Net neutrality: The internet holds its breath

But later this Thursday, a vote will almost certainly reinterpret an older law used to underpin how it is applied in the US - ending a ban on internet service providers (ISPs) being able to put the brakes on some websites' data and accelerate others'.

Some believe that threatens the very fabric of the internet.

Like many of the great American laws, the Communications Act of 1934 was written by a bunch of men who had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

That's not a criticism. Who could have foreseen, as they put pen to paper, that one day their words would be used to govern how bits and bytes are streamed and downloaded, through copper, glass and radio-waves, under and overground, across our oceans and even into space?

Sometimes, though, the most effective laws are about establishing a broad principle - in this case the idea that companies providing telecommunications must do so without discrimination.

Should that rule - known as Title II - apply to the companies that provide Americans with the internet?

It did, but now it won't.

The pioneers of the internet are unequivocal: losing net neutrality will be nothing short of a catastrophe, for innovation, free speech and free expression.

Yet the man orchestrating the change calls that notion 'hysteria'.

We're about to find out who's right.

Will untying the ISPs hands foster innovation, or cause the wider industry to hit the buffers?

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