Among other things, the US Government is being petitioned to destroy “net neutrality,” the concept that all internet traffic should be treated the same way. While most members of Congress lack the technical skills to understand exactly how the Net works, and therefore, why Net Neutrality is important, we need to rise up in protest to stop this train wreck before it gets out of control.

Basically, the telcos want to be able to determine which network traffic gets higher priority, thus destroying the most democratic communications medium we have left. Interestingly enough, we've been here before, when the telcos were on the other side of the issue.

“The dial phone was invented in the 1880s by Almon Brown Strowger, who was a Kansas City, MO undertaker and was convinced that the Bell Telephone operator was sending calls for his funeral home to the operator's brother-in-law.” ( http://www.affordablephones.net/HistoryTelephone.htm) This hit the breaking point for him when he found that the operator was the competing undertaker's relative, and, when one of Strowger's close friends passed away, his body was sent to the competition because the operator had the body picked up by the competition.

Strowger was so incensed he invented the amazing eponymous Strowger switch that allowed people to make connections themselves through the use of a rotary dial. These switches were in place for many years, and visitors to central offices could hear the clicking of the switches as calls were automatically routed from the caller to the recipient. To be fair, the phone company went to the mechanical switches to save money, not to insure unfettered openness of access. Nonetheless, to this very day, anyone can pretty much call anyone else anywhere in the world. This openness of access is supported by the idea that the telephone companies are “common carriers” and must provide access everywhere it is needed.

Strowger's invention is no longer used (although I wouldn't be surprised to be proven wrong on this assertion), as most calls are now digitally routed to their destination, but the central advantage stays the same. You decide who and when you want to call. The system is there to do your bidding with no editorial interference.

Now that analog voice signals have moved to digital broadband bit streams, the idea of equal universal access is under attack. If Congress allows telcos to determine tiers of service for individual packets (not for overall service as is done today), your DSL provider might decide that you should get Yahoo really fast, and Google really slowly. This is exactly like having the telco decide you should get your pizzas from Dominoes, not Pizza Hut, and making phone calls to the latter full of noise and busy signals.

Strowger was angry enough to invent a breakthrough technology to force fairness to the world of phone calls. We need to be strong enough to keep his accomplishments active in the broadband age of bits in which we now live.