Tim Berners-Lee, Network Neutrality, and the FCC

Net Neutrality: This is serious. I'm not sure why I didn't post this yesterday when I first read it, but I realized it has one of the best simple descriptions of network neutrality that I've seen. And now I've had a chance to think about it and rant a bit too. :) He defines it as:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

The only improvement I could see is stating rather than implying that the companies between the ends want to get at least one end to pay them as well to keep up that level of service. Explaining that fully brings up the need for a bit of background. Take the FCC's principles to Preserve and Promote the Open and Interconnected Nature of Public Internet. That's a press release, if you're interested you can see the full policy statement which gives some reasoning and jurisdictional justification. That was published by the FCC as an official general guidance a year and a half after the initial ideas were proposed.

In 2004, Michael Powell, then chairman of the FCC, also gave a speech titled Preserving Internet Freedom: Guiding Principles for the Industry. In this he stated, "it is time to give the private sector a clear road map by which it can avoid future regulation on this issue by embracing unparalleled openness and consumer choice." He then goes on to challenge voluntary compliance with the precursors to the FCC's principles.

He even goes as far as to state that they have every right "to offer a variety of service tiers with varying bandwidth and feature options," but says they have to be open about it to the customer. I find it rather sad that this is effectively the entire point of the Telcos pushing against any regulation. It's unlikely that any of this would be brought to light if a provider's access was stated as "Internet access, 0Kbps CIR, 8Mbps burstable, maximum 3GB per month general traffic, unlimited traffic and 2Mbps CIR to our services and services of certain partners." That would be paying for the specific quality of service as mentioned in the timbl quote. Instead they want to say "Unlimited High-speed Internet Access" and hope you won't use it.

Of course the Internet caught on, and people started to use it for their own content, and now it's overloaded the ISP backbones. A simple fix would be to start charging more accurately for their costs to provide the service, allowing the backbones to be upgraded properly (or usage to be reduced accordingly if the cost is too high). Instead, they first tried to silently stop or degrade certain services without telling the customers. Madison River effectively got smacked down for that, although there wasn't really any legal force behind it. Now they want to start charging content providers, taking the approach that a business is less likely to stop providing service with a cost increase than consumers cutting back with a price increase.

That wouldn't be a problem if they did it by charging for transmitting data to their network. Due to the wonders of how the Internet works, you'd eventually end up with costs going up for everyone. Unless there was collusion, people would switch ISPs. The result is competitive prices. They want to structure it in a way where all the content providers pay them directly. This allows precise tweaking without proper competitive control, as the costs of the connections are externalities. You pick an ISP because they sell "the same" product as other providers at the best price. Your video provider's ISP does the same, and the ISPs have negotiations on how transfer between them is handled. Suddenly your ISP decides that if the video provider wants to get content delivered in an adequate manner, they have to pay your ISP directly. They don't try to charge the video provider's ISP excessively, as there's bargaining power there. The video company is forced to choose between paying or losing you as a customer, unless they somehow convince you to switch despite your ISP saying they offer the same product as everyone else. In a way this is somewhat inverse competition, in that it's more likely the higher price will be paid when more prices are cheaper - cheaper to pay for protection than lose customers. Effectively but not legally extortion (assuming they're careful, thus the need for regulation to keep things in check. It's barely "Network Neutrality" — it's effectively "Truth in advertising".