http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/16/tim-berners-lee-net-neutrality - Guardian
The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned internet service providers (ISPs) that plans for a "two-speed" internet go against the principles that have let the net grow so rapidly in the past two decades.
"Best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee told a round table in Westminster on Wednesday morning, convened by the communications minister Ed Vaizey. Content companies, represented by Facebook, Skype, the BBC and Yahoo, squared up to ISPs, with input from consumer representatives including the Open Rights Group, the Consumers' Association and the communications regulator Ofcom.
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, who was representing consumer interests at the meeting, said afterwards that he was concerned about the direction the debate was going: "The potential for something going terribly wrong is absolutely there. The regulator and government do not wish to intervene, for good reason; but industry is not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation."
ISPs have for years sought to charge the BBC or customers, or both, for the huge amounts of data transferred over their networks by applications such as the iPlayer, whose popularity has exploded in the past few years. ISPs have to pay for carriage of data from BT's core network to customers, but offer unmetered services on broadband – meaning that when people's demand for data grows, ISPs can be out of pocket.
But the BBC and other content providers such as YouTube have resisted calls that they should pay, on the basis that they are providing a service that allows the ISPs to find customers. In response, ISPs both in the US and Europe have mooted the idea of "two-tier" connections where some services are slower than others. Skype complained at the meeting that its service is effectively blocked on all of the mobile services in the UK except 3, meaning that carriers are violating the principle of net neutrality because they fear it will affect their call revenues.
Berners-Lee told the meeting that "every customer should be able to access every service, and every service should be able to access every customer ... The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."
Vaizey said the meeting had been "useful and productive" and that "it was important to discuss how to ensure the internet remains an open, innovative and competitive place."
"Net neutrality" – in which services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination – has become an increasingly vexed topic as demands on ISPs and mobile carriers have begun to outstrip capacity.
ISPs have thus suggested that they should be allowed to manipulate the transfer of data, but that they would be transparent about how and what they were doing.
On Monday the Broadband Stakeholder Group launched a new traffic management transparency code, which has since been signed by the largest fixed-line and mobile carriers, including BSkyB, BT, Everything Everywhere (formerly Orange and T-Mobile), TalkTalk, 3, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Together they represent more than 90% of all fixed-line broadband and mobile customers in the UK.
It pledges that "information will be provided in a common format to explain what traffic management techniques are used, when and with what impact for each broadband service currently marketed by the code's signatories."
But Rob Reid, senior policy adviser at the Consumers' Association, who was among the attendees at the meeting, said that there was concern that transparency was only one half of the required commitment – because users might be tied into contracts lasting 18 months or more, meaning that if they disliked a change to the traffic management policy it would be expensive to switch to a different provider who offered one they preferred.
Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, told the Guardian: "The issue of [customer] switching is critical. It's the other side of the coin to transparency. Ofcom is working on guidance on this and it is an issue that was highlighted. Everybody agrees that it is important."
Adding faster systems would only work as a short-term measure to relieve congestion on networks, said Walker: "it's like adding more lanes to the M25 – it just attracts more cars. Having faster networks will mean that people will want more services using more data."
But Killock said that not enough was being done yet: "In contrast with the US, where rules are being put in place through the Federal Communications Commission, or Norway where ISPs have agreed a meaningful code, our ISPs are not offering us what we and the UK economy needs. If that continues to be the case, then Ed Vaizey will find himself with the task of breaking the log jam."
The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned internet service providers (ISPs) that plans for a "two-speed" internet go against the principles that have let the net grow so rapidly in the past two decades.
"Best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee told a round table in Westminster on Wednesday morning, convened by the communications minister Ed Vaizey. Content companies, represented by Facebook, Skype, the BBC and Yahoo, squared up to ISPs, with input from consumer representatives including the Open Rights Group, the Consumers' Association and the communications regulator Ofcom.
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, who was representing consumer interests at the meeting, said afterwards that he was concerned about the direction the debate was going: "The potential for something going terribly wrong is absolutely there. The regulator and government do not wish to intervene, for good reason; but industry is not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation."
ISPs have for years sought to charge the BBC or customers, or both, for the huge amounts of data transferred over their networks by applications such as the iPlayer, whose popularity has exploded in the past few years. ISPs have to pay for carriage of data from BT's core network to customers, but offer unmetered services on broadband – meaning that when people's demand for data grows, ISPs can be out of pocket.
But the BBC and other content providers such as YouTube have resisted calls that they should pay, on the basis that they are providing a service that allows the ISPs to find customers. In response, ISPs both in the US and Europe have mooted the idea of "two-tier" connections where some services are slower than others. Skype complained at the meeting that its service is effectively blocked on all of the mobile services in the UK except 3, meaning that carriers are violating the principle of net neutrality because they fear it will affect their call revenues.
Berners-Lee told the meeting that "every customer should be able to access every service, and every service should be able to access every customer ... The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."
Vaizey said the meeting had been "useful and productive" and that "it was important to discuss how to ensure the internet remains an open, innovative and competitive place."
"Net neutrality" – in which services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination – has become an increasingly vexed topic as demands on ISPs and mobile carriers have begun to outstrip capacity.
ISPs have thus suggested that they should be allowed to manipulate the transfer of data, but that they would be transparent about how and what they were doing.
On Monday the Broadband Stakeholder Group launched a new traffic management transparency code, which has since been signed by the largest fixed-line and mobile carriers, including BSkyB, BT, Everything Everywhere (formerly Orange and T-Mobile), TalkTalk, 3, Virgin Media and Vodafone. Together they represent more than 90% of all fixed-line broadband and mobile customers in the UK.
It pledges that "information will be provided in a common format to explain what traffic management techniques are used, when and with what impact for each broadband service currently marketed by the code's signatories."
But Rob Reid, senior policy adviser at the Consumers' Association, who was among the attendees at the meeting, said that there was concern that transparency was only one half of the required commitment – because users might be tied into contracts lasting 18 months or more, meaning that if they disliked a change to the traffic management policy it would be expensive to switch to a different provider who offered one they preferred.
Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, told the Guardian: "The issue of [customer] switching is critical. It's the other side of the coin to transparency. Ofcom is working on guidance on this and it is an issue that was highlighted. Everybody agrees that it is important."
Adding faster systems would only work as a short-term measure to relieve congestion on networks, said Walker: "it's like adding more lanes to the M25 – it just attracts more cars. Having faster networks will mean that people will want more services using more data."
But Killock said that not enough was being done yet: "In contrast with the US, where rules are being put in place through the Federal Communications Commission, or Norway where ISPs have agreed a meaningful code, our ISPs are not offering us what we and the UK economy needs. If that continues to be the case, then Ed Vaizey will find himself with the task of breaking the log jam."
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4607-net-neutrality-concerns-raised-as-isps-defend-two-tier-internet.html -Non Uk
Earlier this week, many broadband ISPs spoke out in favour of the voluntary code of practice on traffic management transparency published on Monday by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG). A long list of broadband providers, both large and small, has put their backing to the proposal indicating that they are in favour of ISPs being open and honest about the services they provide, and how they handle traffic management across their network. Consumer Focus, a government backed consumer body also backed the proposals and are keen to point out that verification that consumers are sticking to it should be independent.
"This is a golden opportunity for internet companies to provide clear information to consumers. To keep consumer confidence, it is vital that the pilots of this code are independently verified and contribute to informing consumer’s actual experience of traffic management policies. But transparency should not be used as a tool to restrict consumers choice of accessing content, applications and services over the Internet nor discriminate against certain applications, services or content."
Robert Hammond, (Head of Post and Digital Communications) Consumer Focus
The key to this proposal being successful is in information being clearly visible to consumers in an easily understandable way. Whilst some users will appreciate technical details, others will not be willing to trawl through tables of data to try and work out the difference between a broadband product from one provider and that of another.
Other concerns have been raised over this with some wondering if this will see ISPs start to offer a two-tiered Internet where some services receive a higher quality of service in comparison to others, but with ISPs being open about how traffic is treated. Net neutrality is a hotly debated subject, and pro-campaigners are keen to see that all traffic on the Internet be treated equally, no matter who sends it. A net-neutrality debate organised by the government saw ISPs defend their right to run a two-speed Internet, stating that if content providers want to pay to get a higher priority on the network, then they should be able to.
Whilst this is how things work in a free-market, there are strong concerns that this will cause long term damage to the way the Internet works. Smaller websites, and those who operate free-services could effectively find themselves priced off of the Internet by large content providers, and ISPs seem unwilling to compromise in the net-neutrality debate.
"They weren't willing to make any concessions on their ability to manage traffic. BT even said that if people want to block things they should be able to.
If people are blocking large sections of the internet and promoting a handful of service then they shouldn't be able to claim that they sell internet access.
Jim Killock, (director) Open Rights Group
The BBC being one of the larger content providers in the UK are equally concerned about the issue, and have called for the creation of a 'broadband content group' to help represent content providers such as themselves and the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. The BBC are hoping that a system to shame ISPs who are performing poorly could help users see when their ISP is performing traffic management on their connection. The BBC iPlayer is soon to receive a traffic light system which will rate their ISP based on the performance of the connection to the iPlayer service- Red for poor, amber for UK, and green for acceptable. Such a system is unlikely to be enough to qualm service providers though, and they will continue to press for the right to run their networks as best suit them.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/berners-lee-to-advise-on-uk-net-neutrality-code-10022010/ - UK source
The government convened a net-neutrality-related roundtable event on Wednesday involving ISPs, content providers, consumer groups and father-of-the-web Tim Berners-Lee.
It was announced at the event that Berners-Lee will work with industry body the Broadband Stakeholder Group to expand its voluntary code of practice, which was unveiled on Monday. The code, to which most big ISPs and mobile operators have signed up, compels those companies to be transparent about their traffic management policies in an easy-to-understand way — Sir Tim wants the commitment to extend to other aspects of net neutrality.
"While transparency about traffic management policy is a good thing, best practices should also include the neutrality of the net," Berners-Lee said in a statement. "The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications."
Communications minister Ed Vaizey, whose Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) organised the occasion, described it as "useful and productive".
"I am pleased that someone with the expertise of Sir Tim has agreed to work with industry on expanding that agreement to cover managing and maintaining the open internet," Vaizey said.
"That agreement should be guided by three simple principles. The first is users should be able to access all legal content. Second, there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry and finally traffic management policies should be clear and transparent. The internet has brought huge economic and social benefits across the world because of its openness and that must continue."
Vaizey's words did not carry the government position on net neutrality much past that which he had already laid out — namely, that it would prefer to avoid regulation on the matter until a real problem manifests itself. It addressed the potential issue of a content provider paying an ISP to downgrade rival content providers' services, but that is not really a scenario that has been much discussed — at least in public — in any case.
What has been proposed, many times, is that ISPs charge content providers to ensure their services run at a guaranteed quality. ZDNet UK asked the DCMS on Thursday what its attitude would be to such arrangements, and a spokesman said the department "wouldn't intervene".
"The difference would be that if you come to an agreement for a guaranteed level of service then the knock-on impact would be on the internet as a whole, not a specific group of content providers," the DCMS spokesman said. "[Vaizey] is saying there's no way you should be able to get an ISP to run your rival's service slower. It's about specifically targeting your rivals."
According to the DCMS, attendees at the roundtable included: Amazon, the BBC, the Broadband Stakeholder Group, BSkyB, BT, the CBI, Channel 4, Channel 5, Consumer Focus, eBay, Everything Everywhere, Facebook, the Federation of Communications Services, Google, ISPA, ITV, the Mobile Broadband Group, Nominet, Ofcom, the Open Rights Group, Skype, TalkTalk, the Tax Payers Alliance, 3, Virgin Media, Vodafone, the W3C, WE7, Which? and Yahoo.
what is net neutrality?
is when services are treated exactly equally as they pass over the net, no matter what their source or destination.
Is the internet neutral?
i believe the internet is not neutral as we in the UK all receive a much slower service than other countries.
Should it be?
In some way the internet should be neutral. Everyone should be able to receive the same speed. If people want faster speeds then they should pay for that extra bandwidth.
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