Preserving Net Neutrality

January 18, 2018

Preserving an open internet is important to Connecticut businesses and families.

There are also talks in the works to craft legislation during the upcoming session of the General Assembly aimed at protecting Connecticut businesses and consumers from the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality rules.

Under the net neutrality laws, internet service providers (ISPs) cannot treat any data stream on the internet differently and cannot charge for access to specific sites or limit the speed for any specific online content.

The elimination of net neutrality means that internet service providers can begin to charge different premiums for different kinds of content and data. For instance, they may charge more to stream a movie than to send an email or they may charge based on what websites you access.

ISPs will be able to decide which web sites/services receive the best bandwidth and can therefore steer surfing to specific sites and help or hinder new business ventures that cannot afford higher bandwidths.

This is both a consumer protection and a pro-business issue.