VPN and Net Neutrality: Can a VPN Get Past ISP Throttling and Restrictions?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.

Unfortunately in the recent years, things have proven not to be so impartial, especially when it comes to ISPs actions to maximize their revenue by restricting and throttling certain websites and services.

So – given the basic attribute of a VPN – anonymizing traffic – could a VPN be used to get past ISP blocks and throttles in the context of net neutrality?

In December 2017, the FCC decided to repeal 2015 approved net neutrality regulations, with the main arguments that the market with regulate itself as it did before 2015, and that ISPs will be incentivized to invest more in their infrastructure.

However, most online opinions about this repeal are actually against it and more and more people are beginning to research on the opportunity that VPNs bring to the table in the context of net neutrality. Here are some potential scenarios that could become reality in the future:

• Consumers could start paying more for their Internet services. ISPs could start to “bundle” services and charge more depending on what you want to access. An example of this is already happening in Portugal, a country without net neutrality rules.
• ISPs could throttle Internet access for certain services – especially the bandwidth-intensive ones such as live video streaming, online gaming, etc. They could ask for more money from the consumer if they want to access that specific service with full speed.
• ISPs could block certain services if companies don’t reach an agreement with them or if they belong to a competitor. How would you feel is Verizon would not allow you to connect to Netflix? Best case scenario – you’d have to pay something extra for that.
• With the desire to get more money from their subscribers indirectly through advertising, ISPs could restrict access to services that anonymize the Internet traffic, such as VPN services.

Even though these potential effects could apply only to online users connecting from the US, it could set an example for other countries across the globe as well.

A VPN encrypts and secures your Internet activity so even if someone is able to listen in (like your ISP), they can’t decode what you’re doing. All they see is scrambled data going by, and they can’t even tell what sites you’re visiting, much less what you’re doing on them.

Just to set things straight: technically speaking, it’s easy for an Internet service provider to determine if someone is connecting repeatedly to a certain server (VPN) and restrict or throttle that connection. But it’s not only individuals that are using VPNs; most of the companies have such solutions in place for their remote workers. So, unless an ISP has a clear plan to get every penny they can from selling the browsing data of their users to marketing companies, they will not restrict VPN services.

In the context of VPN and net neutrality, there will always be a way to use the Internet on your own terms, without being spied on by your ISP, various companies or even the government. All you have to do is carefully choose the right VPN for you: one that you can trust, that is fast and reliable.

Aside from keeping your private data safe and not letting ISPs spy on your traffic, a modern VPN for 2018 has to handle bandwidth-intensive apps without slowing down your connection or disconnecting, like most traditional VPN services do.

Speedify is different in a good way: it is the only true mobile VPN available for consumers on iPhones, Android, Windows and macoS. Speedify can combine multiple Internet connections into one super-link, giving you extra bandwidth, lower latency and increased reliability.

Speedify also has an automatic Internet failover mechanism, so it’ll seamlessly switch between Internet connections so you won’t skip a beat in your live streaming video when one of your connection is bad or drops.

Do you want to be sure that you’ll always be able to use the Internet on yur own terms? Get started with Speedify today for FREE – no strings attached!