I'd like to share with you few thoughts I hade recently about net neutrality and read your comments.
IANAL, I may be wrong, but maybe there's nothing new to do about NN.
FIRST: letting aside the issue about civil rights (which are mostly dealt with by privacy authorities) NN, in the end, is a way to assert that market must be preserved.
non discrimination of devices, services, users, on the internet
what is the internet ?
well, the best effort internet was there long before QoS so I think we can say that Internet = best effort; QoS is an additional feature that must be sold incrementally (after all, all the fuss by telcos is to be able to make more revenues by selling qos, isn't it ?)
so, best effort is the basis. I think we can agree on this.
SECOND: let's think of another point.
let's say I'm Acme Inc. and I run a website that measures and publishes performance stats (throughput) of internet connections.
let's pretend that I want to ensure that my service works smoothly and I go to operator X and ask them to prioritize my traffic on their customers.
this is exactly what oeprators say that video sites are interested in.
right ?
now, let's pretend that Hulu is one of such customers... (one of those that Acme Inc asks for operator X to prioritize its traffic)
would Hulu allow that their access connection is prioritized for a service (throughput measurament) that I run ? or would Hulu rather ask that its service (video) is prioritized ?
the answer is obvious, Hulu would not allow operator X to prioritize its traffic according to MY wishes
Conversely, how could Hulu ask the operator to prioritize my internet access if I don't want it to ?
my access connection is mine, best effort is the basis, if I want a priority that's an incremental service to the internet conenction and only I can request it on my access loop.
it cannot be imposed to me by a third party like Hulu, otherwise I want to impose my priority wishes to Hulu access connection as well!
if everyone has the same rights in front of the law...
user wants to have rtsp prioritized ? ok, he has to ask for it on his access loop and pay incrementally for it...
if we stop thinking of end-to-end and we start thinking of half-circuits and priority services to be sold incrementally on best effort, then it's not the operator of choosing winners and loosers, it's not the operator the gatekeeper, I think it's likely that we structurally preserve market conditions.
maybe these principles (only I can ask to prioritize traffic on my access loop + best effort is the basis (as this is the internet as users know it)) can be affirmed just by traditional consumer rights, with no further regulations.
I warned you... just few thoughts...
I'd like to read your opinions...
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