At present your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not discriminate between different types of web data. So the text, images etc. of this Left Foot Forward article are delivered to you at the same speed as a page from the BBC News website or an auction page on eBay.
Net neutrality: it sounds a bit geeky, a bit nerdy, and no one in British politics really seems to understand it. The term might have entered your consciousness yesterday if you read one of the stories appearing in the media with a title along the lines of the BBC’s “Minister Ed Vaizey backs ‘two-speed‘ internet”. So what’s the problem I hear you ask?
Public versus private is essentially the problem – that’s the reason why Labour needs a resolute response to Mr Vaizey’s proposals, and why Liberal Democrats should also be profoundly concerned about the coalition’s thinking on this.
At present your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not discriminate between different types of web data. So the text, images etc. of this Left Foot Forward article are delivered to you at the same speed as a page from the BBC News website or an auction page on eBay.
Fast forward to the internet system advocated by Mr Vaizey and that would not necessarily be so. eBay could strike a deal with your ISP, meaning eBay pages load much faster than Left Foot Forward or BBC pages do.
For text and images you might not notice the difference. But how about video? Not only does online video require considerably more data transfer, but the major UK player in the online video sector – BBC’s iPlayer – is run by a public sector broadcaster. It would, as a matter of principle, not enter into bargains with some ISPs rather than others for faster provision of its services.
There’s an alternative company that would have no such qualms; News Corp, already dominant in the UK newspaper market, is aiming to take full control of Sky, and Sky is already an ISP as well as a television company. Get Sky Sports on your PC in HD quality, but iPlayer will be clunky and slow.
Mr Vaizey says all of this is not a problem in a liberalised market as consumers can change their ISP freely. True in theory, but anyone who’s ever gone through that process knows it is time consuming and fraught with difficulties. A simple choice akin to buying one brand of baked beans or the other it is not. As ever Tom Watson is doing his best to highlight these issues – and yesterday pubished a Commons Early Day Motion on this issue – but he seems to be rather a lone voice in the Labour party just now.
It is time more progressives woke up to these issues.
• For more on the issue see ArsTechnica and The Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog.
40 Responses to “Why progressives need to wake up about net neutrality”
Ganja Bot
Why progressives need to wake up about net neutrality – Left Foot Forward http://ff.im/-u1M9E
scandalousbill
StephenH,
I agree with your response. N addition, Vaizy has conveniently overlooked the consolidation occurring within the UK media. The policy proposed creates walled corridors can be used to not only impact competition from start-ups, but from established providers as well.
The vertical integration that News Corp would achieve with the BskyB purchase is illustrative of the problem with the creation of walled corridors by ISPs. The proposed scheme would allow News Corp through its BskyB ISP to allow high speed traffic to its own services but to virtually eliminate user access to competitors, whether the BBC, the Guardian, any blogs Murdoch doesn’t fancy etc. In your example, BT could throttle off, or charge a premium to its user base for Skype access
The impact of the ill advised two tiered internet will become even more apparent as the rise in bandwidth intensive and multimedia applications and services increase. (IPTV is a particular case in point.) Current technology enables the identification and manipulation of data stream by ISP on a per user or per website basis. The concentration of this power with a select few vested interests will not foster any new innovation or serve the public interest. It simply creates a system of rigid monopolies. Instead of providers using innovation and service enhancement to generate revenue, they simply retain the status quo under a more favourable pricing scheme.
London Chit Chat
There remains plenty of issues that divide Labour and the Tories, Net Neutrality should be one of them http://bit.ly/aX1Nxm
cim
Article: At present your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not discriminate between different types of web data.
Petition in comment 2: [ISPs] shouldn’t discriminate between different kinds of content and services
I appreciate some of the general principles of net neutrality, but these are problematic statements. Different types of internet traffic have different requirements.
Live Video: Needs extremely high bandwidth (connection speed) and low latency (time to establish connections)
Streaming pre-recorded video: Still needs extremely high bandwidth, but high latency is tolerable.
Audio (e.g. Skype): high bandwidth, low latency
Web pages: low bandwidth, moderate latency
Bulk file transfers: bandwidth needed varies, but very high latency is acceptable.
Online games: variable bandwidth, but usually fairly low – but needs very low latency.
I’d far rather ISPs were able to control different types of traffic differently, to give them the type of network connection that they need, on networks not physically capable of providing every request from every user with high-bandwidth, low-latency connections, rather than being legally forced to run everything at some sort of inadequate single setting.
I’ve yet to see a “net neutrality” proposal that allows this sort of (legitimate and vital!) network traffic management while still disallowing the activities objected to in the post. In at least some cases, it seems fairly clearly to be the intent of the “net neutrality” proposers that traffic management is outlawed.
scandalousbill/3: In your example, BT could throttle off, or charge a premium to its user base for Skype access
Given that Skype does have higher network requirements than web browsing, charging a premium for it (or giving a discount for connections that don’t need it) isn’t actually unreasonable.
If you mean BT Broadband placing an unreasonable premium on it to discourage Skype usage, well, this isn’t the USA with its regional monopolies and duopolies on consumer internet, where that sort of behaviour is worrying plausible – people can choose a different ISP if that happens. The vast majority of negative consequences from this sort of activity can be avoided by having competition – as we do – in the ISP market. A consumer ISP could very easily make “net neutrality” a selling point, even (just as there are already niche ISPs where you pay slightly more for a connection tailored to heavy internet use).
L DTUC
RT @leftfootfwd: Why progressives need to wake up about net neutrality: http://bit.ly/d7FIrx writes @JonWorth