On your various visits to the World Wide Web, you may have stumbled across a new phenomenon that is sweeping the world. This “net neutrality” term is something that is becoming one of the hottest topics of the digital age. But why? What is net neutrality and how will it affect you?

What is Net Neutrality?

The internet has always been there, whether it is for researching a topic or using it for social media. Net neutrality is the notion that all internet traffic is to be treated the same, and therefore shouldn’t be restricted by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in order to gain more money by requiring payment for access to certain sites.

People who are in favour of net neutrality want ISPs to provide the service of an internet connection, and have no influence on what content customers access – as long as it’s legal, of course!

ISPs have hit back by arguing that a tiered internet is more appropriate in the digital environment we have today. This tiered internet allows content providers to pay to access an internet “fast lane”, which customers then must pay to utilise.

Why Is This A Popular Topic?

A huge case in the US was brought to the media’s attention in January of 2014, where Verizon, an American ISP, challenged the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the net neutrality policy that was in place.

Since then the FCC has been heard to state that they were allowing ISPs to charge for content as long as the terms were “commercially reasonable”.

How Does Net Neutrality Affect Me?

Net neutrality means that, as a consumer, you only pay the ISP a single fee for each bit of data that you use, with no additional costs for accessing bandwidth heavy content, such as streaming a video.

This allows you as the user to control what content you are seeing, rather than allowing your ISP to direct you to certain sites if they have some form of commercial deal with that particular content creator.

If net neutrality was overturned, your ISP could charge you every time you browse those high bandwidth websites, which would inevitably rack up the cost consumers will be paying to access regular content.

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