All posts in network neutrality

On April 18, 2006, I was in Oxford (thanks to Jonathan Zittrain) giving a talk at the Oxford Internet Institute that Google Desktop tells me was titled “Seeing the Net: Recent FCC Developments.” The slides I talked through had to do with Bellhead/Nethead differences and the new laws, new institutions, and new asymmetries of information that the telco-incumbent-persuaded FCC was forwarding. Because it was Oxford I wrote out my notes in some detail, and I can see that I talked about net neutrality at length.

I tried to convey the idea that allowing network access providers to discriminate was bad policy – it advances the interests of autonomous actors (the network providers) without sufficient regard for the overall social good. I’m confident I talked about sidewalks, substrates, and openness.

Well, I distinctly remember being told by some Ofcom representatives who were there (this was 18 months ago, so I feel I’m not violating any confidentiality now) that neutrality was always going to be a solely American issue. They were extremely confident. Their arms were folded, and they told me what was what, and neutrality was simply not on the table. “You’re assuming the presence of a network,” they told me. “Of course prioritization is necessary for broadband access – otherwise the providers won’t be able to recoup their expenses.”

Yesterday CNET reported that there’s a professor in the UK (Nigel Shadbolt) that thinks it’s time for the UK and Europe to get into the neutrality tussle. According to Shadbolt:

[The Web is] ‘all about making content visibly available to anybody who chooses to take it and not have intrinsically built in a system of ways of applying explicit filtering.’

He’s convinced this issue will be relevant for the U.K.:

‘We can’t not have the discussion,’ added Shadbolt. ‘It’s not as if it’s of no relevance to us. What happens in the U.S. will make its way here.”

It makes me glad to see Nigel Shadbolt suggesting that net neutrality isn’t just American. I’m sure he’s getting the same chilly reception I did, but at least he has the right accent – “Nigel Shadbolt” clearly is a native.

It’s clear that last week’s Dept. of Justice filing hewed very closely to arguments often made by AT&T and others opposing any form of limitation on their ability to prioritize communications on their networks.

But it may be too easy to say that DOJ is in thrall to AT&T. This may be part of something much more significant.

The Bells, Hollywood, and law enforcement all have strong interests in controlling online communications. The internet disrupts their business models. We can see this in the AT&T fight against network neutrality (and the Pearl Jam story); in the studios’ determination to blame P2P software for every form of sin and every possible security risk; and in law enforcement’s desire to ensure that all highspeed internet communications have a back door that makes them easily tappable — as well as to ensure (see n.20 of the DOJ filing) that “public safety” packets get priority.

Non-neutrality writ large, which carries with it the ability to impose differential “quality of service” treatment on different packets, serves the interests of all three of these groups.

Non-neutrality also serves the interests of those who would like (more generally) to see the internet morphed into something much more akin to the current wireless model here in the US: a fully-monetized network, permitting use of particular applications that share their revenues with the network access provider. (This network would not be the same thing as the internet.)

Another document came out last week that ties this all together. It’s from the ITU, and it’s called “Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007: The Road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN).”

The ITU defines “NGN” as a network that provides quality-of-service-enabled transport technologies. The idea is that packet transport will be “enriched with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to ensure Quality of Service (QoS).”

Translation, as far as I can tell: packet transport becomes the same as circuit-switched transport. Prioritization is controlled; it’s a network optimized on billing.

Now, the ITU has been working on “NGN” for an awfully long time. It holds many many meetings about it. It takes a lot of work to change an open system into a cellphone system. But a cellphone system would put the network operators (and their friends in Hollywood, and law enforcement), back in charge of communications. They’d be able to charge whatever they want, outlaw whatever they want (eg, unwanted P2P communications, non-CALEA-compliant communications), and generally run the show they way they used to in the old days. It’s not clear that the “road to NGN” will ever actually be followed.

The DOJ filing is another step along that road. It parrots AT&T, but it may be tied to a much larger incumbent agenda around the world.