Net Neutrality: The Wrong Debate or the saviour of the Intetnet ?
Recently the Net Neutrality debate has taken off in the telecommunication,media and technology arena with an interest from various vendors,operators and telecoms regulators, analysts and consultants. But what is in this debate that we really need to consider and what is that all means.
In a Nutshell,Net Neutrality or the "Open Internet" - Rules introduced by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Dec 2011- No ISP can apply any type of traffic shaping or 'throttling' on traffic and all traffic should be treated equally. There are also additional provisions for Net Neutrality law in the FCC chapter,namely:
1. No blocking provision: devices should not be blocked from accessing any type of traffic
2. No unreasonable discrimination : i.e. no traffic to be treated differently. without a justification.
The chapter, though, has outlined that some discrimination can be applied to mobile wireless traffic( from mobile devices) which is creating some controversy and is still being debated in courts.
The focus of Net Neutrality rules are on transparency, no discrimination and pricing models and deals that doesn't harm competitors. This type of regulation is needed and welcomed, but the prism upon which the debate is centred seem to disregard important considerations and issues. Let's look at the following points:
In a Nutshell,Net Neutrality or the "Open Internet" - Rules introduced by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Dec 2011- No ISP can apply any type of traffic shaping or 'throttling' on traffic and all traffic should be treated equally. There are also additional provisions for Net Neutrality law in the FCC chapter,namely:
1. No blocking provision: devices should not be blocked from accessing any type of traffic
2. No unreasonable discrimination : i.e. no traffic to be treated differently. without a justification.
The chapter, though, has outlined that some discrimination can be applied to mobile wireless traffic( from mobile devices) which is creating some controversy and is still being debated in courts.
The focus of Net Neutrality rules are on transparency, no discrimination and pricing models and deals that doesn't harm competitors. This type of regulation is needed and welcomed, but the prism upon which the debate is centred seem to disregard important considerations and issues. Let's look at the following points:
- The Internet is changing and will always do. Change is spontaneous and occurs at a pace which is difficult to keep up with - this implies that that Net Neutrality rules updates will be as often as a new pricing models and partnerships will be forged especially between top search engines, social media sites and OTT providers and Network Service Providers (including ISP, Mobile Service Providers).
- The Internet has grown rapidly and will keep growing thanks to the efficiency or rather 'not' of TCP and innovations for error control and recovery over the network of networks- well people tend to forget that without preferential treatment for video and audio and other delay sensitive applciations and services(DTN, Adaptive coding, audio and video compression), a major part of current Interent services would not be usable.
- The way Internet works is 'by definition' not neutral as 'peering' prices are different at the backbone of the Internet that the edge which gives advantages to the big companies with multipe/huge 'pipes' of bandwidth . ISPs tend to bear the brunt of this but they compensate by a lower pricing at the edge.
- The Net Neutrality concept of equal treatment is much needed ONLY - not everywhere- at the backbone of the Internet where the majority Gbps of transatlantic fiber optics is
Mature Infrastructures
- net Neutrality needed to maintain market competitiveness
- 'price' model centred, well most of court disputes was due to price model disadvantage or the possibility of it.
- All the talk is ' high' bandwidth and OTT dominant
Developed Infrastructures
- different market characteristics- you can't apply Net Neutrality rules by FCC in the USA to Africa for example!
-differentiated treatment of services and applications, is in fact the enabler for getting Internet access provision to those 'digitally excluded' individuals, communities and industries
- All the Talk is ' key' or ' Universal' services provision and hence despite the fact that still the same Net Neutrality rules apply -when it comes to maintaining Market competitiveness- they have to be applied and considered differently considering state of the market
There are also other branches and characteristics to take into account. However, I like to tend to acknowledge the need for traffic shaping, traffic rate control and provision both in the last mile and in the core - at least at the service provider level even if it does contradict 'current' Net Neutrality rules. We don't even know if current rules are in sync with the current status of the Internet or not. Moreover, Certain domain traffic shaping and rate limiting is beneficial despite being controversial- if applied equally to all subscribers- when you consider the technical problem of delivering Internet to sparse isolated communities with socio-economic challengers of affordability, infrastructure barriers and culture barriers to digital inclusion.
Thanks for reading up to here , You care about the Internet future- you should, this affects many aspects of our lives at all spheres
#NetNeutrality
Hassan
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