[governance] Re: What is Network Neutrality

[Avri Doria]

On 13 Jan 2009, at 01:48, Parminder wrote:

> >
> > Option 2. Telecoms are absolutely barred from charging content  
> providers for
> > any special treatment of their content, i.e. we do not have a tiered
> > Internet, with different quality and speed of delivery of content  
> as per
> > different charges.
> >
> >
I have gotten a little confused in this discussion.   So this email is  
as much to try and understand the position as to perhaps make a small  
point based on my possibl flawed understanding

If I read this correctly the prohibition is only against doing this to  
content providers.

Not included is doing this to other service providers and no  
prohibition against doing this to consumers. (perhaps the upstream  
downstream distinction someone was making though I do not think it  
maps perfectly).  I.e. Access providers can provide different service  
levels for those who are happy with best effort for their email and  
occasional surfing and for those who require high bandwidth with ultra  
low latency for playing massive online distributed games.

Is that correct?

I think that is unavoidable.  One complexity with that is if the  
premium service they provide starve the best effort pipes.  I am not  
sure how that fits into the puzzle.

Also I wonder how this is handled when a content provider who provides  
a small amount  of content in a periodic newsletter and only uses a  
trickle of uploading bandwidth while a providers of on demand videos  
are using  large amounts of latency sensitive bandwidth.  Should they  
be given the same access and be charged the same?

It seems to me that there needs to be a line between differentiating  
because of the nature of content or the business relationship with a  
content provider (NN) and differentiating based on amount and type of  
bandwidth used (something else).

And while one can reasonably be an activist on content NN, and/or an  
activist for 'sufficient' best-effort-access for all at an affordable  
price (or even free), they are not the same struggles.


a.

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