Impact of Net Neutrality on Your Dental or Medical Practice

Internet service providers (ISPs) can now charge extra to ensure that businesses have a speedy internet that runs smoothly— a sort of “tiered” system with a fast lane and a slow lane.

Net Neutrality: What it is, and How it Affects your Practice

Simply put, net neutrality is a network design paradigm that argues for broadband network providers to be completely detached from what information is sent over their networks.

Since the internet was first widely available, we have seen it grow and expand tremendously, often without very many rules or regulations. The ability to view and read articles, watch patient education videos, listen to podcasts, search, and send email have long been taken for granted based on “network neutrality,” a guiding principle that preserved an open and transparent internet for all content and all websites equally.

The Future of Your Website

With these changes coming, it’s important to take a look at your website and figure out how it might be affected. If you choose not to pay the fee for upgraded service, here are some tips to optimize your site: 
• Avoid graphics-heavy content, such as Flash, or large photos that will load slowly.
• Keep patient education videos short, and use lower resolution for faster loading times. 
• Build websites that have a mix of text and video content, with smaller video files and smaller photo files so the site continues to load quickly. Adding more text can help portions of the page load quickly so potential patients will not get frustrated and surf away from your site.

The internet is a constantly changing medium, and it’s important to continue to adapt to maximize the way consumers can find and use information from your site.