Network neutrality is not a new concept. Far from it, it’s been around for as long as we’ve been using data networks. Maybe you know it as the end-to-end principal, or, of you’re an old-timer you probably remember the fights over the common carrier status of the network providers. The concept of network neutrality is pretty simple: the companies that own the network plumbing shouldn’t be able to control what flows through the pipes. All data packets are treated equally.
Simple in concept; devilishly difficult in execution it turns out. Or at least that’s what the telephone and cable companies would have us believe.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held a hearing on broadband network management practices earlier this week at the Harvard law school. Andy Oram, writing for O’Reilly radar, had the best analysis of the hearing I’ve seen, reflecting the infectiveness and overall impotence of the FCC:
“Yet to a large extent, the panelists and speakers were like petitioners who are denied access to the king and can only bring their complaints to the gardeners who decorate the paths outside his gate. I believe that the FCC commissioners see distinct limits to what they can accomplish, and that their compromises will come out much closer to the current practices of the Comcasts and Verizons than to the more idealistic calls for an Internet that we should have had seven or eight years ago.”
We in the US should be enjoying symmetrical bandwidth ten- to 100-times that which we have today. Instead of spending the money it’s going to take to increase available bandwidth, the providers want to control network traffic to balance current bandwidth levels and, most importantly, maximize revenues. The end-result is instances like Comcast’s infamous blocking of BitTorrent traffic.
Such activity will stifle internet innovation. As Timothy Wu pointed out during one of the panels, investors would be unlikely to fund development companies if their services could be blocked at any time.
Meanwhile, Comcast not only blocks internet traffic it doesn’t like; it blocks public access to the FCC hearing.
The FCC will likely issue a formal statement endorsing non-discrimination of network traffic on the part of network providers. But that’s not enough. Not nearly enough.
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