’s the idea in a nutshell<\/strong>. Implications can go much further up to censorship and blocking certain domains<\/strong> but that’s an issue for another day; you will be learning about Net Neutrality and businesses <\/strong>for now.<\/p>\n

If net neutrality regulations\u00a0in the United States are abolished, this is what things would probably look like<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Some websites would load faster than others –\u00a0depending on how much money<\/a> these websites are paying Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) which in the States are mainly AT&T<\/strong>, Verizon<\/strong> and Comcast<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  2. When websites are slowed down, the loading time of\u00a0streaming videos<\/strong> for example would be much longer and buffering<\/strong> would be an everyday issue for a lot of people; not just those with slow internet speeds.<\/li>\n
  3. ISP’s could start charging customers extra fees<\/strong> in order to remove the restrictions<\/strong> on speed differences between websites of their choice.<\/li>\n
  4. Organic reach<\/strong> of websites to people, especially through search engines<\/strong> could<\/em> be heavily impacted – mostly due to the fact that loading speeds of websites<\/a> detected by search engines such as Google heavily affect the placement of these pages in search engine rankings<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  5. The above also has similar implications on paid ads<\/strong> on search engines or social media, even if indirectly<\/strong> – think of it this way: if you and your competitor<\/strong> place the same ad<\/strong> but one has a page loading time of 2 seconds<\/strong> since the domain pays the telecom companies<\/strong> more while the other<\/strong> has that of 10-15 seconds<\/strong>; which do you think will keep more users engaged<\/strong>\u00a0on and not have them exit the page directly?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"Start<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    From GIFs as the one above to the one seen below featuring Donald Trump<\/strong>, the ISP’s and Ajit Pai<\/a> – head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which is responsible for regulations such as Net Neutrality and previous lawyer for Verizon.<\/a>\u00a0This was cleared in a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver<\/strong>\u00a0– a satirical political show produced by HBO –\u00a0and people are not taking the possible threats to the integrity of Net Neutrality<\/strong> well.<\/p>\n

    \"net

    Net Neutrality and the FCC<\/p><\/div>\n

    The following video on Vimeo promoted by the website shows briefly what the effects of removing Net Neutrality regulations may cause and explains the reactions that have been seen on social media:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n