Dive Brief:
- Four education technology companies have filed objections with the Federal Communications Commission over its proposal to create "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" on the Internet.
- The four companies — General Assembly, Codecademy, CodeCombat, and OpenCurriculum — warned that the proposal to regulate the Internet would make startups like themselves virtually impossible and would favor entrenched companies that could pay Internet service providers for preferential connections.
- The online education sector in particular, including students who seek to learn job skills online, would be harmed by the FCC's proposal, the companies say.
Dive Insight:
Some excerpts from the company blogs and filings: CodeCombat says, “For small startups without the resources to fight traffic discrimination or strike deals with ISPs, net neutrality can be the difference between life and death.” For General Assembly, “this type of discriminatory pricing would prevent many new entrepreneurial endeavors from ever getting off the ground.” According to Codecademy, “If our competitors did strike deals and our content loaded more slowly and less reliably than competitors, we would have been done for.” CodeCombat is advising its blog readers to call Secretary of Education Arne Duncan instead of the FCC to make their views known on the commission's proposal.