This is Matt Bebich’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

The FCC wants to give “free Internet” to everyone, so you can connect from anywhere. It would be transmitted just like cell phone companies transmit their Internet service. The download speeds would go up to 700kbs, which is considered high-speed Internet. There will be no porn or illegal torrents and software like Limewire. Cell phone companies do not want this to happen because they would rather have people pay for their way over priced slow Internet. Places like Starbucks will also suffer from this, you see all the people at Starbucks using their Internet, which is overpriced [opinion].

Internet should be a free service – a lot of good comes from the Internet. People wouldn’t have to go all the way to the local bookstore to get a book. A lot of people don’t have Internet service. If they want Internet, they get dial-up (which no one could do anything with dial-up). You can’t even load a webpage with dial-up without waiting 50 minutes. Don’t even try to watch a video – you will have to pause it and wait ’til it finishes 20 minutes later… then watch it. That’s why I think the majority of people don’t have Internet, and why it should be free. Why should a hand full of companies control the Internet the companies don’t make the Internet the Internet – we do. We deserve to have a option for free Internet. I would really like to see this happen with two conditions:

1. They need to have good security for it. They need to encrypt the data. If they don’t have really good encryption for it, I would be very scared to use it.
2. I don’t want the government seeing everything we are looking at on the Internet. Not saying I’m doing anything illegal, I just don’t think it would be right for them to intrude on my privacy.

It might happen, but major companies will hate this. They want to overcharge for their Internet service – and they don’t even give what they promise. They say you have unlimited service, then right when your downloading something: “Oh, Dang – throttled!” Even if the free Internet isn’t as fast, at least you can connect to it from anywhere – we all want that. At least it will be better then dial-up and a lot other paid services that just rip you off.

This plan would get Internet to rural areas, so everybody could be on the Internet. It would benefit schools that can’t get wireless Internet access. People wouldn’t have to pay for the cell phone companies’ Internet service (that gets “okay” service and okay speeds). For the price that we pay for it, we should get great speeds and great service. Free Internet is the way of the future and it is going to happen sooner then later. It’s just the matter of time and money.

• What is Net Neutrality?
• The Best FCC Regulation, Ever