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Politicians seek formal net neutrality deal

By Reuters

Posted on 17 Aug 2010 at 08:22

A quartet of Democrat politicians has called on regulators to push ahead with plans to enforce their own rules governing internet traffic rather than rely on the Google-Verizon deal mooted last week.

The call – made by four politicians on a congressional panel - centres on whether large internet companies should be allowed to prioritise certain traffic, such as video, from partners who pay for the privilege.

Rather than expansion upon a proposal by two large communications companies with a vested financial interest in the outcome, formal FCC action is needed

Last week, Verizon and Google said regulators should be able to police internet traffic over cable and telephone lines, but that carriers themselves should be able to control the speed of consumers' access to content on wireless devices such as smartphones.

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said any outcome or deal that does not preserve an open and free internet for consumers and entrepreneurs would be unacceptable.

The companies' joint proposal marked a surprising compromise on net neutrality, but the Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have sent a letter to Genachowski insisting he should maintain a free and open internet.

“Rather than expansion upon a proposal by two large communications companies with a vested financial interest in the outcome, formal FCC action is needed,” they said.

Last October, the FCC issued a net neutrality proposal and collected public comments, but it has not said when it plans to implement it.

In its proposal, the FCC asked for public comment on whether operators should be prevented from discriminating against any legal content a third party wants to deliver to consumers on their land line and wireless networks.

It would allow for "reasonable" network management to unclog congestion, clear viruses and spam and block unlawful content such as child pornography or the transfer of pirated content.

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User comments

Amusing Typo

"... such as video, from parters who pay for the privilege ..."

Reminded me of a particular Blackadder episode where Hugh Laurie is Farters Parters at Blackadder's drinking party, where the participants all wear comedy breasts. Anyway ...

By paulgspence on 17 Aug 2010

Parters

Thanks for pointing that out so eloquently.

By SMitchell on 17 Aug 2010

Is net neutrality such a wonderful idea?

I use broadband at work and at home. If my business broadband supplier offers me a guarantee of bandwidth during business hours -is that a breach of net neutrality?
Similarly if I have a hosted service with guaranteed bandwidth is that consistent with neutrality?
At what point on the network do we need the guarantee of neutrality?

By milliganp on 17 Aug 2010

Yes Net Neutrality is important

I don't really understand the point you're making milliganp.

Net Neutrality isn't about being able to offer a guarantee of bandwidth to your business per se, it's about whether or not large corporations with money behind them should be allowed to 'bribe' the ISP's to give them the majority of their bandwith - thus hindering those smaller companies who can't afford to pay by decreasing their share of it.

If accessing a small internet-based business site seems painfully slow compared to the larger companies, it risks most end-users giving up and sticking with the already established competitor. In certain situations it effectively shuts out new competition.

I think the internet needs to be seen as 'infrastructure' rather than 'luxury'. Large stores like Tesco's and Sainsbury's aren't able to hire private lanes on the roads to get their goods to their stores any quicker, yet this is pretty much the proposal in allowing prioritised traffic on the internet.

Good news for a select few, damaging for the majority.

By Mr_John_T on 17 Aug 2010

@milliganp

As I understand it, the issue of net neutrality isn't about the bandwidth/speed you access the net at; it's about isp's, google/search engines etc not being allowed to prioritise or prevent content reaching you. eg if nVidia pay google a large wad of cash it could be that anytime you went searching with the word 'graphic' as a search parameter then the first page of results or more would be links for nVidia or their partners or worse a direct jump to nVidia web pages. No matter whether you actually meant graphic design or were maybe shopping for an Ati card.

Equally it would stop politically sensitive material from being blocked; think goggle searching 'Tiananmen Square' and 'students' while sitting in a Beijing coffee house and the results you know you wouldn't get!

By fingerbob69 on 17 Aug 2010

So what hpeends when company A pays to get the information etc to you quicker and thus use more band widith while your ISP at the other end is choking the band widith eg BBC iPlayer due to it taking too much resources out of the network

By mprltd on 18 Aug 2010

Setting the boundries

My aim in my original post was to try and work out what does and doesn't count as net neutrality. Much of the press coverage doesn't seem to know.
"Obviously" we don't want the internet to be taken over by someone like BSkyB buying the backbone and making all other services second class. But there are plenty of intermediate levels of service that I feel ISPs ought to be able to offer as premium services.
At the moment you can pay your ISP for different connection speeds, or pay for different monthly download limits. For a premium Virgin and Plusnet offer a service that does not include traffic shaping -so you can play games of p2p to your hearts content.
When we had networks that uses time-division you could get a better service by buying more time slots. With a statistical internet the only way you can do the same thing is by traffic prioritisation. Thus "absolute" net neutrality would prevent any such capability.
I do understand that in the US net neutrality is much more about basic access since large numbers of people have no or little choice as to ISP whereas in the UK we can generally vote with our feet and go to another ISP (the campaign against Phorm was successful because people had choice).
Ultimately my point is that we need to be certain what does and doesn't constitute neutrality so that we don't prevent the development of new service that people might want and be willing to pay for.

By milliganp on 18 Aug 2010