Net Neutrality debate back in the spotlight, thanks to Comcast
Following the discovery last week that Comcast was interfering with file-sharing among customers using disingenuous methods, AP News reported that two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones.
Senators Bryan Dogan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have called for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal regulation is needed.
It is particularly interesting to note that telecom companies have asserted that Net Neutrality is a “solution in search of a problem”, and that further regulation would stifle the innovation and healthy competition needed to bring the best possible service to the customer.
Now, I have two issues with this : first, where’s the competition? Ever since the FCC made it difficult for fledgeling ISP providers to compete with the incumbents, (not to mention the series of telecom company mergers that have taken place in the past two years), the telecom-cable duopoly is the the only thing that allows customers to have a choice. Thus, most urban and suburban regions in the country have a choice of two internet providers, three if they are lucky. Rural areas usually have no choice at all. (Go here to read an interesting article that busts the myth of competition in the telecom sector, which is constantly cited as the reason for not imposing further regulation on the internet. The article states that “The problem is that the FCC’s definition of “effective competition” doesn’t work very well. If multiple providers exist in a region of the country, then that region is dubbed “competitive,” even though only a few homes and businesses may actually have a choice between providers. The report also noted that the FCC has trouble getting accurate competition data, since it relies on third parties to provide it, and those parties rarely have an obligation to do so.”)
Second, net neutrality violation is not a myth. Here are previous examples of data discrimination by service providers :
Madison River Communications : In 2005, a rural North Carolina telephone company, Madison River Communications, was fined by the FCC for blocking VoIP services (provided by Vonage) from it’s internet customers. The terms of the settlement, which could at best be described as a slap on the wrist, drew scathing comment from critics. Madison River was required to not block VoIP services — for only 30 months — after which it could, presumably, resume it’s discriminatory business strategies.
Telus : Canada’s top telecom company blocked access to a pro-union site during a labor dispute, by blocking the server on which it was hosted. Researchers at Harvard, Cambridge and the University of Toronto found that Telus’s actions resulted in an additional 766 unrelated sites also being blocked for subscribers.
Verizon : In September 2007, Verizon Wireless prevented NARAL, a pro-choice organization, from sending text messages to its members coordinating a public demonstration.
And so forth.
Data discrimination is the biggest factor that, for me, tilts the argument in favor of regulations to keep Internet service “content unbiased”. To quote Sir Tim Berners-Lee, “If I pay to connect to the net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service.”