[governance] Re: caucus contribution -> possible replacement terms for NN?

[Roland Perry]

In message <20130214102925.1e34a379 at quill.bollow.ch>, at 10:29:25 on 
Thu, 14 Feb 2013, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> writes
>> >“How to maintain the principle (sometimes referred to as ‘net
>> >neutrality’) that the price which an ISPs charges their customer for
>> >exchanging data packets via the Internet shall not depend on the
>> >content of the data packets, nor on who specifically is the remote
>> >party? What shall be the mechanisms and institutions involved in this
>> >process?”
>>
>> I'm not sure I know of any ISP that charges their consumer customers
>> different rates for different types of packet.
>
>That language is trying to somehow address the type of concern that
>was expressed in media coverage about the Dutch "net neutrality law"
>by means of the following words:
>
>  "Under the new law, mobile internet providers like KPN won't be able
>  to charge for access to particular services like Skype or throttle
>  traffic through them — both techniques that the company was intent on
>  using to manage its mobile traffic."
>
>In my view, the concern is expressed well enough in the proposed text
>for our present purpose, even if it is true that there is an aspect
>which is not covered, namely potentially intentionally throtteling (or
>e.g. introducing jitter) specifically to stop people from using specific
>services that happen to compete with other offerings of the ISP.

That example clarifies the situation, in other words KPN might have 
charged a fee to "unblock" Skype. Of course, the quote above is still 
somewhat ambiguous, because I doubt if access to other services (other 
than Skype) is free of charge, so all of them are in fact being 
delivered for a fee.

I've seen some other mobile phone companies doing the exact reverse, 
with traffic to Skype being "truly free of charge" and other traffic 
charged per byte.

But I do wonder if Skype in particular (and VoIP in general) is a bit of 
a special case due to the direct competition with mobile voice. If 
there's no similar threat to 'pure data' traffic[1], perhaps the Skype 
issue could be dealt with via an alternative statement to do with 
blocking (and/or outlawing) of VoIP in general on some networks and in 
some countries.

But perhaps that's a thought for another day, because we approach this 
deadline too rapidly.

[1] A hypothetical fee to unblock YouTube or Wikipedia.
-- 
Roland Perry

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