Ravi+S’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Internet: The Speech=

=Text of Speech:= Internet Service Providers (ISPs for short) have been pretty terrible for a long time, but in recent months they have gotten much worse; the biggest offenders being Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon. Net Neutrality, a term many of you may not understand, simply means that: all internet traffic is treated the same no matter what. Recently, the major ISPs have completely forgotten about Net Neutrality, so that they can maximize profits. All of us use the internet and pay an absurd amount to use it, which is fine if we get the service we paid for, but we aren’t. A lot of us use Netflix, YouTube, and TwitchTV, and they consume a lot of data, but we pay for these services, so I should be fine if I want to watch all of those at the same time, because that’s what I paid for. The ISPs don’t agree, they want to slow down our connection to these services as much as possible, and raise prices at the same time, because most ISPs are also cable/satellite companies, and they see services like Netflix as a direct competitor. So naturally, they all team up against competing services and make the use of those services is as miserable as possible. For every other type of business this would be illegal to do, since it is anti-competitive, breaks the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Clayton Antitrust Act. But, due to the current classification of the internet/ISPs by the FCC, the government has no power to stop these things from happening. This could easily be solved if the FCC would reclassify the internet/ISPs under “Title 2” or as utilities, but the ISPs have all grouped together to ensure they would “stop upgrading infrastructure and innovating” (even though they haven’t upgraded anything in years) if they were reclassified, and the current chairmen of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was a former lobbyist for the cable companies. Since the government can’t do anything, Netflix has had to make deals with companies like Comcast, deals where Netflix is paying and giving ISPs free equipment to ensure Netflix’s service isn’t throttled. Now some of you may think, why does this matter, how does this affect me? Well, Netflix may have to raise its prices because they have to spend tons of money paying off the ISPs, and you’re going to have to pay more for your internet access, since the ISPs don’t have the infrastructure to keep up with our demands (I’ll address this later). Naturally, the uninformed are going to complain about Netflix raising its prices, and they will cancel their subscriptions, eventually causing Netflix to go out of business. People are also going to want to switch to another ISP, but since all the ISPs have colluded to ensure that they don’t offer service in the same areas, people are stuck with their current provider. This leaves the ISPs with a monopoly over the content you want to watch, allowing them to raise prices to whatever their hearts desire. Paying 40$ a month for cable? Well, have fun paying $140 a month now for the same exact service. The ISPs win no matter what, until the FCC reclassify them under “Title 2”, allowing the government to enforce Net Neutrality.

Shifting away from Net Neutrality, earlier I mentioned that the ISPs don’t have the infrastructure to keep up with our demands, sadly, this is completely true. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the “Telecommunications Act of 1996”, this bill was supposed to: “promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.” The bill provided reduced regulation, but the ISPs never lowered prices or provided higher quality services. In fact, they have raised prices and provided lower quality services. The government gave ISPs, major tax breaks, free money, reduced regulation, and various other things, in return for better infrastructure, but every time a deadline came up for the ISPs to fulfill a promise, the ISPs fought tooth-and-nail against meeting it. The Act also gave ISPs the perfect opportunity to upgrade the ancient Copper infrastructure to Fiber Optic cable, which would have greatly mitigated the infrastructure problems today, but instead the ISPs took the money given to them and did nothing with it. In an attempt to encourage ISPs to upgrade infrastructure, Netflix has started displaying error messages “calling-out” ISPs for poor service. Verizon has combated this by sending Netflix a cease and desist order, and saying that Netflix has no basis to say these things. Companies that are trying to push innovation are getting shut down by greedy ISP, because the ISPs would rather keep their record profits, than improve things. So why does this matter? Small businesses relying on the internet, are going to have a hard time because the infrastructure is so bad, the speeds are very slow, and they have to pay in insane prices just to use it. America is also falling behind many other countries in terms of technology and internet, other countries such as Japan and South Korea pay much less for 5-10x the service, and Americans have always prided themselves on “America being the best”.

In the America I hope to grow old in, I would like to see Net Neutrality actually exist, rather than being just an idea, I would like to see internet speeds that are actually competitive with other countries, and I would like to see America at the top of the list when it comes to internet infrastructure.

=Cite Your Sources=