Skype Journal: What neutrality giveth...
September 13, 2006 05:20 AMConsider this.
I'm a cheapskate, and I'm with Tesco Mobile's prepaid plan. I hardly use my mobile except as a camera and for brief voice notes. Under $10/month expenditure.
Tesco's MVNO only offer Web (ports 80/443 HTTP/HTTPS) access on their GPRS gateway. This is a means of the host operator (in this case, O2) to segment the market and avoid competition from the MVNO for its premium customers.
Now, if you have neutrality rules, you get two unwanted effects:
- Tesco may have to close down their GPRS service, because it discriminates against service providers who happen not to use HTTP as their only protocol. The customer loses if the only type of Internet access allowed is 100% unfiltered.
- Tesco can never expand the service to, for example, allow POP email access whilst disallowing VoIP by inducing jitter and using deep packet inspection. The customer loses again -- in this case the marginal one who may even be willing to pay a little more.
You might object that this kind of protocol discrimination will be allowed in the rules, whereas extortion attempts against individual destinations will be outlawed. I think attempts to differentiate discrimination between classes of application and classes of destination (or individual end points) is doomed to failure from the outset -- it's all too easy to game by creating new protocols and tunneling old ones. If you allow SIP but block Skype's protocol, or vice-versa, you've just secured the Christmas bonus for a lot of lawyers.
I've said it many times before, but Network Neutrality is a treatment for the symptoms, not the causes -- and it's an ineffective anti-consumer folk remedy at that. Good intentions aren't enough.
UPDATE: And there's more... ISPs and telcos do more than just shuffle IP packets. What if your ISP starts re-directing failed DNS look-ups to ads? What if they bundle a device that only works with their service and you can't get the connectivity without paying for the device? What if they give themselves preferential treatment in the retail channel? Picking at one tiny part of the anti-competitive edifice isn't the way forward. Better to have power over suppliers through your wallet than via politicians.
Martin is anything but neutral via Telepocalypse.
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