[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Roland Perry]

In message <p0620073dc58bc11e1a09@[10.0.1.2]>, at 10:01:52 on Thu, 8 Jan 
2009, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at attglobal.net> writes
>I have never seen from an ISP a clear statement by an ISP of what the 
>ISP does with respect to traffic manipulation (if anything)

I've run two and a half [1] ISPs (the second a little over 10 years ago 
now [2]) and the answer for them all would have been "no traffic 
manipulation at all".

At the first one we used to attempt to "meter" (for the purpose of 
charging the content provider) our hosted websites, but only after 
discovering that the vast majority of the outbound web traffic was 
generated by a handful of what we might call these days dot-XXX sites. 
(No connection to Carlos's XXX operators!!!)

Perhaps we were naive, or perhaps there just wasn't the volume of 
threats and abuses that we see all around us today (most of the traffic 
manipulation I see is in response to a threat of some kind). But there 
might also be some sort of Internet threat/freedom-of-speech analogy for 
the old expression "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom 
fighter".

But our metering (not throttling) as described above, is within my own 
understanding of the scope of the Network Neutrality debate; where the 
question is whether the cost of handling the traffic in the core should 
be mainly borne by the hosting company (because they have something to 
sell, and shop-space traditionally needs to be rented from a landlord) 
or by the customer (just as they pay for their cable-TV channels) [3].

So NN is about the expectations of the people running the core regarding 
which direction their funding is coming from, and Regulators making sure 
that whatever the answer is, conforms with their local telecoms/ 
competition policy. That doesn't mean the regulator *imposing* a policy, 
because a "light touch" regulator could be prepared to allow a wide 
range of possible policies, between some hard limits at either end of 
the spectrum.

[1] The "half" was designed, but the backers ran out of money before it 
was ever deployed.

[2] Back in the days when the UK was a "developing country" as far as 
connectivity and Internet infrastructure was concerned. So I have a lot 
of sympathy for people whose experience of being an ISP and "connecting 
to the Internet" starts with signing a million-dollar lease on a line to 
New York.

[3] You get the same for mobile phones, where the USA model was 
essentially that the person receiving the call pays the "mobile premium" 
(because it's to his advantage to be able to receive calls anywhere) 
whereas in the UK the caller pays (because it's to his advantage that he 
can contact people wherever they are).
-- 
Roland Perry
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