How Repealing Net Neutrality Can Kill Your Small Business

How repealing net neutrality can kill your small business

The Internet is an entertaining platform. It entertains everyone with what they need. For the promotion of a product or service, to connect with friends and family, for enjoying music, to stay glued to videos, for shopping, banking, playing nonstop addictive games – It is for all. But internet access may not remain same after 14th of December this year. This is due to the possible repealing of Net Neutrality by Federal Communications Commission, and repealing net neutrality will have an adverse effect on the small-scale businesses. Before getting into the details, let’s understand what exactly net neutrality is.

What is Net neutrality?

Net neutrality is a policy, according to which the internet service provider should treat all the data available on the internet as equal. There should not be any different change when it comes to content, website, application or the mode of communication. All the users will have equal access to the information available on the internet. But, this scenario is about to change after 14th of December 2017. The chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, will vote in support of repealing the net neutrality (or Open Internet Order). You can read more about Net Neutrality, how it will impact your business, and what actions you may take to stop this from possibly happening in this blog from TribeLocal.

Rise of Net Neutrality

All this started in the year 2015 by the Obama administration. According to the Open Internet Order, the internet service providers cannot charge more money for fast internet lanes to get access to specific data and content.

If repealing of net neutrality does not happen, the internet service providers will have total control over the internet and they can slow down or block certain contents. Some contents can get superior treatment and some may not be treated well.

Net neutrality is supported by tech giants

Net Neutrality is getting huge support from Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, and other prominent groups. But the cable operators are trying their level best to take charge of the content promoted in the online world. With the help of net neutrality, every company is getting an equal chance to showcase their content.

How can repealing net neutrality kill your small business?

The small and local businesses can be adversely effected if there is no net neutrality. Here are some reasons:

1. It will Increase Competition

It is obvious that small business and middle and top business compete with each other without paying extra money to ISPs. But repealing net neutrality can be a threat to small business as IPS can charge more to those customers who want to get access to certain websites.

2. You’ll have to pay extra money to the ISP

Big companies can easily pay ISPs to be in the top tier, but the same is not possible for small and local businesses. They don’t have that much funds or resources. It will be difficult for the small and local companies to survive in the online world without net neutrality. The small business will need to pay extra to the ISPs to stay ahead of their competitors and to reach their target audience.

3. Reaching multiple ISPs to stay in the competition.

There are several internet services providers, it is just not feasible for the small and local businesses to contact each of these service providers and to be ahead in the lane. That challenging work, and not practically possible.

4. No freedom to the user

Currently, users just need to search the Internet as per their need, and they can ignore everything else. But if some content on the internet is paid while others are free, the users would be bound to pay extra money to the ISPs to get access to all content, which is not the case today.

Net neutrality is very crucial as it allows all businesses to sustain and promote healthy competition. Repealing net neutrality may affect small and local businesses by reducing the traffic which reaches their website, along with reducing the business they gather through online marketing.