NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Text of Markey's H.R. 3458: Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009
At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, can someone please correct me in the
analogy below on Net Neutrality? (I've been talking to laypeople and some
governmental type folks on this in developing countries)
Differentiated services are allowed and, in fact, the norm within a
provider**, for successful mingling of the various types of applications
that share an underlying infrastructure. Some care about accuracy, others,
latency, jitter, etc. But decisions for how packets are to be treated
(already do today/should/must [?? please help which is true]) come from the
edge. Just like a user chooses whether to use DHL/FedEx/USPS, and
overnight, 2nd day, etc., the system should recognize and respect tags
mapping to applications, instead of the providers.
[**tagging/ToS bits are not recognized end-to-end in a standardized manner
today]
But wait, can't a carrier incentivize specific addresses, content, partners,
etc.? In a truly competitive world, I would say, let the market decide. But
we know that (a) it's not really competitive; (b) "free markets" have a LOT
of public involvement in them in the broadband world of today; (c) there are
issues of access, affordability, and innovation that make it difficult to
think of broadband access as just another commodity.
Reading the Bill below, I am reminded of how cable companies allocate 30x or
so more bandwidth to shared video than switched packets. They are free, if
they want, to do so. As a thought experiment, what happens when we move to
IPTV with fully switched content? (Depending on the topography, it might
make sense even today.) Now, if they are a content provider, wouldn't they
want to favor their own content over others? How do they do that fairly in
an IP world? Aren't there restrictions on their doing that in a non-IP
world, e.g., "must carry" rules? Discrimination in the shared video world is
merely carry vs. not carry (and pricing). One of the beauties of the
Internet is precisely that I can access any (legal) content I want,
regardless of whether my service provider had a deal with them. I am always
reminded of the anguish many consumers face when a particular channel is
dropped from a cable bundle. I hope we don't make such issues more complex
and more hidden from sight in the IP world.
Rahul
[ Note that AT&T's U-verse already is fully-switched IPTV. U-verse
is nothing but "higher speed" DSL with the triple-play of
Internet, Voice, and TV sharing the available bits, along with
some spectacularly deceptive promotional material to try
de-emphasize the limitations of this approach for potential
subscribers (the infamous "2 HD streams" limit is but one example).
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>wrote:
>
> Interested parties can inspect the entire text of Markey's Internet
> Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 3458) at:
>
> http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:h3458:
>
> A paragraph that seems to be triggering the most noise is:
>
> (5) [ISP will] not provide or sell to any content, application, or
> service provider, including any affiliate provider or joint
> venture, any offering that prioritizes traffic over that of other
> such providers on an Internet access service; ...
>
> I interpret this as simply creating an even playing field in terms of
> the ISPs' subscribers being able to access the Internet services of
> their choosing on a nondiscriminatory basis. That is, the ISP should
> not show favoritism in delivering traffic to/from Internet or other
> content service (A) simply because Internet or other content service
> (A) paid the ISP directly to skew the service levels to the
> comparative detriment of Internet or other content service (B).
>
> I do not view this language as prohibiting the handling of different
> kinds of traffic with different priorities, so long as the handling is
> nondiscriminatory and equivalently provisioned *for any given type of
> traffic* between the ISP and Internet or other content services,
> without bias triggered by payments or other "special considerations"
> between Internet or other content services and the ISP.
>
> --Lauren--
> NNSquad Moderator
>