Breaking net neutrality

Breaking net neutrality happens when an ISP uses its control of your connection to treat some online services better or worse than others. The problem is not that speeds differ; it is that the ISP is choosing winners and losers based on its own interests.

Favouring its own service

Some ISPs sell other products as well as broadband. Imagine that “Rivergate” supplies home broadband and also sells its own smart security cameras, “Rivergate Watch”. Customers pay Rivergate for the cameras and for the broadband that uploads their clips to the cloud. If Rivergate lets its own cameras upload at full speed but slows uploads from a rival brand, “HaloCam”, it is using its control of the network to help its own shop. A household might give up on HaloCam not because it is worse, but because the ISP made it frustrating to use.

Slowing a site it disapproves of

An ISP can also break net neutrality by slowing the speed at which customers can download pages or files from a site whose message it does not like. Suppose a local campaign group, “Friends of Marsh Lane Park”, runs a website arguing against a new building development. If the ISP’s directors back the development and quietly make downloads from that website slow for their customers, the ISP is using its position to limit who gets heard. The campaign site has done nothing wrong; the ISP is simply treating it differently from other sites because of its own opinions.

Why this matters

In both cases, the unequal treatment comes from the ISP’s decisions about traffic, not from the website or from your device. Net neutrality is designed to prevent this. ISPs can still manage their networks, but they must not favour or disadvantage particular services or customers because of their own preferences or commercial interests.