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Digital Economy All Party Parliamentary Group event on ‘Net Neutrality, opportunities and challenges?’
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Briefing for the Digital EconomyAll Party Parliamentary Group
event on ‘
Net Neutrality,opportunities and challenges?
’
The House of Commons, Tuesday 29 March 2011Net neutrality
The internet is an essential utility and, as such, access to it
–
and to the increasingnumber of public services hosted on it
–
must be protected. Consumers must be ableto access the internet via the connection of their choice and be able to access thecontent, services and applications they wish, free of any negative discrimination.
Network congestion has led to the development of ‘traffic management’ practices
undertaken by ISPs to maintain a level of service to all users. Heeding the principleof net neutrality will help to ensure that this traffic management is not discriminatoryin nature and that consumers have access to the services they want and servicesaccess to consumers.
Net neutrality may not be a familiar term to most consumers, yet the effects felt by themwhen it is compromised, such as blocked access to certain content or the downgrading ofquality and services will certainly be important to them. Net neutrality may be simply definedas the aspiration
‘
to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.
’
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The increase in internet use, the use of mobile devices to access the net and the use of dataheavy applications online is putting pressure on networks and making it a challenge forinternet service providers (ISPs) to maintain a minimum level of service for all consumers.Currently ISPs use traffic management practices to address the congestion issues.However, some of these practices have raised concerns due to their discriminatory nature
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.The potential for unfair discrimination is increasing due to development of
‘
managedservices
’
with priority access
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, as well as the convergence of network providers andproviders of television with telephony services.We believe that any discussions on traffic management policy should respect and maintainthe principle of net neutrality. The protection of net neutrality becomes all the morenecessary as broadband becomes an essential utility used to deliver public services.
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In 2007, UK telecom operators Orange and Vodafone removed the Voice over the Internet Protocol(VoIP) from all Nokia N95 cell phones sold by them in the UK.
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Managed services offer consumers the chance to pay a premium to ensure that certain content isdelivered at a guaranteed quality.
Digital Economy All Party Parliamentary Group event on ‘Net Neutrality, opportunities and challenges?’
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In addition, any discussion on traffic management policy should reflect a wider debate overthe importance of maintaining an unrestricted
‘best effort’ pub
lic internet. We fear that thelack of a joined-up approach may undermine the existing Government initiative to enhancedigital participation in the UK, and lead to a two-tier internet with few able to access premiummanaged services and many left in the slow lane with a low quality, restricted public internet.
Consumers
’
asks
Both Consumer Focus and Which? ask Government and Ofcom to ensure that any trafficmanagement policy enshrines the principle of net neutrality and guarantees consumers aninternet connection that:
is of the speed and reliability advertised
is transparent over network management practices
enables them to:-send and receive content of their choice-use services and run applications of their choice-connect hardware and use software of their choice that does not harmthe network
is free from anti-competitive discrimination against applications, services, orcontent based on sender or receiver address
promotes competition among network, application, service and content providers
How to achieve them?
The new EU regulatory framework on electronic communications is based on two pillars:transparency and competition. It will become UK law on 25 May this year but it does notenshrine the principle of net neutrality into law and thus only partly protects it. It also fails toensure that existing levels of online access and choice for consumers will be protected.Therefore, we recommend that in addition to the new legislation both the Government andOfcom should:
consider the examples of national regulatory authorities from other countries(Canada, France and Norway) and adopt net neutrality and traffic managementguidelines to serve as a benchmark to prevent anti-competitive behaviour
carry out a review of the existing transparency and consumer informationmeasures, and in-
depth research on consumers’ experience and understanding of
traffic management, with the aim of adopting a best practice approach toinformation provision on traffic management
address the problem of switching barriers that prevent consumers from switchingInternet Service Providers
adopt a joined-up approach in policy making on net neutrality, by assessing shortand long term implications of traffic managements for
consumers’ and citizens’
interests, including impact on access to public services and digital inclusion
adopt minimum quality of service requirements if developments in the marketthreaten the
‘best effort’ public internet and compromise important citizens goals
egaccess to public services
Digital Economy All Party Parliamentary Group event on ‘Net Neutrality, opportunities and challenges?’
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Our concerns
Lack of best practice guidance for traffic management practices
We recognise that reasonable traffic management practices are necessary to the properfunctioning of the networks. However these need to be distinguished from discriminatorypractices arising from anti-competitive behaviour resulting in access restrictions. Consumershave already experienced different types of traffic management practice that raise concernsover anti-competitiveness and fairness. These include:
transparency failures where ISPs may fail to tell consumers and applicationdevelopers which services they offer, estimated bandwidth, latency, etc. Inresearch conducted by Which? 52 per cent of 3,
355 consumers with ‘unlimited’
packages did not know if their provider had a fair usage policy
blocking and
‘throttling’ (traffic shaping) where certain content and services are
blocked and/or service quality downgraded. These practices include Skypeblocking or downgrading P2P networks
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‘
w
alled gardens’ or preferred partners applied, for example, in mobile tel
ephony,where network providers develop products for consumers that allow access only tothe content providers that the ISP has stuck a deal withWe are concerned that the new EU legal framework based on competition and transparencyof information is not sufficient to deal with issues around net neutrality from the position of anindividual consumer. Competition rules can only be applied after the event (ex-post). Theyalso can be circumvented, depending on whether services are blocked or just slowed down.Moreover, even if there are enough competing ISPs, consumer decisions to switch providersare complex, and depend on many factors, including tariffs, bundles of products, networkcoverage, licensing and contract lock-ins. In addition, the switching process itself acts as abarrier to consumer switching, greatly reducing the ability of the market to negate concernsover excessive or discriminatory traffic management.We are concerned that adopting the new EU legislation without clear guidelines for bestpractice and transparency on traffic management and a much easier switching process willlead to discrimination based on commercial interests. This in turn could have adverse effectson consumer choice and access to online services.
Limitations to transparency
Though information transparency is important for consumers it should not be considered asthe only tool to deal with the issue of net neutrality and traffic management.Transparency relies on service providers to give accurate, meaningful and verifiableinformation to consumers and on consumers being able to understand and utilise thisinformation, to make informed purchasing decisions, or to switch service provider.
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For example currently in the UK only mobile operator Three does not impose some form ofrestrictions on using Skype services.
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