Free Riders’ Rebellion

It’s rather difficult to find the actual text of the Save the Internet bill that our fuzzy-minded friends are complaining about as it’s not in Thomas yet. Not to worry, the Benton Foundation has posted the original text and the April Update on its web site. This is the section that they’re worried about: II. … Continue reading “Free Riders’ Rebellion”

It’s rather difficult to find the actual text of the Save the Internet bill that our fuzzy-minded friends are complaining about as it’s not in Thomas yet. Not to worry, the Benton Foundation has posted the original text and the April Update on its web site. This is the section that they’re worried about:

II. Net Neutrality

The legislation gives the FCC authority to enforce its broadband policy statement and principles when it receives a complaint that the principles have been violated. On September 23, the FCC concluded that it has the jurisdiction necessary to ensure that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or Internet Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services are operated in a neutral manner. Moreover, to ensure that broadband networks are widely deployed, open, affordable, and accessible to all consumers, the Commission adopted the following principles:

* To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

* To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

* To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

* To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

After reviewing a complaint, the FCC would be able to issue an order that a violating entity comply with the above principles.

In addition, within 180 days of enactment of the legislation, the Commission is to submit a study to Congress regarding whether the objectives of the broadband policy statement and principles are being achieved.

I frankly don’t see what the fuss is about. The Coalition’s complaint, at the end of the day, is that the above language isn’t strong enough, and that certainly appears to be a load of crap.

The underlying issue is this: When a cable company or Telco has deployed a cable plant that allows it to accelerate voice services such that VOIP is as good as the existing telephone network, can service providers such as Google and Skype use these enhanced facilities for free? The bill says that’s the Telco’s call to make, not the government’s, and I’m all for that. The Telcos need to make money in order to have the incentive to upgrade the cable plant. They’re not charities and they shouldn’t be forced to act as if they were.

Google is looking for a free ride not on the ordinary Internet, but on a new cable system that performs better than the ordinary Internet. They want Fedex service for the price of bulk mail, and that would be a no-go even if Google weren’t a dangerous monopoly that cooperates with the Chinese government to stifle free speech.

Don’t believe the crap about Telcos blocking web sites, the plain language of the bill prevents that. Read the bill and decide for yourself if it’s progressive or regressive.

For more information, see the Benton Foundation’s page and the Committee’s page.

7 thoughts on “Free Riders’ Rebellion”

  1. It’s all about QoS; nobody minds if one pays for a premium, provided that the premium doesn’t come at the expense of what one is already led to expect- the presumed warranty of operability of broadband.

    If broadband were to slow to dial-up and to have the same price increases, that’d be a problem.

    And it’s not out of the realm of common sense to assume that some service providers might just be tempted to do that.

  2. Yes, it is all about QoS.

    If I pay a premium to my access company for some sort of Admission Control with, say, WMM priorities, I don’t want my Voice Priority flow disrupted by unruly applications that tag all their packets with Voice Priority. In that case, the Access Provider should downgrade the unruly apps tag to Best Effort Priority. If the free riders get their way they wouldn’t be able to do that.

    And if the Access Provider screws me over, I’ll simply change Access Providers.

  3. Uhm, hey Richard,

    The bill isn’t in Thomas yet because it is a committee print, on deck for markup tomorrow.

  4. Richard:

    WMM with admission control is a bad example- which you’re probably aware of, and mean ironically. After all, being that it’s in an unlicensed band, you’ll always get what you pay for, and can not really stop the interfering networks, especially when they’re outfitted with certain products from evil companies that begin with the letter “B.”

    On cable, DSL, and dedicated spectrum, however, the point is well taken, again, provided that the implied warranty of operability is not violated.

    Of course, if we had multiple broadband providers in throughout country, we could just “change providers.”

    There’s a simple way out of this issue which should be satisfying to all: the companies, as utilities, get no doubt copious tax breaks for infrastucture improvements; if not they ought to. It’s not difficult to scope out how to match infrastructure improvements in such a way that the better quality services are deployed without screwing the best effort folks.

    My preferred solution though would be if such infrastructure improvement costs were passed on to the rate payers, that they be compensated by ownership in the company. But that’s not going to happen.

  5. DSL is a dedicated link from your house to the CO, so it’s not clear how any priority scheme is going to affect performance on it one way or another, except as you’ve opened sessions with priority assigned by you to begin with. And the COs are connected by an ATM ring that has many times more bandwidth than any consumer can use. And the ATM ring it connected to a backbone where peering arrangments dictate the routes and the latencies of packets.

    I suppose the Telcos want to provide mechanisms on the ATM ring and the peering system to make their VoIP outperform Google’s and Skypes, and given the history of peering arrangements it seems to me that they can and should do so.

    The Telcos have a responsibility to their shareholders to invest wisely in infrastructure, and if Google and Microsoft want to use their political muscle to make these investments unwise and unprofitable they simply won’t happen.

  6. DSL is a dedicated link from your house to the CO, so it’s not clear how any priority scheme is going to affect performance on it one way or another, except as you’ve opened sessions with priority assigned by you to begin with.

    True, the issue arises though with transfer across the differet network fabrics, and how many “many” actually is.

    Re: Google and Microsoft, can’t they just buy their own damned network?

  7. Right, it’s mainly an issue of service bundling. Let’s say Qwest offers you a choice of plain vanilla Internet for $20/mo or Super Enhanced Internet for $40/mo. The Super deal is the plain vanilla deal plus some high-priority queues you can use for Vonage or Skype. What they want to do is offer their own VoIP for say, $10/mo that you can use with the plain vanilla service, so you now have three choices:

    1) Crappy Vonage or Skype for $20
    2) Telco VoIP for $30
    3) Good Vonage or Skype for $40.

    And your non-priority web surfing is the same in all configurations. They used to do something similar with independent ISPs, where you could use the Telco for your ISP with DSL for $40/mo or an independent ISP with DSL for $55/mo.

    It seems to me that this is a pretty reasonable thing to do, and while I may not have chose to offer this kind of service for these prices myself, I figure that Qwest should be able to do it, especially if it encourages them to wire more houses for DSL.

    Now the interesting thing about using the Internet is that it’s all transactional. I go to Google and that creates a transaction between the two of us. Now let’s say I have the low-cost plain vanilla Internet service, but the Telco has a deal whereby web-based services can pay a fee to the Telco to bump-up my performance in transactions with them, effectively subsidizing my Google experience. Under the Telco plan, as I understand it, they should be able to do that, and why not? The whole damn Google business is subsidized by ads as it is, so nobody can claim Google is opposed to bundling and subsidies in principle.

    So that’s the essence of the debate: is the sauce for the Google good for the Telco? Should broadband access providers have flexibility in service bundles? Should Google be able to subsidize the link that they stuff their ads down?

    It seems to me that these are all reasonable avenues to explore, given the uncertainty in the broadband business today and the high cost of infrastructure.

    And the reason Google and MS don’t build their own network is that it’s cheaper for them to hitch a free ride on one that’s essentially paid for by POTS, but Google is planning to deploy some Muni WiFi that’s subsidized by advertising. Just don’t let a Telco do that, of course.

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