Technology Minister, Andrew Wheatley, says net neutrality in Jamaica is here to stay, despite a vote in the United States to repeal its own laws on the matter.
The principle of Net Neutrality holds that all Internet traffic is treated equally.
In practice, it prohibits Internet service providers, ISP’s, from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites.
However, today the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, voted to approve a controversial plan to repeal net neutrality protections in the United States. The repeal passed 3-2, along a party-line vote. It’s what many access to information advocates around the world are describing as the end of the Internet as we know it.
The US-based FCC today voted to to repeal the Obama-era protections.
This means US Internet Service Providers can now discriminate against what can and can’t be accessed through their service.
According to the Washington Post for example, under the repealed net neutrality rules ISPs such as Verizon were not allowed to favour services Yahoo and AOL, which it owns, by blocking Google.
In addition, Verizon was not allowed to charge Google extra fees in order to connect to Verizon customers. But under the new rules, that type of behaviour would be legal, as long as Verizon disclosed it.
CEO of Digicel Caribbean, Vanessa Slowey, in November called the planned repeal of net neutrality a victory. She urged Caribbean regulators to take note and not simply apply a blanket one size fits all approach in their markets.
It should be noted that in 2015 Digicel attempted to block Voice over IP services such as Whatsapp and Viber when utilizing one of their data plans.
When Nationwide News spoke to the Technology Minister today he urged telecoms providers operating locally to embrace the concept of net neutrality.
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