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Internet governance

Control of the operation 

and use of the Internet.

Internet governance

Focus on

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Chapter 3  Managing digital business infrastructure

The net neutrality principle

Net (or network) neutrality

 is based on the organic way in which the Internet grew during 

the 1980s and 1990s. The principle enshrines equal access to the Internet and the web which 

is threatened by two different forces. First, and the most common context for net neutral-

ity, is the desire by some telecommunications companies and ISPs to offer tiered access to 

particular Internet services. The wish of the ISPs is to potentially offer a different quality of 

service, i.e. speed, to consumers based on the fee paid by the upstream content provider. So 

potentially ISPs could charge companies such as TV channels more because they stream con-

tent such as video content which has high bandwidth requirements.

Concerns over tiered access to services appear strongest in the United States where two 

proposed Bills to help achieve neutrality, the 2006 Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination 

Act and the 2006 Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, did not 

become law. The ISPs were strong lobbyists against these Bills and subsequently it has been 

alleged that provider Comcast has discriminated against users accessing peer-to-peer traffic 

from BitTorrent (ArsTechnica, 2007). In European countries such as the UK, ISPs offer dif-

ferent levels of access at different bandwidths.

The second and less widely applied, but equally concerning, concept of net neutrality is 

the wish by some governments or other bodies to block access to certain services or content. 

For example, the government in China limits access to certain types of content in what has 

been glibly called ‘The Great Firewall of China’ (Wired, 2007), which describes the develop-

ment of the Golden Shield which is intended to monitor, filter and block sensitive online 

content. More recently Google has been criticised for censoring its search results in China for 

certain terms such as ‘Tiananmen Square’. In 2009/2010 Google considered withdrawing its 

business from China.

Net neutrality

The principle of provision 

of equal access to 

different Internet services 

by telecommunications 

service providers.

Box 3.8

Ofcom on net neutrality in Europe and the United States

Ofcom is the regulator of the Internet in the UK. Its position on net neutrality has a clear 

description of the potential need for governance on this issue.