[governance] Draft statement on Nairobi meeting programme

[parminder]

"If your network delivers content mainly to mobile users, it makes sense 
to try to gather some of the necessary extra revenue at the inbound edge 
(and leave the publisher to offset that by the income generation in his 
own business plan), rather than handing out an indefinite "free lunch". "

Pay-for-priority distorts the very nature of the Internet, and over time 
the Internet will just not look the same. (Charging different fees for 
download volumes is a very different thing. ) It changes the level 
playing field nature of this new and revolutionary communication 
paradigm of the Internet. It thus impacts freedom of expression, 
economic competitiveness for new players, and egalitarian possibilities 
that Internet offer. A simple cost-profit and economic feasibility 
framework is not the best way to understand the implications of the NN 
issue, as it is not for media and other constructions of the public 
sphere, and as it not for many other social and cultural issues. Happy 
to discuss this issue further - quite close to my heart.

parminder

Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <E09009D3-015C-44D5-9761-F897BF39CE8E at ciroap.org>, at 
> 19:14:11 on Sat, 22 Jan 2011, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> writes
>
>> Should different rules apply for mobile and wired Internet networks? 
>>  If so, how can communications rights and Access to Knowledge be 
>> preserved for those users, in order to avoid an ongoing information 
>> divide
>
> I recall debates (in the UK) about fifteen years ago where the theme 
> was wanting "freephone" or "800" access to ISP modem banks on the 
> grounds that paying around five dollars[1] an hour for a regular phone 
> call was some kind of infringement of a right to free expression.
>
> No-one was able to explain how the dial-up telephone infrastructure 
> which is required to support [what eventually became at some times of 
> day the biggest user of the telephone network] was to be paid for.
>
> Eventually a compromise of paying at "local call" cost of perhaps 2 
> cents a minute, despite the calls often being long distance, was 
> arrived at. Then ten years ago cable and ADSL happened, and people 
> forgot the charging aspects of dial-up Internet, along with forgetting 
> the restricted bandwidth.
>
> Now history is repeating itself with 3G data (very few people even 
> expected to use 2/2.5G data for more than email). Carriers who 
> over-generously offered "unlimited" plans of perhaps one to three 
> Gigabytes a month for thirty dollars (which includes handset rental 
> and voice calls) find their networks choked by people downloading 
> streaming video, and try to invoke caps [limits] typically in the 
> region of half a Gigabyte a month. Which would be several year's worth 
> of email, even for a prolific user such as myself.
>
> For those using 3G 'dongles' rather than phones, a cost of around 
> fifteen dollars per Gigabyte is typical (there are no "unlimited" 
> plans that I'm aware of). But that's a lot of money to watch a movie 
> (one Gigabyte is a quarter of a DVD), when it's been estimated that 
> mainstream ADSL costs the ISPs about 20 cents per hour for TV-quality 
> movies.
>
> So this is not about Network Neutrality, but "Local Loop neutrality", 
> where end users are in denial about the varying costs of telecoms 
> provision *of that last mile*, be it by GSM, ADSL or whatever. The 
> previous thousand miles will cost much the same irrespective of the 
> technology of the local loop.
>
> If your network delivers content mainly to mobile users, it makes 
> sense to try to gather some of the necessary extra revenue at the 
> inbound edge (and leave the publisher to offset that by the income 
> generation in his own business plan), rather than handing out an 
> indefinite "free lunch".
>
> Of course, if users are happy to express their freedom in ways other 
> than downloading movies all day, there isn't a problem.
>
> [1] I use USA money as it's more recognisable.

-- 
PK

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