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| | The Telecom Network for Professionals and Users Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Legislation mandating network neutrality | Views: 657 | | Jul 21, 2006 4:06 am | | Legislation mandating network neutrality | # | 
Ken Hilving | |
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As Ira pointed out in another thread -
"Video as the next "breakthrough" technology for the Internet" - the US
Congress is considering legislation that will either require network neutrality
of US carriers, or allow them to prioritize traffic over their own networks
specific to their own services. I have been asked to join letter campaigns on
both sides of this issue, so its been on my mind.
I have pretty well decided which side of the
argument I support, but I am curious about how members of this forum feel.
Should US carriers be allowed to prioritize their
own traffic over their networks, or should they be required to treat all traffic
the same? Please tell us what you think and why.
For those outside of the US, feel free to share
your thoughts as well, both for your own country and for the US.
Private Reply to Ken Hilving | | Jul 21, 2006 5:46 pm | | re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a bad idea | # |
Ken Hilving | |
Hi Ira
I am against more regulation as matter of
principal. Governments too often fail to have clear objectives with legislation,
and rarely a review process to validate either the continuing validity of the
objective or the requirements they have established.
The perception of one "Internet" is false to
begin with. Most traffic rides on one or more carrier backbones, and move
between carriers at peering points outside of the true Internet. The paths
around any carrier who tries to restrict traffic other than his own (which is
not the same as prioritizing his own traffic) are too many for any one carrier
to be an issue. Prioritizing only becomes an issue when the regular traffic
faces congestion based latency.
The key concern would be that a combined carrier would
discriminate against competing application service providers. While I understand the
concern, there are several natural barriers to this.
First is competing
carriers. Any carrier that started on a policy to
block particular type of application service would become an immediate target for
competing bandwidth providers. The market campaign would be simple - "At
(competing carrier) we believe in a level playing field for all services."
In American culture, this alone would cause a significant shift in customer
preference. This same condition is fertile ground for new carriers.
Next, an SLA can be written to insure performance
levels from a customer perspective, regardless of whether the customer is an
application service provider or a business user of network services.
Blocking a particular application will prove to
be as difficult as blocking spam. Application service providers will find
multiple ways to bypass any attempts by carriers to block service.
A blessing in disguise is the likely improvements
by network designers and application developers if bandwidth and latency become
common issues.
Private Reply to Ken Hilving | | Jul 21, 2006 11:20 pm | | re: re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a bad idea | # | 
April Diehl | | I have been trying to understand this issue for many days, becuase I too have been asked to assist in letter writing campaigns. I understand the carriers desire to control what and how much goes over their network, but I don't see how prioritizing internet traffic will be beneficial to the end user.
On the other side, isn't his much like what data carriers are doing today with frame relay and ATM, and graceful discard? Customers are given a specific Commited Rate or minimum guarenteed bandwidth. Above that the excess packets are prioritized based on the type of traffic it is. Example if there is congestion, Billy Joe Jim Bob's Tackle and Bait store's excess packets would be dropped before the Florida Highway Patrol, or Wall Street.Private Reply to April Diehl | | Jul 22, 2006 5:30 pm | | re: re: re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a bad idea | # |
Tom Foale | | The issues seem to concern the ability of customers to freely access the sources of services they desire, combined with regional monopoly. In the UK this isn't an issue - there are sufficient safeguards with local loop unbundling and the separation of BT's wholesale and retail businesses that there will be competition to supply broadband. As I understand it, in the US the Baby Bell's are still regional monopolies, so are able to control people's access to internet services delivered via their broadband services - there is no alternative in many cases.
I believe the telco's are using a fallacious argument to try to extract more money for delivering very little. I would rather pay the telco for additional bandwidth I needed directly, than have the costs for other services increased to pay the telco indirectly. What the telco's are proposing is market distorting and an abuse of their monopoly position.Private Reply to Tom Foale | | Jul 25, 2006 1:46 pm | | re: Legislation mandating network neutrality | # | 
Matt Brunk | | The net neutrality arguments are clouded, confusing, questionable and adding more legislation to an overlegislated industry isn't wise.
Convergence has proven that the telecom regulations are outdated and outmoded and unable to keep up with the technological forces of change.
I would only suggest further reading and a lot of pondering before acting either way- for or against.
For further reading and consideration:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1497
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/post_11.html
http://www.voiploop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1063&Itemid=34
Private Reply to Matt Brunk | | Jul 26, 2006 7:13 pm | | re: re: re: re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a bad idea | # |
Ken Hilving | |
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The landscape has changed since divestiture, and
I think your understanding may be wrong, Tom.
There is no monopoly on the copper loop.
Companies other than the copper owner can offer DSL, as well as traditional
voice services, over the facility. Its a question of competition. To succeed the
competitor has to offer a cost or services advantage while still making a
profit. In many areas, the margin for success has been deemed to small to risk
the effort.
The former Bells have had to keep their various
revenue and resource streams separate for some time now. Local telephone, long
distance, and enhanced services (Internet) departments have had limited ability
to cooperate internally. These restrictions are due to be lifted later this year
unless Congress intervenes.
The move from analog to digital cable has opened
the door for cable TV services to expand into traditional telephone services.
The rules that constrained the Bells did not always apply to cable providers.
Wireless has become a reasonable alternative for
the local loop in many areas. Again, its a matter of competing on cost or
service. Where DSL and cable are available, the fixed wireless alternative has
been a risky venture. In areas where DSL and cable do not exist, its a question
of market size for a particular price. All of these also compete against
satellite, which meets broadband needs when latency is not a factor.
Size does matter, though. A broadband carrier
today must compete with the world for any Internet services. Since economies of
scale come into play, competing on price with a provider like Vonage for VoIP is
almost impossible.
VoIP has had an added advantage against
traditional telephone providers by being considered simply another application.
This means they have been exempt from the fees and taxes local, state, and
federal government has put on telephone service here. On a traditional
residential phone line in Texas, these fees total more than the basic line rate.
Private Reply to Ken Hilving | | Sep 06, 2006 2:06 pm | | Legislation mandating network neutrality - a Tragedy of the Commons? | # |
Ken Hilving | |
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The full essay by Garret Hardin can be found at
The Garret Hardin Society web site.
Tom, so how does network neutrality fit with the
"tragedy of the commons" economic model that in your opinion dooms Fon? (see
re:
Google is Evil ) Won't a "commons" approach to the Internet result in its
eventual demise as certain enterprising individuals abuse a wide open resource?
Private Reply to Ken Hilving | | Sep 07, 2006 3:58 pm | | re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a Tragedy of the Commons? | # |
Tom Foale | | They are not similar at all. It's like the difference between a community planting a crop and harvest what they need, and renting the land to a number of farmers who plant, grow and sell the crop to the community. In the first instance, the lazier individuals within the community may decide to put the least effort into the planting and take more than their fair share of the results. This is likely unless there are penalties imposed by the community to prevent this. There is also no incentive on the community to use the land efficiently and the community may have insufficient expertise to grow good crops. This is what FON is like.
The farmers on the other hand are motivated by profit and competition to use their expertise to manage the land efficiently, grow good crops and improve production. The community gets its share of the crop as rent, and the excess can be sold to individuals and other communities at a profit. So overall the community benefits more than if they did it themselves.
The internet is not a commons - each service provider incurs costs and as a business has to pass those costs on. I can buy broadband with dreadful contention, delays, restrictions and service, or I can pay more for a quality service - my choice. There is essentially no difference in this principle for any volume of traffic. Both the consumer and the serice providers pay the network operators for the service that meets their needs.
However, what the network operators want with the end of net neutrality is to share in the profits of the service providers - so they would charge Ebay more for the same traffic volume than, say, Yahoo. Why should they?
As the biggest component of core internet costs are due to file-sharing (for some operators over 60%), this is also inherently unfair. The correct answer would be a rental charge for use of the infrastructure and a traffic-related charge to pay for the usage-related costs. This way light users would see lower charges and heavy users would see higher charges. In fact most operators are heading this way with different prices for different levels of capped usage.
If the telco operators are not a monopoly (as you said) then there is no major problem - competition and anti-trust legislation should ensure that the tax imposed on the services providers will be fair. However, consider this. If the costs of providing a wireless service are, say, half of the cost of a fixed link, then without net neutrality the wireless operator can charge the service provider a lot more than the fixed operator without affecting their market share. The loser is the consumer, who will pay the excess fees via the service provider. If net neutrality stays in place, the consumer buys the connection they need to carry the traffic they use and pays less overall. Economically this is the best option (highest 'utility').Private Reply to Tom Foale | | Sep 07, 2006 4:18 pm | | re: Legislation mandating network neutrality - a Tragedy of the Commons? | # |
Tom Foale | | Another thought - what the operators are looking to do is no different to what BSkyB does in the UK, or the mobile operators do to their content providers, or what Intel may end up doing with Viiv. If you control the means of access to the consumer then you can charge anyone wanting to offer them services high charges to do so. However, it's a model open to competitive disruption - for instance, BSkyB's satellite-TV model will be disrupted by IPTV and video-on-demand unless BSkyB can shift its users smoothly from satellite set top boxes to broadband STB's without increasing its costs. The telecom operators' ideas could be disrupted by the service providers collaborating to create their own telecoms infrastructure. Private Reply to Tom Foale | | |
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