[governance] Net Neutrality

[Phil Regnauld]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 05:49:14PM +0530, Parminder wrote:
> 
> Many technologists at first did not engage with public policy at all, and
> now when some dangers of such a position are very evident, they are ready to
> engage with it only in terms of some technical principles. And NN is a
> technical principle, and it may in some situations serve public interest and
> at other times it may not.

Well, as far as analogies go, why not look at the bridge / toll
systems instead of the gaming console one (credit to one of my
acquaintances):

You build and operate a large toll for an 8 lane bridge.  Now you're
going to have the basic differentiated services: cars pay 5 bucks,
trucks 20 (adjust to your currency / barter animal).  Fair enough,
trucks fill the road more, and use up the pavement more, etc...

On top of that, you're against Road Neutrality.  And you want to
make an extra buck.  So you start to single out Walmart trucks.
"You guys are the biggest users of this bridge, you got tons of
trucks from all over the country crossing this bridge, so I'm going
to invoice Walmart.  And if they don't pay, I'll just have have to
park you guys into a waiting area, and wait until a clear spot, say
1 mile long, shows up on a lane, and then I'll send you through.
And it doesn't matter which freight company Walmart uses, it's my
bridge, you pay extra".

This is typical telco behaviour.  Their revenues got spanked by
VoIP, and while it's not been proven that they downright will
downprioritize SIP and RTSP (or outright block it, as some Wimax
providers have done here in Denmark), but they sure as hell don't
make an effort to ensure it gets equal treatment.  So what do you
do ?  You find another way to make money (fair is fair).  But instead
of offering better services or trying to create new products, you
try and revive that old zombie from the end of the 90s: prioritized
traffic and the need to pay what amounts to metered access.  Telcos
hate flat rates, it's a law of nature like nature hates vacuum.
And (please, anybody show me the numbers to prove me wrong) the
whole problem of QoS being needed for VoIP is bull.  VoIP represents
too small a share of carrier bandwidth to be significant, and it
will only be a problem at the edge when the networks get congested
-- i.e. it's a problem that's solved between the ISP and the customer,
not end-to-end.  Claiming the contrary is a return to the reserved
circuit, underused capacity of the bygone days of X25.

I'm no defender of Net Neutrality as a law: I think it's preposterous
that lobbyists are even trying to pass this one, it shouldn't even
be necessary.  But when carriers see they can't make the same bottom
line as they did before and decide to make businesses that do turn
a profit cough up in a discriminatory fashion, I call that cheap
tactics -- especially when it's known that they won't invest in
faster infrastructure because there's simply no incentive to do so,
not because they lack money.

P.

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