Net Neutrality Advocates May Bristle

NET NEUTRALITY ADVOCATES MAY BRISTLE: Internet-based productivity and effective public policy

Garth Graham Net Neutrality Panel, PCNA 2009 Summit, Vancouver, February 21, 2009

Two stories: -396,000 Google images on a search of “net neutrality” … because there is a debate on this as a primary issue of public policy in USA. There is no such debate in Canada. I am greatly bothered by its absence -when I represented TC in TPRP, I was up against 30 BCE registered lobbyists. They submitted over 1000 pages of “evidence” to the TPRP. Currently the “draft” new telecommunication Act was completely written by the industry. The difference is that public policy isn’t public in Canada. Why should you care? If we are all now networked in an Internet Economy, then “net neutrality” is NOT a technological issue. It’s a fundamental principle of relationship governing the way we all interact. US citizens sort of get that its not up to the telecommunications industry to define something as fundamental as that. Canadians sort of don’t. Productivity = ignoring the role of the citizen as a producer in an Internet economy

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MANY WAY • Many ways to look at what the Internet does • Some of those viewpoints explain the importance of Net Neutrality better than others • The Government of Canada’s trust in the communications industry to bring us broadband is misplaced

I’m going to show you…. …that there are many different ways to look at what the Internet’s role in socio-economic and political change actually is. … how taking those different viewpoints into account gives you a clearer way to see why net neutrality is an important issue in public policy. … why the Government of Canada’s trust in the communications industry to bring us broadband is misplaced We need people to grab hold of this issue and speak out.

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“Finally, an understanding of what mainstream Internet users are using the Internet for today – and want to use it for in the future – explains the continuing development, on the part of many types of Internet players, of ways to treat different kinds of Internet traffic in different ways. ‘Neutrality,’ to the extent that it prevails within the Internet at all, continues to be in decline, in favour of differential treatment of traffic. …

The reality is that the Internet is a commercial environment.” “Internet originalists and end-to-end purists who object to the market-driven evolution of the commercial Internet might perhaps be more comfortable as members of closed user communities, such as that of Internet2.” “Given how out of touch with the interests and needs of today’s (let alone tomorrow’s) mainstream Internet users most ‘neutralists’ reveal themselves to be, we should also ask just whose interests would be served by preventing new internetworking paradigms, including those that are even less neutral or egalitarian than today’s Internet.”

Craig McTaggart. Was the Internet ever Neutral? Prepared for the 34th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy, George Mason University School of Law Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A. 30 September 2006, (Revised). http://web.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2006/593/mctaggart-tprc06rev.pdf Image is: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/father_of_www_t.html

Hi, I’m Garth Graham. And I’m an Internet originalist, and end-to-end purist, and a neutralist. And today I’m going to try and tell why I have no intention of reforming myself.

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“Aside from a handful of isolated incidents that only happened once and now stand as cautionary tales for the North American ISP industry, there have been no net neutrality-related problems to date in the retail Internet access market that could not be resolved through commercial negotiation or existing rules. … … There is no need for premature legislation that would prejudge what models of Internet access will best satisfy Canadian Internet users’ diverse preferences in the future.” Craig McTaggart. NET NEUTRALITY AND CANADA’S TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT. Prepared for the Fourteenth Biennial National Conference on New Developments in Communications Law and Policy, Law Society of Upper Canada, Ottawa, 25-26 April 2008. 10-44. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127203

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Net neutrality drives Arvo Koppel, Systems Operator for the Peace Region Internet Society, to drink

“The issue is not whether traffic shaping should occur at all, as this is a technological issue rather than a political issue. The issue is WHO should shape (place priorities on) traffic, and whether it should be done through "price" or "packet purpose", or some other means. I will always maintain that one cannot move a packet for free. It is only free until the slack capacity in the system is used up: At that point, the next packet costs a fortune!”

Avro is, of course, right about that from that technological perspective, but from a different perspective - from the perspective of how we as a society use the Internet for our own productivity and socio-economic development, there are a lot of political issues.

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Internet governance

Network operations and transport

Use = the real market

Getting layers one and three right are critical to policy that effectively serves the public interest

Here is a way of unpacking the idea of the Internet in order to see where the public policy concerns occur. Perversely, I’m going to agree with “market-based.” That’s because the real “market” is in the use layer, not the transport layer. By failing to make this separation, the Government of Canada is failing to enable competition in the applications layer. They are allowing the “owners’ of the transport layer to set the terms of relationship, obligation and responsibility in all three layers. The advantage this gives the prime carriers is that they can act anti-competitively in the use and applications layer. But the key to getting it right is to gain a capacity to regulate that understands the nature and role of Internet Protocol

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Internet protocol governs Internet Culture The IETF Credo,

“We believe in rough consensus and running code,” … re-states the Golden Rule,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Why should you care enough about net neutrality to speak out in its defense? Now, we are all children of the Internet. And we need to be aware of being in that place, and of the role of that place in our being. Because the Internet’s values and rituals are so different, this is a very difficult idea to get your head around - particularly for managers, bureaucrats, planners and developers. In the Internet world, there are rules for the way that communities form and for what they do. We now live in a relational world, where structure arises through self-organization. In that world, there is nobody to tell us who we are. We have to do it ourselves. And the Internet is precisely a technology designed to allow us to do that. The internet is an expression of that world’s values, not the cause of it. One example - IETF… rough consensus and run code …collaboration and relationship [as per lee Smolin] Everything is open to participation. Then comes the test. Is it a good idea? Does it “fit” well enough with everything else to survive? The operational principles that govern decision making about the Internet’s development is a re-statement of a moral imperative about inclusive collaboration. When telecommunications corporations tell you that the Internet should be fixed for your safety, and your convenience as a consumer, they are actually short circuiting the operation of a moral principle. What kind of a society do you want?

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Internet is a value-added dish best served bundled Telecommunications sector Internet

Telecoms

Internet

Internet protocol renders everything into bits and then swallows the whole world including telecom Image from: http://picasaweb.google.com/Knelsontc/Icefishing#5048997322275544770

What’s going on, and what’s inevitable, all depends on your point of view.

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….. but… there are political issues in layers one and three that aren’t yet addressed:

… … … are responsible for: Governments

a. socio-economic development planning in an Internet Economy, b. sustaining the governing principles of Internet Protocol as a Common, c. insuring that the use layer is open or “neutral” for competition.

Canada has no institutional or structural capacity to address these responsibilities. It’s not just about “access.”

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Telecommunications Act Section 7. [Objectives] It is hereby affirmed that telecommunications performs an essential role in the maintenance of Canada's identity and sovereignty and that the Canadian telecommunications policy has as its objectives (a) to facilitate the orderly development throughout Canada of a telecommunications system that serves to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the social and economic fabric of Canada and its regions; ... (f) to foster increased reliance on market forces for the provision of telecommunications services and to ensure that regulation, where required, is efficient and effective; ... (h) to respond to the economic and social requirements of users of telecommunications services;

Canada once had the beginnings of a national strategy for the uses of the Internet for socio-economic development. But we are in the process of dismantling that capacity

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In exercising its powers and performing its duties under the Telecommunications Act, CRTC shall implement the Canadian telecommunications policy objectives set out in section 7 of that Act, in accordance with the following: (a) the Commission should (i)

rely on market forces to the maximum extent feasible as the means of achieving the telecommunications policy objectives, and

(ii) when relying on regulation, use measures that are efficient and proportionate to their purpose and that interfere with the operation of competitive market forces to the minimum extent necessary to meet the policy objectives;

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European Competitive Telecommunications Association ECTA Regulatory Scorecard 2008 http://www.ectaportal.com/en/basic651.html

Pro-active and fully empowered regulators are key to achieving results for consumers and multi-national businesses. • Countries which score highly across a range of broadband competitive measures also enjoy higher broadband penetration rates. • Increased effectiveness in competitive forms of access which allow competitors to innovate including unbundling and functional separation may contribute to an increase in the overall size of the market. • The take-up of fibre access and higher speed services available over it could be stimulated through unbundling and that such expansion and competition could also facilitate increased demand for the incumbents own fibre services. • Parallel infrastructure should be pursued, where efficient, alongside open networks and effective access regulation to create market conditions which drive demand and innovation to justify investments in high speed fibre access networks. • There is a strong and statistically significant relationship between effective regulation as measured by the Scorecard and investment levels in different European countries in the telecoms sector.

ECTA’s mandate is “to work for a fair regulatory environment which allows all electronic communications providers to compete on level terms in order to multiply investment and innovation throughout an effective European internal market.” Their analysis of what works best is the opposite of what the telecommunications industry, particularly BCE, has been telling the Government of Canada. In particular, do note their emphasis on “unbundling.”

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http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/78/net_neutrality.html

Whenever you hear the word “bundle” you should shout “No!”

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This is the wireless modem in my home. It’s on the cook books shelves in the kitchen because that’s half way between my wife's office and my own. It operates at 100mbs. Can anybody tell me why I know I need that in my home, and yet all I can get from Telus at the wall is 1.2 mbs down and 0.7 mbs up? I ask this question as an observation on the nature of demand.

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“In the firestorm around converging industries that has cable operators diving into the phone business and phone companies pushing into television, Telus remains unusually quiet about its TV efforts....The financial investment for phone companies to upgrade their networks to handle high definition TV signals is huge. ... Like AT and T, Telus is using the cheaper model of fibre to the node rather than to customers’ homes.” Simon Avery. Why Telus is keeping its TV plans under wrap. Globe and Mail, August 13, 2008

Here’s what Telus plans to do about it. Whenever you hear a Federal politician tell you we can safely leave broadband development in Canada in the hands of the telecommunications industry, you shout shout “No!”

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Examples:

http://www.digitalontario.mgs.gov.on.ca/en

http://about.telus.com/digitaldivide/index.html

Some municipal governments in Canad are beginning to wake up to their changed responsibility for effective socio-economic development in an Internet Economy. Here’s examples of two provincial governments that are beginng to recognize what a “neutral’ playing field in online markets might look like. Digital Ontario is the Government of Ontario's approach to it's strategy for "Strengthening Digital Infrastructure Capacity." This is, at last, a reasonable example of what Telecommunities Canada means when it speaks to the need for governments to have a strategy for the uses of ICTs in development. It contrasts starkly with the total absence of anything comparable at the Federal level. BC Government has kept the local loop “neutral” in connecting rural and remote communities. But if the agreement disappears forget about it. There is some irony in noticing that the Telus icon for community I discovered is a conversation among NEWTS.

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The Government of Canada’s approach to Telecommunications regulation is protecting the prime carriers from risk

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/authors/1353.jpg

By deregulating in favour of market based competition for access, the Government believes it’s doing the right thing. But it’s not - it’s actually picking winners and losers in the real market - the market for applications, uses and services that IP makes possible. In that sense, while seeking to act in order the reduce the imposition of government regulation on business, what it’s actually doing is providing a different kind of bailout in response to typical corporate special pleading. Would you bet on the telecoms- your government is. If you are concerned, remember they’ve never heard from you. On many levels, Canadian politicians ARE hearing the phrase, “Broadband.” But they never hear the phrase, “Net Neutrality.” And no one is telling them that those two phrases are actually two facets of the same gem. Beginning with Paul Martin’s Governments and the sun setting of the Connecting Canadians programs without any effective follow-up, Canada has been really stupid about this for a long time. But the contrast between our productivity and other counties can’t go unnoticed forever. Eventually, somebody somewhere who can make a difference will ask -what have we been doing wrong?

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So … as we go forward … … is it going to be this?

Telecoms

Internet

Image from: http://picasaweb.google.com/Knelsontc/Icefishing#5048997322275544770

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… or this?

http://yogizilla.wordpress.com/category/net-neutrality/

Keep your hands on that network plow, hold on!

Net neutrality ultimately means that you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to try something. The more control of your connections you have via a live “mouse” in your hand, the more effective you will be as producer in an Internet Economy. All of Canadian public policy now supports the ICT industries in viewing the citizen as merely a consumer of products and services. Please be a Newt. Do speak out and tell them they are wrong about that.

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