And Now the Net Neutrality Fight Starts for Real

Julius Genachowski gave a great speech yesterday outlining his position as the chairman of the FCC on net neutrality.  The speech is well worth reading because it provides a coherent argument in support of the neutrality principles.   Genachowski first reiterated the importance of the “four freedoms” (later restated as four principles, a good comparison is here).   But then he added a critical fifth principle:

The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination – stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.

which makes it clear that a provider can’t selectively rate limit certain kinds of traffic, such as say VOIP or IPTV.  To this he added a sixth principle:

The sixth principle is a transparency principle – stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.

In other words, providers can’t say one thing and do another.

It is important to note that these principles are stated in terms of broadband providers without regard to how that capacity is delivered.  So the intent is to have these principles apply to both wireline and wireless providers.

The main argument made by opponents of these new principles is that they would erode the economics of operating a network and by doing so take away the incentives for investing in network capacity in the first place.  I don’t believe this to be the case.  There are compelling counter examples that exist today.  For instance, hosting companies tend to offer bandwidth (some directly, some through separate carrier agreements).  They put no restrictions on how you use that bandwidth – there is certainly no inspection of packets and shaping of outbound traffic based on that.  Yet there has been massive investment in capacity by both datacenter operators and telco providers.  It is important to keep in mind that nobody is asking for unlimited consumer bandwidth (as some seem to imply), only that within a given bandwidth offering there is no discrimination.

There can be no doubt that this will be an epic fight as the existing network providers will try to protect their current status.  For instance, an amendment to an appropriations bill has already been introduced that would apparently “deny the FCC any funds for developing or implementing new Internet regulations” (which makes you wonder what the FCC is supposed to be doing).  All the gloves will come off in this fight and I hope that Genachowski has the stamina and the support of the president to stay the course.