Wednesday, May 10, 2006

 

Financial Sector Needs Net Neutrality

If the telcos offer a high-security tier of service, then banks MUST use it or face liability if there's a security incident, writes Philip Corwin in the April 21 issue of American Banker [link, two-week trial subscription required]. Corwin writes:
Those payments [for premium-tier service -- David I] may become both a competitive and legal necessity. The security of Internet access to financial institutions customer information is encompassed by the “Safeguards Rule” of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; and failing to provide the highest level of security could become a liability factor for online data breaches. Those that do pay may find they cannot pass these new costs directly along to customers for whom “free” is an essential element of online financial services. And those that decline to pay will face growing customer dissatisfaction as their transactions are shunted to the Internet’s increasingly congested, low-priority slow lanes.

Corwin is urging the banks to support Network Neutrality legislation.

Indeed, any entity that's a customer of the telcos and depends on the Internet to do business should support non-discrimination! This includes hospitals, catalog sales companies, airlines, newspapers . . . just about any company that does business on the Internet.
Corwin continues:

A major ISP could designate a single diversified financial services company as its exclusive preferred partner and deny the same quality of connectivity to its competitors.
Does it scare you that there might be one company, or two if you're lucky, standing between you and your friends, your news, your financial transactions, your health care, your travel and the stuff you buy? I'm scared.

Network Neutrality is hard to define and hard to implement. Yes. So is Democracy. So is Freedom of Religion, Interstate Commerce and Eminent Domain. But how is a different argument than whether we should or not. We. Should.

Technorati Tags: ,


Comments:
How will legislated network neutrality affect the out-of-network ATM fees that banks currently charge their customers?
And will the answer to that question affect which side of the issue the major financial institutions support?
 
Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?