More Net Neutrality

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about net neutrality in a post that got a little bit of discussion going. Earlier this week at Salon, Farhad Manjoo wrote an article on the subject that goes in to a lot more depth and explains it in relatively simple, non-technical language. (You know the drill on Salon links--if you're not a subscriber, you can watch an ad and get a "day pass" that will allow you to read that article and poke around the site to your heart’s content for a few hours.)

The problem seems to be not what barriers large telecom companies such as AT&T will put up on today's Internet--they've promised they won't block access to any Websites, and no one seems to have any reason not to believe them--but how they'll construct a much larger broadband Internet to give favored Websites (i.e., those that pay) better and faster access at the expense of other content providers. Here's how Manjoo describes it:

AT&T and other network operators are building their networks in a way that would make it possible to split up network traffic into various lanes -- fast, slow, medium -- and then to decide what kind of data, and whose data, goes where, based on who's paid what. Broadband companies argue that engineering their networks in this way will benefit customers in two ways. First, they say, splitting up the Internet into several lanes will generally improve its efficiency -- the network will simply run better if it's more logically managed.

The phone companies' second argument concerns cost. If AT&T builds a blindingly fast new Internet line to your house but only allows some firms -- firms that pay -- to get the fastest service, it can significantly offset the costs of the build-out. And that's good for you, AT&T says, because if the company can charge the likes of Apple and Google to pay for the line, it doesn't have to charge you. "I think what we're saying is friendly to the consumer," Ciccone says. "If we're building the capacity, what we're doing is trying to defray some of the cost from consumers to the business end of this."

AT&T's critics don't buy this claim. They argue that by slicing up the Internet into different lanes, broadband companies are violating one of the basic network design principles responsible for the Internet's rise and amazing success. They add, too, that there's no proof that AT&T's plan would result in reduced broadband costs for home customers. Instead, consumers could lose out in a big way. If AT&T's plan comes to pass, the dynamic Internet, where innovation rules and where content companies rise and fall on their own merit, would shrivel. By exploiting the weaknesses in current laws, telecom firms would gain an extraordinarily lucrative stake in the new media universe. In the same way that a corporation like Clear Channel controls the radio airwaves, companies like AT&T could become kingmakers in the online world, granting priority to content from which they stand to profit most. Britney Spears, anyone?

On the surface, organizing the Internet so that some important content can have priority over other less significant content sounds like a potentially useful idea. Manjoo offers a number of examples in which prioritizing makes sense, such as the delivery of video, where a delay of half a second is noticeable and frustrating, versus the delivery of e-mail, where even several seconds is not likely to cause a perceivable delay. But then he answers those examples with a straightforward slogan: "Simple is better."

Gary Bachula, vice president for external affairs of Internet2, a nonprofit project by universities and corporations to build an extremely fast and large network, argues that managing online traffic just doesn't work very well. At the February Senate hearing, he testified that when Internet2 began setting up its large network, called Abilene, "our engineers started with the assumption that we should find technical ways of prioritizing certain kinds of bits, such as streaming video, or video conferencing, in order to assure that they arrive without delay. As it developed, though, all of our research and practical experience supported the conclusion that it was far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment."

Today, Bachula continued, "our Abilene network does not give preferential treatment to anyone's bits, but our users routinely experiment with streaming HDTV, hold thousands of high-quality two-way videoconferences simultaneously, and transfer huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets."

Not only is adding intelligence to a network not very useful, Bachula pointed out, it's not very cheap. A system that splits data into various lanes of traffic requires expensive equipment, both within the network and at people's homes. Right now, broadband companies are spending a great deal on things like set-top boxes, phone routers and other equipment for their advanced services. "Simple is cheaper," Bachula said. "Complex is costly" -- a cost that may well be passed on to customers.

Complex is costly to debate, too. This is a much more complicated issue than merely to regulate or not to regulate. It's easier to say that the government should stay out of commerce, but secretary of commerce isn't a Cabinet-level position for nothing. We need to do whatever is necessary to ensure a level playing field. Off the top of my head, my personal preference would be for wireless access to be a city utility. The telecom giants are fighting that idea in places like Philadelphia, where it's on the agenda, but that's just more evidence that the telecoms want to keep their cash cow all to themselves.