Net Neutrality

The major network providers: AT&T, Verizon, Cox Communications, Comcast, etc. would like to begin charging different rates to major content providers: Google, Yahoo, etc. for priority access to the fast lanes of the Information Superhighway, as well as multi-tiered access to heavy end-users.
This could, in theory, lead to providers granting access to the fastest components of their networks to the content providers and end-users with the deepest pockets.
This could also potentially allow providers, at least indirectly, to control content, sites, platforms, equipment required, and modes of communication allowed.
This situation came about as a result of the major telecommunications companies reneging on their promises to build a nationwide fiberoptic network one hundred times faster than the copper wire network we have today. This after taking multi-millions of dollars in tax breaks and other financial incentives guaranteed them by the government, which saw the network as a benefit to the nation.
This makes a perverse kind of sense when one considers that they have already taken the money, they can still charge content providers (and anyone else who can afford to pay) premium rates for priority access to their networks, and they can avoid the heavy financial outlay that the new network infrastructure would require.
What concerns the vast majority of Internet users is what this level of control by a few elite groups and well off individuals would mean for the rest of us. We have heard time and again of a digital divide between the haves and the have-nots. This situation threatens to create an access divide within the haves themselves.
Since its inception the Internet has been seen as the next frontier. The internet is also the last frontier of unregulated openness. It is an invention of democratic societies intended for use by the world as a whole. The Internet has fostered innovations in political campaigninggg, debate and protest: (Tiananmen Square, the Iranian uprising, the war in Iraq), as well as the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints between groups and agencies as ideologically diverse as MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition and Al Jazeera. And anybody can participate: Major news organizations, bloggers, podcasters, etc.
The Internet has also given rise to numerous innovations which include: Online shopping, banking, bill paying, gaming, education, and the sharing of our lives through social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter). This, in addition to the impact the Internet has had on the music, motion picture, and television industries.
The Internet has been, and continues to be, a truly tranformative technology which has changed the way we live our lives. We need Net Neutrality legislation to preserve the economic, educational, social, and innovative benefits the Internet, unregulated and equally open to all will continue to provide.