The Problem With Net Neutrality

An axiom that crosses over multiple genres -- Hollywood, Wall Street, professional sports -- is that you've never really made it until enough people hate you. If that truism can be applied to the telecommunications industry, then it looks like the IP Multimedia System, better know as IMS, has officially arrived.

Although they may not even know it, proponents of net neutrality legislation, when they rail against the prospect of incumbent carriers carving up the Internet into tiered services, are really railing against IMS. It is, after all, the policy control and QoS assurance practices prescribed by the IMS specification that will empower facilities-based operators with the ability to discriminate one bit from another as it passes through their networks.

So now that I've performed the public service of identifying the object of scorn of so many so-called Internet purists, I might as well continue the unofficial education of those who believe that imposing artificial constraints on the next phase of growth of the Internet will ensure openness and nurture innovation: you're dead wrong.

Proponents of net neutrality legislation have managed to turn the argument over whether or not new policy control technology available to Internet service providers will create a two-tiered Internet, completely on its head. Open Internet advocates argue that allowing incumbent carriers to offer preferential treatment to bits traversing their networks will limit end-user choices and retard innovation and the natural competition that an open Internet environment promotes. The exact opposite is true.

By not allowing carriers to utilize the tools that are available and required to create a new universe of rich applications, neutrality advocates would be placing artificial restraints on the next phase of Internet growth. These new tools, which are largely byproducts of the adoption of IMS, have the potential to be the foundation for significant enhancements in the way subscribers will utilize the network and manage their work and home lives. To handicap this process with regulatory restraints makes little sense and would have a negative effect on overall growth of the Internet. The imposition of net neutrality legislation would essentially rob service providers of the greatest tools at their disposal for enriching the Internet experience. It's like passing a law that would restrict artists from using the colors red, green or blue, or outlawing a writer from using irony, foreshadowing or some other artifact of the craft. While it's certainly possible to create a masterpiece or Pulitzer Prize-worthy manuscript under those conditions, the odds are greatly against it.

While most net neutrality advocates have their hearts in the right places, they are guilty of spouting over-the-top rhetoric and erroneously evoking democratic principles in defending their positions. They wrongfully characterized the combatants in this imbroglio as large service providers versus tiny innovative Web sites, with the ultimate losers being the end users. More accurately, the net neutrality battle lines are drawn between large incumbent carriers, such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., and almost-as-large independent Web sites, such as eBay Inc., Google and Yahoo Inc., which have designs on replacing incumbents as communications services providers. The salient issue is that the traditional phone companies now have the ammunition to better control the traffic that flows across their networks, allowing them to give preferential treatment to their own traffic or traffic originating from partner companies.

A two-tiered Web, however, does not equate to a monopoly-like environment in which consumers have access to only high-priced premium services and are denied access to low-cost or free alternatives. Though it is conceivable that best-effort performance may deteriorate as subscribers rely more and more on their broadband connections for entertainment and communications needs, carriers will continue to offer a best-effort connection as part of a tiered service. Carriers are smart enough to understand that a certain percentage of their subscriber bases will prefer no-frills, low-cost services that can be obtained from the Internet at large. To cut off access to those services would not only promote customer defection, it would invite legal action, as some service providers have already learned through unsuccessful efforts to block service from Vonage and other companies in the past. Carriers recognize that shutting out access to the open Internet is neither in their best financial interest nor within the boundaries of legal precedent, making net neutrality legislation completely unnecessary.

It all comes down to providing the consumer with additional choices, and it's difficult to find anything undemocratic about that. In fact, to prevent carriers from applying these tools, which would lead to new and innovative services that blend presence information with communications and entertainment, would be a distortion of the libertarian ideal of the Internet. The Internet is all about equal access to an open-ended repository of information and services. Net neutrality legislation could pervert that ideal by ensuring that innovation is watered down to a lowest-common-denominator status.

For more on the net neutrality/fair use debate, visit www.xchangemag.com/ebooks/june06_net.html to read our eBook, "Net Neutrality & Fair Use: Where Service Providers Fit," presented in partnership with Network Insight.

 
Joe McGarvey is principal analyst with Current Analysis Inc. and a new columnist for xchange. He can be reached at jmcgarvey@currentanalysis.com.

Current Analysis Inc. www.currentanalysis.com

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