How IoT Will Kill Net Neutrality

I am a supporter of the principles of net neutrality — that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. However, I can't help but feel that it is doomed, and something that is already being eroded by cellular networks in the service of mobile devices, and will continue to erode in the service of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Our desire to capture, meter, monetize, and surveil at the packet level has provided the fertile environment to kill any notion of net neutrality, and the desire to deliver specialized networks for drones, automobiles, and industrial implementations will further fragment and splinter the already embattled concept. It won't be about prioritization of certain packets on the Internet that does in net neutrality, it will be the prioritization of access to networks, where the principle will be rendered mute.

Continued investment will be made into the rolling out of specialized networks and further disruption of the public Internet. You want the preferred content, and media, be on our network. You want your drone to fly with the ability to stream video to Facebook uninterrupted, be on our network. You want to be on the "safe" network, without all the noise and garbage, then you want to be on our network. It won't be out packet prioritization, it will be about network prioritization.

In the future, there will be many different networks. There will be public networks, and private networks, and dark networks. There will be industrial networks and institutional networks. If you can afford it, you will get access to the best networks, the secure networks, and if you can't, you will get the messy, cluttered, advertising-saturated and cyber-disrupted network. What Internet you see will increasingly depend on what you can afford, and the access that you afforded through your status in the world.