For a moment, I thought you were the David everyone was waiting for ;-)
That includes me even though I don’t live in the US as it’s a small world and whatever happens anywhere affects the rest of us global citizens.
Regarding your comment, yes indeed, corporates do benefit with or without net neutrality. But with net neutrality, the common man also benefits, which makes it a win-win situation.
Let me illustrate with an example from India.
At the time of the net neutrality debate in India around a year and a half ago, an average prepaid mobile data plan for 28 days cost ₹300 ($5) for 1GB of data at 3G speed. Everything else was extra including voice calls, messages, and roaming fees. So the average mobile bill would be around three times the plan cost. Say around ₹1000 or $15.
That may not seem much, but average income in India was $2500 per year (according to a World Bank study in 2013). That works out to around ₹15000 a month. Paying 6% of that small income for mobile fees was a bit hard for the Indian customers to swallow.
But after the Indian government upheld net neutrality and outlawed charging extra for VOIP calls, more Indians started to come online as they realised they could save on voice calls by making data/VOIP calls.
Around the same time, a new network operator called Jio, entered and disrupted the Indian market with a new tech called VoLTE that routed all mobile calls over the data connection. Jio offered a data plan for the same ₹300 ($5). Except that gave 1GB of data per day, instead of per month, and that too at 4G speed. And that was just for starters. The plan also includes unlimited calls and messages, and no roaming fee. On top of this instead of 28 days, the plan is currently for 70 days. Soon all mobile networks in India began matching this offer.
It was a massive win for the Indian customer.
But here’s the thing. As data prices dropped, millions of new customers came online in India and smartphone sales took off. Today India has overtaken the US as the world’s №2 smartphone market, and is only behind China.
In a way, net neutrality was the catalyst behind this mobile revolution in India, and that was why I say it’s a win-win for both customer and corporate.
