The FCC prepares for its historic net neutrality vote

Should all Internet traffic be treated equally? That's the question before the Federal Communications Commission this week as they prepare for a historic vote on net neutrality.

But net neutrality isn't necessarily a magic bullet — there’s more to ensuring all citizens have access to reliable, affordable Internet.

“At its most original form, net neutrality was a principle of how companies carrying information should act,” says Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who coined the term "net neutrality" in 2003. “It was like an ethical rule — like don’t lie or don’t degrade. What we’ve seen now is [a push for] a legal enforcement by the government of the net neutrality principle.”

Wu believes that the FCC will rule in favor of net neutrality this week, a ruling that would reflect public desire: As of January 2015, advocates supporting net neutrality have sent more than 1 million messages to the FCC or Congress.

“[The FCC has] changed their tune over the year and have gone, basically, full bore for the net neutrality approach," Wu says. "I think they’re not going to compromise."

One indication of that was an essay written by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler earlier this month in which he outlined his plan to reclassify the Internet as a public utility. That plan would give the government greater powers to enforce net neutrality.

So why is this such an issue in the United States? Wu says there's a simple reason why Internet service quality varies nation to nation — and why the US lags behind other developed nations.

“It’s the product of government infrastructure spending,” he says. “Some governments think of the Internet as a public infrastructure like highways or bridges. And governments outside the United States spend a lot of money on infrastructure. We spend some, but other countries spend more, and those countries tend to have the fastest Internet service.”

Wu says that Kansas City currently boasts the fastest Internet in the United States.

“Google has wired Kansas City, and as a consequence, the cable and phone companies have felt that they have to offer better service,” he says. “They’re racing to the top in Kansas City — not just in barbecue but in bandwidth.”

Will the rest of the nation get there? Wu says the US is well-prepared. Back in the 1970s and '80s, the cable industry wired most homes in the United States — something that has actually given America an advantage.

“The problem in the United States is not so much our infrastructure as much as the insistence on wringing every single last cent of profit out of those pipes,” Wu says. “When people say, ‘Why don’t they offer more bandwidth?’ Companies are saying, ‘Well, how are we going to make money out of that?’ as opposed to, ‘Why would that be good for the country?’”

One of they ways they can make money is through congestion, and Wu says one of the goals of net neutrality is to ensure that congestion is not an attractive business model.

“It’s a little bit like the way boarding an airplane has become terrible,” he says. “It’s in part so the airplane can sell you an upgrade to get past the big crowd getting on the airplane. That’s a little like what could happen on the Internet: Net neutrality says you can’t start selling slow lanes and fast lanes and make money off congestion.”

Wu says that the impending FCC vote will be historic, the most important FCC decision in recent memory.

“It marks a return to an idea that maybe the private sector doesn’t always do everything we want,” he says. “We have public values at stake here, and the open Internet is a big part of that.”

This story is based on an interview from PRI's The Takeaway, a public radio program that invites you to be part of the American conversation. You can take part in our Net Neutrality Twitter chat this Thursday.