What Is Net Neutrality

Net neutrality simply means treating all internet traffic equally. So as a user, there is no difference in the way Mr Examples small personal blog is delivered to you compared to how You Tubes content is sent. Neither is more important than the other and information goes from it’s source to your browser using the same network.

Current Situation

Imagine the UK without motorways – this is how the internet is currently set up. To get from Leeds to London, you would have to go via many stepping stones (towns and villages) to get from your starting point (server) to the destination (browser). This works well (with improvements to bandwidth) and everyone is equal and whilst there may be the odd jam here and there (too much traffic at peak times at certain areas), everyone  and everything is equal and popularity is driving the meritocracy.

The argument is that for large sites (Skype, BBC iplayer etc) the current infrastructure isn’t enough and they are asking the ISPs (internet service providers) the people who “deliver” the internet to our homes, to provide what would be the M1 motorway in our analogy, for organisations big enough and willing to pay for it. These motorways, would be for the sole use of these businesses and would ensure the most seamless and quick delivery of their services.

Free Markets

This gives  private companies and governments control of what is delivered to the user through the best connections. Whilst this will improve the service of some big sites, it fundamentally changes the outlook of the internet’s future as it will create huge competition barriers and creates effectively a “two tier” system.

The proposal to stop this two tier system from gaining traction is to create protection of net neutrality by law. However, this is far from ideal; being the thin end of the wedge of further internet regulation. This is a far bigger danger and could make the disgraceful Digital Economy Act (2010) look positively emancipatory.

Maintaining Net Neutrality

You can’t blame companies for wanting to protect their own interest. However, it is essential that we do not sleepwalk into giving control to corporations who will exchange our freedoms for their profits. Net neutrality is fair and keeps the playing field level between all the stake holders and protecting it is in all our interests. What is certain, is that both a two tiered and tightly regulated internet is a possibility – picture a UK with only motorway toll roads, going to and from set locations approved by government. It’s limits our choices, destroys competition and gives away control from our on-line freedoms.

What is the difference between a site relying on social media as their main on-line marketing focus and one is relying on original content made available through a blog and reference material.

Example one has had a brisk start to it’s traffic and has relied on a good social media profile. It has quickly gathered pace reaching a peak total visitors within it’s first month. The second example shows a slower start, a quarter less total visits over the same period, but it is seeing a steady incline in traffic.

Looking further, whilst the second example has  better long term traffic prospects, the first business has far better engagement of their visitors (Time on site, Bounce rate, pages visited) Engagement of your visitors is of course a sites raison d’etre and you’d expect with a little input, the social media aspect of the businesses would bubble away nicely.

There is of course many qualitative factors that need to be take into account in these examples but the principles in each marketing approach stand true to this general theme that there is a good pay off for providing good content and it has important implications for small businesses who need to make the most of limited marketing resources.

If you had to pick, I’d be delighted to have the second “curves”. Useful, helpful and intelligent content is what the internet is about and it will always eventually generate a hard core following which outstrips loyalty by association. Content is still king!

If anyone has information or can link to information which is current and up to date, we’ll make sure it is brought to as many people attention as possible.

It’s pretty easy to have a rant about the postal service. Whichever country you are in, they seem to lose parcels, take ages to deliver and generally seem incompetent. It’s not always their fault though I suspect.

I watched this weeks Panorama on the BBC about the plight of the Royal Mail and there incessant in fighting. I shan’t begin to take sides on that debate and I feel for all those concerned who have the job of sorting out that particular mess of a company. What did stir the imagination though was the way in which all the packets and parcels that are sent still have to be sorted by hand. I didn’t realise it was still the 1920′s!

Postal Problem

For anyone who didn’t see the program, the basic premise was that because small parcels are all irregular sizes, no machine is able to sort them out. These are the sorts of packages every e-commerce site sends out, every mail order company and pretty much anything sent via the mail which isn’t a letter.

Now the Royal Mail has been handling small parcels and packets since it’s first inception. Nothing new about all that and they have successfully been doing it for many years. What no-one could foresee though is the effects of the internet and more importantly the popularity of the web and buying online has had on the postal service.

More Packets Than Ever

Cast your mind back just 5 years perhaps. How often did we all buy on-line? Not very often if at all would be the most common answer. Most of use can probably still remember signing up for eBay for the first time and certainly no-one had thought of doing their weekly food shopping online. (Not that that goes through the post but it illustrates the point)

So in the last 5 years, the amount of things bought online has doubled, tripled, quadrupled and, I don’t know the word for five times (pent folded?) but whatever it is, it’s a big change. And there is no way that the Royal Mail, or any other postal service for that matter, would have increased their capacity to deal with this type of post by the same factor.

What To Do

So the result is, they can’t cope. They can’t cope in sorting it and they can’t cope in delivering it. And that is compounded by the fact that every country is suffering in the same way and the major hubs around the world are basically becoming gridlocked.

So what can be done other than spending a fortune on more staff and doubling the cost of posting? The answer has to be to standardize the shapes in which all packets should be sent. Now I appreciate that will need many different sized boxes, and a lot of boxes will be half empty as the goods inside would be wider than they are log for example. But assuming that postal tariffs would be partly on box size and partly weight based, it would I guess be fine. Really obscure packages could still be sorted by hand but these would be few and far between.

The Result

In doing this, the postal services can mechanize the sorting of packages in the same way as they do for letters. And if all postal services worldwide stuck to and agreed these sizes, post would flow far more effectively from country to country. Especially at times such as Christmas where volumes become astronomically inflated.

This costs savings would be huge and the service would improve as well. I can see no other solution to this problem which, let’s face it, is only going to get worse and worse each year no action is taken. All comments are welcome!