[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Ralf Bendrath]

Meryem Marzouki schrieb:
> actually, you might yourself legitimize a "double penalty" for people in
> developing countries: not only Internet access is more expensive and
> cumbersome in general, but also, with such caching, there is less
> capacity of choice between mainstream content (whose provider can afford
> expensive caching systems in these countries) and alternative content,
> even though provided by the NGO next to your door.

The choice is still there, of course, it's only that the chached content
is delivered faster than the local NGO content - which it had probably
been without caching anyway because of better upstream connectivity etc.

Edge caching might also be even better for development: If my ISP does not
have to pay as much for expensive interconnection fees as he used to do
before, then he can save money and (hopefully) invest in more local
bandwidth, lower prices, or provide better hosting services for local NGOs
and businesses.

(This just for the record and the intellectual fun of this discussion.
Seriously, I think this edge caching debate is not what really should
concern us. Anybody should have the right to buy a server and connect it
to the internet anywhere, provided she can pay for it, right? The only
issue that could arise here is if an edge caching deal by, say, Google
would explicitly prohibit the caching / co-locating ISP from entering into
the same deal with other search engines or content providers. We all agree
we don't want that, and btw this is also what Lessig has been saying all
along.)
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