UK may end Net Neutrality
From
www.guardian.co.uk
ORGANGRINDER Blog:
Ed Vaizey plan to ditch net neutrality is akin to binning impartiality in television news
Ed Vaizey's announcement today heralds a profound shift for the development for the internet, but luckily the BBC has an answer
There you were thinking that all information was created equal, only to discover that the coalition government thinks not. But then, the Declaration of Independence was never a British idea. And nor was the First Amendment, whose defence of free speech underpins, some believe, the idea of net neutrality. Well it might if this was the United States at least.
Net neutrality has not – so far – been a big issue in the UK. For those not paying close attention, the basic theory of the internet was that all packets, all data was created equal, which means that a pirated copy of Hey Jude can fly around the network with the same speed as a page of your favorite digital newspaper. All of which is fine in an era of bandwidth plenty, but as the BBC iPlayer and YouTube hog traffic, they start to cause problems.
BT, TalkTalk and the internet service providers smell money here, or rather are annoyed that they have to upgrade their kit to provide for all the video they say is clogging up the network (although in reality this is exaggerated). So they want to get anybody who takes up a lot of network capacity to pay more – or if they don't face relegation to the internet slow lane. And, come to think of it, any content owner who splashes out a bit extra will find they get a better service.
The fear, of course, is that this leads to a world where – say – the Daily Mail's web pages arrive more quickly than the Mirror's because one publisher is willing to pay BT more for a better deal. Or where the BBC's online video crawls and becomes no fun to use, while Sky speeds along. It's another reason, in fact, why critics fear the News Corporation-BSkyB merger because if Sky is also an internet provider that could discreetly provide a fast lane to its own content (and why phone companies are watching closely whether the £8bn deal is approved). EastEnders episode delivered by hostile internet provider.
Never mind those worries, though. Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, has come down firmly on the side of big business, saying "content and service providers should have the ability to innovate and, most importantly, to reach users" through allowing preferential treatment. Meanwhile, the BBC, rightly, seeing this idea as a covert handout from the licence fee payer to phone companies, has no intention of paying up – leaving viewers looking forward to the prospect of regularly watching the modern day testcard – endless spinning wheels.
But we shouldn't worry because Ed Vaizey wants internet providers to "present information about their service, including the nature and extent of their traffic management policies and their impact on service quality in a clear, visible and easy to understand form for all their customers". You still awake after that?
Well, hmm, not only is this a complex area to explain, but it's hard to be sure if
we can expect credible metrics from an industry that rarely, if ever, tells the truth about the broadband speeds we get at home (yeah, that'll be 10 megabollocks to you sir). Example of typical ISP service? Surely not.
Never mind, though, you might think. It all sounds a bit technical. Well, let's try an analogy then. If you think about it, net neutrality is about as important as the rules governing impartiality in broadcast news. If Vaizey turned up and made a speech about ditching those, there would be a more vigorous debate – more of an outcry in some quarters. But these are the rules about having an impartial internet and because this is a technical subject, then it's best to simply roll over and leave the debate to the geeks ... right?
Actually maybe not. There's still an Ofcom consultation on the subject. So critics can try shouting a lot – well the middle class kind of shouting, letter and article writing and all that. A second hope is to look for pro-consumer solutions.
Already the BBC is thinking of one – a traffic light system for rating how your ISP is handling its iPlayer traffic. That is a good idea in principle – if, that is, consumers are willing to shop around to get a better service. The reality, though, is that not everybody can be bothered – which is why letting net neutrality go by the board is such a troubling idea.