While those involved in gaming might not feel like the world of net neutrality and US government legislation is going to have a real impact on their day-to-day lives, the end of net neutrality could actually create quite a few shockwaves. Of course, many of those who are in favor of the proposed end to net neutrality are companies like Verizon and other big ISPs who are looking to see if the end of the current rules mean that they can start to build on ideas of tiered internet plans, even possibly starting to get paid to slow down your access to some sites while pointing you in the direction of another by squeezing your bandwidth.
Ajit Pai gets new term on FCC despite protest of anti-net neutrality plan https://t.co/BhlRUf0YzT pic.twitter.com/VCJzDc0c0I
— Technology Bits (@Technology_Bits) 3 October 2017
At the moment, current legislation prevents all this from happening. However, with the new FCC chairman Ajit Pai looking to get rid of the Obama-era rules, the internet could be heading for a dramatic shake-up.
Who Stands Against this Change?
While of course the likes of Verizon are going to be in favor of the removal of net neutrality, there are many others who are clearly against this due to the fear that they could see site traffic squeezed by bigger companies with deeper pockets. Indeed, despite being recently acquired in a takeover, it was natural for companies to share their views against the proposal of the removal of net neutrality in a recent article, as it could lead to their customers enduring a worse gaming experience.
This is because the end of net neutrality could see gamers enjoying their MMO games exceeding data caps, not being able to download games at any speed, or even finding themselves seeing their troops defeated in battle because their ISP has decided to squeeze their service at the wrong moment.
Plarium is unlikely to be the only major player who will be writing this type of article, speculation that a recent article from Reuters confirms, highlighting the fact that even giants of the internet like Twitter and Google are very much against the proposed changes.
Is this Concept Too Complicated to Inspire a Fightback?
While of course viewers might notice that their Netflix service is buffering or that their Amazon Prime Thursday Night football service isn’t really keeping them up with the action, the actual notion of explaining to consumers that these services could effectively be put in a “slow lane” while others wouldn’t be makes the debate a very difficult one to get people excited enough about to fight back against. At least users who are not very tech-savvy may believe there is something wrong with the website or app, not their ISP.
Despite leading sites like Wired choosing to put out articles that show that the changes are really not a good thing and a few demonstrations taking place or being planned, the reality is that it might take the end of net neutrality to happen for consumers to start the fight back against a change that could seriously change the way they use the internet as well as the cost they pay to access it.
Should this happen, then perhaps an issue that has so far only been really fought over by the “geekier” elements of society will start to see mass debate, sparking the current FCC team to show that sometimes preventative legislation has a role to play.