Greg's Corner

Has net neutrality lost its biggest ally?

When the discussion of net neutrality comes up, Netflix is usually used as the poster child for keeping the internet open. It’s been argued if ISPs are allowed to prioritize traffic, consumers may have to pay extra to access the bandwidth hogging streaming service. In the past, Netflix had argued in favor of net neutrality. However, now in the face of the President Trump-backed FCC voting to repeal net neutrality, Netflix has taken a different stance.

Recently when the topic was approached, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings basically said they were out of the fight. His exact words were, “We’re big enough to get the deals we want.” With those nine words, Mr. Hastings may have put the final nail in the coffin for net neutrality.

While net neutrality is probably on its last legs, at least during the current administration, losing a key ally like Netflix may have signed its death warrant. It’s bad enough that most consumers don’t have many choices when it comes to receiving internet service, it will be even worse once the phone and cable companies start charging customers extra to have access to the more popular web services.