Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, today laid out plans to enforce net neutrality upon the internet. While the FCC is a US-only entity, fact of the matter is that “control” over the internet lies within the US, so whatever the FCC decides, it will affect the rest of the world.
Genachowski laid out the plans in an address this morning at theBrookings Institution in Washington. In summary, the existing FCC principles will be turned into rules, and two additional rules will be added. The existing principles are not rules, and Comcast and the FCC are currently in a legal tussle over whether or not the FCC actually has the authority to enforce the principles.
As such, the four freedoms, as they’re called (no, not those four freedoms), must be turned into official agency rules, so that ISPs know what they’re up against, and so that the FCC can actually enforce them. In addition, two new rules are introduced: non-discrimination and transparency. These rules would apply to both wired and wireless connections.
Non-discrimination means that ISPs are not allowed to throttle specific applications or protocols. The transparency rule states that ISPs must be “transparent about the network management practices they implement”. “Why does the FCC need to adopt this principle?” Genachowski asked, “The Internet evolved through open standards. It was conceived as a tool whose user manual would be free and available to all. But new network management practices and technologies challenge this original understanding. Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users – with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world.”
So, is this a form of governmental control over the internet? Not exactly; it’s more governmental control over those who provide access to the internet – a subtle, but crucial difference. In his speech, Genachowski put it like this (very eloquently worded):
This is not about government regulation of the Internet. It’s about fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the Internet. We will do as much as we need to do, and no more, to ensure that the Internet remains an unfettered platform for competition, creativity, and entrepreneurial activity.This is not about protecting the Internet against imaginary dangers. We’re seeing the breaks and cracks emerge, and they threaten to change the Internet’s fundamental architecture of openness. This would shrink opportunities for innovators, content creators, and small businesses around the country, and limit the full and free expression the Internet promises. This is about preserving and maintaining something profoundly successful and ensuring that it’s not distorted or undermined. If we wait too long to preserve a free and open Internet, it will be too late.
Some will seek to invoke innovation and investment as reasons not to adopt open Internet rules. But history’s lesson is clear: Ensuring a robust and open Internet is the best thing we can do to promote investment and innovation. And while there are some who see every policy decision as either pro-business or pro-consumer, I reject that approach; it’s not the right way to see technology’s role in America.
An open Internet will benefit both consumers and businesses. The principles that will protect the open Internet are an essential step to maximize investment and innovation in the network and on the edge of it — by establishing rules of the road that incentivize competition, empower entrepreneurs, and grow the economic pie to the benefit of all.
Over the years, we’ve seen increasing attempts by ISPs to make the internet less open. We already cited Comcast – they degraded BitTorrent traffic, which the FCC condemned. And, of course, we have wireless carriers prohibiting the use of VoIP clients on their networks.
It will be a long and difficult task to get these changes implemented, and it may fail. Google has already given support for the plan. Sadly, US ISPs were not yet available for comments on the matter.
I say pee.
The whole net neutrality debate has me very interested. Basically, I don’t think ISPs should be allow to dictate at what speeds I’m allow to watch an online movie, or download a torrent or even just surf the web.
Frankly, I consider ISPs like any other utility company. If my electricity provider where to start regulating my power consumption for me, I quickly change company but if they all started doing it, I wouldn’t have much choice, would I?
Thanks to the FCC, Europe will take these concerns of mine for more seriously than before.
Those who consume more pay more. I don’t download that much torrent files or view long duration video’s on the web. So I hope my bill goes down and people who hog the network pay more. That would make more sense. Just like for Electricity.
IMHO – This is going to go to court and am not sure if the FCC could prevail. They sold a large chunck of bandwidth for $$$$ and explicitly stated that much of it will not be subject to such regulation. I guess many of the carriers will be asking for a refund.
Edited 2009-09-21 21:29 UTC
I’ll buy into that pay as you go when all the Telcos in the US [hardlines and Wireless] pay back the hundreds of Billions in Loans outstanding, first.
We don’t even have to discuss the hundreds of Billions in US Subsidies right?
Edited 2009-09-21 23:04 UTC
You’re damn right. I had to mod you up because you said it just like I was thinking it.
I see where you’re coming from and I agree with your sentiment, as far as saving money for you is concerned, but I’m paying for a flat rate internet connection. That basically means I have a no size limit download agreement with my ISP. Network “quality of service” is not something I agreed on when I signed the contract, yet I notice more and more that my connection is severely faster for the first 15 to 30 seconds, then the QoS kicks in and my downloads drop. The amount they drop by depends on the time of day but they always drop. That in itself is already bad enough. For my ISP to start dictating at what speed I use various applications is intolerable.
Yeah, I doubt they are going down without a fight. The problem is the FCC had their heads up their ass when they let that particular Genie out of the bottle. To suddenly do a 180 is going to cost them in more than just money.
Are you sure? Because AFAIK all ISPs put a clause that describes quality of service in their contracts. It’s usually mandated by law. Now, it may not be in any terms you’d recognize. It’s probably something like “these services comply with class X as defined by Whoever”. And when you look it up you discover that “class X” means the crappiest possible kind of connection there is, and you’re basically paying for wishful thinking.
If they didn’t have any such clause in their contracts then yeah, you’d be entitled to get on their case entirely on the merits of their advertising. You can probably still do that, in countries which have strong consumer protection laws and enforcing state-mandated bodies which act in their interest at no cost for them. Which is the case for many EU countries.
I’m pretty sure. You see, I signed my contract before they implemented QoS and as they are the remnants of a state monopoly, they tend to do things their way and tell customers after.
Now, I could give them hell over it but I’m moving to London in a month and I really couldn’t be bothered. Frankly, one of the reasons why I’m moving in the first place is to finally get to a place with good customer choice. Luxembourg has a 400k population, with 1/4th living in Luxembourg city. This place is a price fixers dream!
You people trip me out!
So I suppose you don’t use any programs on your computer that are of download nature? Because the very people that may offer you a free program have to upload it somewhere! So that person that gives you a product (with nothing in return) should pay a higher bill then you because you don’t use torrents and this happens to be a great way to spread FOSS software (like Linux)?
I don’t share in your excitement my friend!
On a side note, liked the article! Seems as if something may be done for the consumer here (what a rarity).
Your ISP probably provides different plans based on how much per month one may download and what maximum speed it may run at. Select a plan closer to your needs, don’t suggest everyone buy the highest plan available then expect the fee to be adjusted because they didn’t use all of there allotted transfer rate.
the internet is global and unchained and shouldn’t be messed around with by the government of any country. I don’t want the FCC to censor the internet like they do with broadcast TV and radio.
Edited 2009-09-21 21:55 UTC
This isn’t censorship, and if you had paid any form of attention instead of kneejerking, you would’ve seen that the rules do not interfere with the internet, but merely with US ISPs.
Please read the article before commenting. Thank you.
I think it is you that need to pay attention. Who says what content gets what bandwidth. Right now it is the ability to pay, and that certainly skews things in a certain, but predictable manner. If your ISP decides OSAlert is a really low priority site, they can throttle it completely. What good is a globally-distributed network where the “man-in-the-middle” can decide what sites you can reach and at what speeds.
The ISPs and Telecoms will swear until they’re blue in the face that this isn’t the intent of their plans, that it’s only to squeeze more money from already paying customers, but it’s not. This is about control of the Internet. This is about putting the cat back in the bag.
Edit: their->they’re
Edited 2009-09-22 01:38 UTC
Did you read the “Consumers are allowed to access the lawful internet content of their choice.” part? That would scare the hell out of me. What is lawful content? That could change on a whim.
Look at Iran blocking the social sites, email, and whatnot. Think that can’t happen here? We already have brown shirt tactics where people can anonymously tell the government who was badmouthing the health care plans. We have news that is not being reported, the next step would be marking the people who write on their blogs what they perceive as truth being called dissidents and having their content labeled unlawful content. They did not say legal or illegal for a reason.
That was just what I was thinking. We should have access to CONTENT, period. ‘Legality’ of said content is subjective.
To my eyes, a big problem is that the majority of ISPs have vested interests in holding back VoIP (telcos) and online video (cable companies) as much as they possibly can.
I pay my pound of flesh per month for a connection from my wall socket to the internet. I expect a rate of data transfer regardless of what those 1s and 0s happen to be. At the transport layer, it’s all one binary streaming blob. Filtering parts of that binary stream based on the ISP’d arbitrary feelings is not acceptable. It’s barely tolerable that my upload speed does not remotely match my download speed.
I don’t want my ISP’s “value add”.. It’s a simply deal, I give you money every month, you give me a dump-pipe feed. Don’t bust my balls over what ports I have open or what order the 1s and 0s happen to arrive in.
I agree with your general sentiment, but isn’t this a technical characteristic of ADSL?
While it does meet the characteristic of ADSL, it does not meet the characteristics of cable or fiber. Unless you pay much more, you will not get the ISP to make the up and down be the same. Cable is the dominant provider in the US due to the technical limitations of any DSL, mainly distance from the CO.
The providers do not want you uploading things, so they limit the bandwidth. If you have a business account, and pay much more, then you can get them the same. For residential, they just like to rake us over the coals
ADSL, yes. Afterall, the A is for Asynchronous.
However, DSL is not inherently asynchronous. There are synchronous forms of DSL, mainly, you guessed it, SDSL.
There are other forms of DSL as well. It’s just that ADSL is the cheapest to install and manage.
It’s not a technical limitation based on the last time I was working directly with DSL paired modems. We where doing a modem on each end of a security pair. Both ends could send full speed.
With cable, I also don’t see a technological reason that send and receive can’t run at the same maximum of the hardware potential.
With Dish.. you get a fast download through the dish but slower upload out through dsl lines so in that case, I can accept a difference in transfer rates.
The reason I’ve heard more often is file sharing. They like home users getting fast downloads but don’t want users having fast uploads from there machines. Now, if you buy a business class subscription; fast down, fast up. I’m sure they also claim that home users having full upload transfer rates would overwhelm the network. It’s politics and business strategy more than technology.
Your analogy fails, electricity is paid by amount but net speed is bought as slice. Again like I said these freedoms are pee, they look like fanta but it’s really pee. That means your heavy torrent traffic can be seen as “harmful”, thus you get kicked in nuts.
Good point, my analogy is flawed. I guess what I’m trying to say is I signed a contract with my ISP to get a data pipe. Except for breaking the law or purposely damaging the network, nowhere does it say in that contract what I’m allowed and not allowed to use that connection for. I’d much rather it stayed that way.
well, given 100S% free market principals it would be a non issue simply because no business would go with a restricted internet for the simple fact that they would lose market share as a result.
this would only be an issue if it was government regulated. …. non regulated, this will make no difference in the ISP market. in fact it may spur new life into the unregulated market …………. i believe it would put regulated isp markets out of business.
I really don’t see how an unregulated marked could ever work. Frankly, any time I’ve seen them in action, all you ever get is price fixing until either the bubble bursts, taking all and sunder with it, or the government steps in and forces some sanity on the situation.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the government gets it right all the time. In fact, I’d say they often get it wrong but I’d rather have bureaucrats looking after their own interests than greedy corporations.
As a libertarian, I oppose what the FCC is trying to do. Aside from ideological reasons, I fear there might be negative unintended consequences. For instance, what if the Internet does get overly congested like some claim it might. Neutrality laws might hinder the free market of ideas on how to deal with the issue best.
My personal concern is that business will do what it’s always done in this particular market and seek every way to derive profit at the end user’s utter expense. It’s not an industry where free market principals have tended to benefit the customer as the ideology hope’s for.
As for network congestion, we and the US are falling behind in networking technology. The telco’s have been lax in keeping there networks upgraded in favor of shareholder interests dictated by corporate law. Other countries with much higher density and connected populations are easily tripling our transfer speeds. The network congestion issue is more a monster under the bed used to scare us consumers into behaving at bed time than an formidable threat.
In a healthy customer driven market, I’d agree with you since true competition between businesses would result in the best products ant lowest costs.
The way I see it is this: If the net neutrality passes then the government has a legal precedent to control the Internet. This might seem good at first, with the net neutrality but it can turn very ugly from here on. So supporting net netrality is basically saying “I think the government should have the power to control the Internet”.
Many people might be say at this point “Well what about the greedy Corporations they should be able to control everything.”. Well the situation is not good either way but at least I could change my ISP. I might pay more but if others do the same the markets would favor net neutral ISPs. It would be much harder to sussed from the government if you didn’t like how they were controlling the Internet. The last time that was tried the government violently invaded and waged a bloody war on civilians including brutally burning down full towns and cites.
In the mean time have an idea but I don’t know if it is plausible. What if you bring up a ISP on fraud charges if they start to throttle the Internet. You can claim that the Internet isn’t throttled and what they are doing is selling you something that is not the Internet any more while still claiming it is.