Net neutrality: a turning point for the internet

US telecoms are battling President Obama’s call for all internet traffic to be treated equally. How might this regulatory spat affect internet users? Simon Wilson investigates.

What is net neutrality'?

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data on the internet equally. The principle has been around since the earliest days of the web, but the term was coined by Tim Wu, a professor of media law at Colombia, in 2003, as an extension of the legal concept of a "common carrier".

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.