[Air-l] network neutrality

[Bram Dov Abramson]

air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org (15:02, 27.4.2006):
>There is definitely an international impact with the potential passage
>of COPE of 2006. The telecommunications and cable companies will have
>the power to punish and reward content providers through pricing. This
>is one way to prevent foreign competition on their marketplace. In
>effect, the telecommunications and cable companies would have the
>ability to place a toll on content providers such as Google, Yahoo,
>Amazon, Ebay, Microsoft, Apple and other content providers. 

I think that they have that power now.  They certainly have the
technical means.  While my knowledge of American communication policy is
pretty limited -- I'm writing from Canada -- I would be surprised to
learn there were legal or regulatory levers in place to forbid this, so
they probably have the legal means, too.  The concern may be that, in
addition to the opportunity, telcos are being imbued with the incentive
to discriminate, too.  As I say, others are probably better placed than
I to describe U.S. legislative initiatives.  But, as I understand it,
there've been most recently:

- a "Broadband Internet Transmission Services" (BITS) bill which would
enshrine a sort of network neutrality precept: "shall not grant any
preference or advantage" to any service over another.  This is obviously
fuzzy, but there it is.  I suspect it did not go anywhere.

- the COPE initiative now being discussed.  As I understand it, the COPE
bill's main thrust is about video distribution, ie cable TV.  It would
allow telcos to obtain national video franchises -- one cable license
for the whole country.  The fear is that telcos who are now cable
distributors would want to discriminate in favour of their own services,
and perhaps preempt those of others.  A Democrat amendment therefore
proposed language to COPE forbidding such discrimination, ie supporting
network neutrality, in the context of a bill that would incent telcos to
move forward with "unneutral" plans.  That language looks not to be
making it in, hence the controversy.

The issue itself is a bit complex, because there's network neutrality
and then there's network neutrality.  There's always been *some* network
"un-neutrality" -- caching providers like Akamai which provide
pay-to-get-good-distribution; spam-fighting ISPs making life hard for
outbound mail servers except their own; hard choices which ISPs
inevitably have to make about dealing with a mix of traffic from
different applications.

But as the number of access providers shrinks and the involvement of
these providers in application- and content-layer businesses grows, the
fear is that this "unneutrality" will be taken to a new level in a way
that frustrates non-telco-affiliated applications and content providers,
thereby frustrating innovation generally.  Seen another way, there's
application-based discrimination, and firm-based discrimination.  So
far, most of the discrimination has been oriented around applications.
The fear is that, now, it will get personal and become about who is
providing the service, not what the service does to the network.

And that, given the emerging duopoly -- broadband providers who don't
own legacy copper (telcos, cablecos) don't seem to be living long lives
-- there will be nowhere else to switch.

(For those interested, in Canada the issue is largely untested.  There
have been a couple of flaps, but quickly resolved.  We in theory have
the means to address packet discrimination.  A very recent Big Picture
Sector Review, at http://www.telecomreview.ca, proposed doing even more
about although, as always, noone really knows what the political life of
their recommendations will be.

The big hurdle is evidentiary, and our regulatory system is not very
disposed to going out and gathering evidence on behalf of potential
complainants -- something that, to prove network neutrality in a
convincing way, may be necessary.)

cheers
Bram