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

Roland Perry roland at internetpolicyagency.com
Sat Mar 19 06:10:53 EDT 2011


In message <7.0.1.0.2.20110318191143.0586d508 at jefsey.com>, at 19:54:54 
on Fri, 18 Mar 2011, JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com> writes

 >>If you were on an island with a 2 Megabit leased line, and had ten 
 >>people wanting to stream BBC iPlayer at 1 Megabit each [which they 
 >>naturally feel is possible because each of them only wants half the 
 >>supplied bandwidth], what architecturally network neutral solution 
 >>would you propose?
 >>
 >>(Assume you'd asked if they wanted to pay 10x the monthly fee, and 
 >>they all said "no").
>
>The problem is not with the Internet, but with the BBC and its 
>commercial motivations to broadcast at 1 megabit for various merchant 
>reasons instead of better quality at 0.1 Megabit.

I agree - the BBC is declaring a "right" to have its content transmitted 
at a rate which it has determined. Although because its a public-service 
broadcaster there isn't a "commercial motivation". No-one pays anything 
to the BBC specifically for this content. In some other countries there 
will be similar content available where the subscriber *is* paying, 
however.

>So, neutrality is first to make sure that IUse neutral solutions (we 
>are out of the network, i.e. fringe to fringe) do not exist, that 
>permit better quality stream broadcast requiring 0.1 Megabit do not 
>exist, that obviously could be possible, but out of BBC (and Apple) 
>commercial control and benefits.

If you want to watch a TV show at the same resolution as broadcast 
(especially on a wide-screen TV) then it does require 1 Megabit or more. 
That's quite an achievement, actually, because they use 4+ megabits for 
standard broadcast quality.

>This is why we are to be careful about the difference between the 
>network neutrality bound to the Internet legacy and the current 
>merchandisation strategies, and the intrinsic brain to brain digital 
>ecosystem neutrality various middle strata. At each stratum the 
>architectural law is the same, but the scope is different.
>
>If you really want to dig into the roots of the Internet neutrality, I 
>suggest you read the begining of the RFC 3869

It says that while TCP was a good initial congestion avoidance 
mechanism,

    "The congestion control mechanisms of the Internet need to be
    expanded and modified to meet a wide range of new requirements, from
    new applications such as streaming media and multicast to new
    environments such as wireless networks..."

Which is exactly what the UK networks are proposing.

>BTW, is not Britain an Island?

It is (well, a collection of islands). However, the BBC content and its 
viewers are all inside that island. (Another time perhaps we can discuss 
the non-neutrality of the content being prohibited to view outside the 
country). For my 'island' analogy to work inside the UK, you have to 
imagine every town is an island, with all the people in that town 
connected to one Internet Point-of-presence, and that PoP connected to 
the outside world by one limited connection.

For the majority of subscribers involved in this NN battle in the UK, 
that's actually very close to the architectural model. The main pinch 
point is that connection between the PoP and the 'Internet Cloud' (the 
backhaul), while individual subscribers also have varying degrees of 
quality of connection to the PoP (the "up to 8Mbits" issue), which can 
also become saturated by content.

If customers would pay more for their individual connections, there'd be 
money to upgrade the backhaul.
-- 
Roland Perry
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