[governance] [lack of] Net Neutrality for Mobile Internet in different shapes and forms?

[Roland Perry]

In message <4D83708D.9030803 at wzb.eu>, at 15:47:41 on Fri, 18 Mar 2011, 
Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wzb.eu> writes

>> But the money has to come from somewhere, and in the UK that's the end
>> users paying their monthly subscriptions to their ISPs. Unfortunately,
>> the majority aren't paying enough money to provision the network
>> sufficiently to deliver *everything* they demand *simultaneously*.
>
>Hi,
>
>I am surprised you frame things that way. This sounds like the typical 
>telco point of view. Content providers do also pay for the bandwidth 
>they are using don't they?

Even in the most content-provider friendly scenario, they only pay for 
the bandwidth from their server to the "cloud". They then expect it to 
reach its destination by magic.

If all ISPs had a good balance of high-volume content providers, and a 
large number of subscriber eyeballs, it might just even out. But real 
life's not like that.

>If all of that is not enough money for expanding the infrastructure, 
>the ISPs should perhaps raise the monthly fees we pay for our internet 
>connection?

They try, but consumers are too keen on being part of a "race to the 
bottom", where they'll buy the cheapest service on offer, and them 
complain it doesn't give them the highest performance possible.

I know that this makes me sound jaded, but I've been in the industry too 
long (since the early 90's as a connectivity provider) and it's simply 
the way the market works.

>Charging content providers for delivery to end users is suspected to 
>create all sorts of unpleasant side-effects we cannot possibly want.

The original model was that an ISP with most of the local market would 
be getting a few large payments from content providers and a lot of 
small payments from eyeballs. Which meant that each was making a 
contribution to the overall cost.

This breaks down, because the market goes global, and ISPs specialise in 
servers or eyeballs.

Add in IXPs (which I think are a very good idea) and you get the current 
standoff between content that says "you can't afford not to deliver me 
to your end user customers, they will walk to another provider 
otherwise", and eyeballs who say "you can't afford not to be available 
to me for free, without me you have no business".

-- 
Roland Perry
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