Net Neutrality and Education

I was talking with a friend of mine who works in the IT field the other day, and the topic of Net Neutrality came up. This is a very controversial and divisive issue that seems to challenge the ideas of free speech and free enterprise. I started thinking about Curtis Bonk's open world and the effects that a lack of net neutrality could have on all these openers as well as the relationship to education and educational technology. I wondered if anyone had written about this specific issue.

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So first of all, what is net neutrality? Above all, net neutrality seems to be something that is very difficult to find an unbiased description of. Most sources have either a very positive or very negative opinion about this issue. Net neutrality is the idea that all information on the internet should be of equal priority. This is the current state of the internet, all alternative ideas remain hypothetical for now. The alternative, commonly called tiered internet, would allow service providers to give certain companies or partners a higher "tier" or level of accessibility by allowing customers to access these sites or services through a "fast lane" of data. While data would not be physically separated, this means that traffic to these higher tier websites would be given priority to proceed above other traffic. On the other side, users who wished to access non-favored websites would be more likely to meet errors or slow connections. This means that on the metaphorical highway of the internet, if two cars wanted to get into the same lane at the same time, the one that was traveling to the sponsored destination would have the right of way, and the other car would have to yield.

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The issue is less about whether this is a good or a bad idea, and more about where the law comes down. Should the government be able to protect the rights of all people to have the equal opportunity to be heard at the cost of restricting free enterprise?

So what does this all mean for education? Thinking about this, I immediately thought of Bonk's open world and wondered if a world where internet providers have control over the accessibility of information would really be so open. Being that this is yet to be implemented, this is only my speculation. I think that tiered internet access could go in two different directions in terms of education:

Best Case Scenario:
Tiered internet will not be as dramatically disabling of bottom tier sites as speculated. During peak usage, users may experience occasional lag or loading errors, but will not experience serious service disruption. Teachers and students will still have easy access to online resources despite these small errors, and will continue to use new and existing online resources.

Worst Case Scenario:
Hypothetically the paid resource sites could pay to be top tier leaving free resources backed up. If tiered internet has as dramatic an effect as some speculate, accessing some sites could become very difficult and yield loading errors much of the time. Sure we would still have access to these resources, but would they be worth using if the connection was not reliable?  If Amazon loaded quickly, but Open Library had an unreliable connection, would teachers use resources from open library? I speculate that students would likely be willing to wait through longer load times, but that teachers may be less likely to choose these options as a result, and less funding and focus may be put on these options if they are not  used.

So what do I think? Honestly I'm not sure. I don't know if tiered internet access would destroy these open resources or not really affect it, but I don't see it adding anything positive. I also don't think that tiered internet is necessarily the next step in web development. If one provider maintained net neutrality while others moved to a tiered model, I believe that the neutral provider would have a significant advantage in business that could easily make up the amount of money earned by providers selling top-tier service. It's a lot to think about, and it might not even happen.

So I apologize for this monster of a post, but tell me what you think! Would you as a teacher use a resource that did not load reliably if it had good content? Do you think it will even come to that?