Net Neutrality vs. SMS

The opponents of net neutrality claim that with net neutrality the Internet will develop slower and not provide as many services. They also claim the market will prevent them from suppressing a site or service. Do you have a Verizon Wireless cell phone? Have you noticed that you can’t use the multimedia messaging to send a friend a ring tone? That’s because Vzw blocks that. Why would they do that? Because your friend should have to pay for the ring tone. Specifically, your friend should have to pay to download it. So that Vzw can bill the site they download it from for the download from as well as billing your friend. No they’re not protecting the rights of the person who created the ring tone, if they were they would allow that person to give you the right to not have to pay. Weren’t we supposed to be able to use cell phones to pay for things? Why hasn’t that developed as quickly as Internet based technology? Net neutrality is the reason. Without net neutrality the internet will develop as slowly as SMS (the “Internet” capabilities on your cell phone.) The only SMS app that is widely used is text messaging. NewsForge has a good article explaining the “rapid” pace of development on the network without net neutrality aka your cell phone’s Internet. Tags: blogs, Internet, web, freedom, politics, net neutrality, technology, SMS