Network Neutrality Threatened In Norway

eirikso writes, "In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway, decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The CEO of NextGenTel, Morten Ågnes, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that they will give priority to the content providers who pay for better bandwidth. The Consumer Council of Norway takes this as a serious threat to network neutrality in Norway and wants to call a meeting with the biggest broadband providers in Norway to find a solution."

Comments

Missed the update?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's not news anymore, if you read the fine article (blog, whatever). There has been an update to the text that says that the broadband provider caved in to pressure to stop the throttling.

Re:Missed the update?

[kjart]

I come to Slashdot for the excellent editorialship and breaking news.

Indeed, looking further into the article we find:

In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).

And by further into the article, I mean the first sentence of the "Original article". So, to recap, this story misses the update (which indicates that this is now a non-issue), and is reporting on something that started several months ago. Bravo :)

Re:Missed the update?

[tyldis]

I feel the need to clarify this a bit, before the submitter is totally fried for being out of date.

The throttling begun in June, but it was not made public until September 30th when the National Broadcasting Corporation published a statement. After that the ISP in question received lots of angry phonecalls and emails (also from yours truly which happens to be a customer). On October 3rd the ISP declared that it has ended the practise because everyone hated them.

The ISP claim that the free content is growing more rapidly than their infrastructure can handle, and that they prioritize their investments to suit content providers who pay up.
The weird thing is that the same ISP is happily upgrading all their customers with broader DSL access and very actively marketing 20mbit ADSL2+.

Good

[commodoresloat]

I realize there are arguments in favor of network neutrality, but as a huge fan of alliteration, I'm really looking forward to reading the headline "Network Neutrality Nixed in Norway."

Middle man trend

[joshsnow]

I think this is a trend that we'll have to get used to. When someone realises that they're in a position of power as an intermidary, they can, and often do, play both ends against each other for their own profit. It's a model employed by super-markets and record companies, price fixing by controlling supply and demand.

ISPs already employ charging models based on usage per month for their customers(consumers), charging (content)suppliers based on usage is trivial for them.

Re:Can't see the issue here

[SanityInAnarchy]

There is another solution: Actually start lighting up all the dark fiber, build the infrastructure that our tax dollars are supposedly paying for, and deliver actual, real, reliable bandwidth. This will probably be a result of increasing the flat-rate cost, which will probably be a result of ever more people discovering ways to actually use the bandwidth they're given. I have a housemate who's not very technically inclined, but watches live baseball games on his Powerbook, so we are going to have to face up to the reality: Moore's Law of (CPU|bandwidth|storage|GPU|resolution|wireless) isn't going to let up anytime soon.

My local ISP is making a lot of noise about fiber to the home. Their goal seems to be a gigabit pipe to everyone's house. I doubt they'll be able to come close to filling it, but at least they're thinking ahead.

NextGenTel changes it's mind

[jgrimstveit]

ITavisen today (reports that NextGenTel has decided not to go forward with this any more. Rough'n'quick translation:

NextGenTel follows NRK
By André Lorentsen,
Wed 4. okt 2006 kl. 04:00

NextGenTel customers can now again see NRKs web-tv in full speed.

Norways second largest broadband supplier, NextGenTel, reduced in June the transfer speed from NRK.no to it's broadband customers. The motivation was to cut costs.

- We cannot increase the capasity on our lines at the same pace as the free offers from NRK, said marketing director, Morten Ågnes in NextGenTel in a comment to Forbruker.no.

Fotball viewers pays

But the football leage have always had full speed.

The football league is a payment subscription service, and then we get paid to transfer the programs to our customers, was the comment from the marketing director.

Network manager Bjarn Andre Myklebust in NRK did not like the new strategy from NextGenTel. TV2 and NextGenTel have always had a very good relationship.

- We don't like that our products get a lower quality when being delivered to the end user, and I guess the customers don't like it very much either. Our principle is that we deliver a high quality product to every broadband companies. From there on it's their responsibility, Myklebust says to NRK.

Crossed customers

To show where the responsibility was, the web director of NRK.no published a message to the customers of NextGenTel. At the same time the maximum speed on NRK's web-tv was reduced to 650 kbps for NextGenTel's customers.

The strategy paid off. Now NextGenTel has changed it's mind and have set the capacity back to the same level as before the reduction in June.

- I got a phone from NextGenTel tuesday morning. They told that they had received some negative feedback from their customers, and that they had realized that this wouldn't work, Myklebust proceeds.

Roles

He claims it was important for NRK to use this case to underline the roles between content producer and distributor.

- It is important for us to show that we deliver content, and that it is the distributors that have to make sure the customers get what they already have paid for.

The case have also lead to renewed dialog between NRK and NextGenTel.

- We are in dialog about long term planning when it comes to transfer speeds. We also evaluate the possibility of a commercial cooperation about paid content from NRK, Myklebust says.

Re:Neo-coms

[mabinogi]

I don't quite think you understand the issue.

There are four parties involved.
A. The content provider
B. The content provider's ISP / Hosting provider, whatever
C. The consumer
D. The consumer's ISP (in this case NextGenTel)

Note - A is _NOT_ a customer of D.

If A wants to serve more content at higher speeds, no problem, they pay B more money.
If C wants to get more content at higher speeds, again no problem, they pay D more money.
No one has any problem with that concept.

The problem is when D decides that they can extort money out of A, by throttling the traffic between C and A unless A pays them some money - regardless of the fact that D doesn't actually provide any service to A. They try to use the justification that with there being so much high bandwidth content around that they can't handle the load anymore, so someone has to pay. But they gloss over the fact that someone _IS_ paying: C, the customer that actually requested the content from A in the first place.
If C's internet habits are really costing D money, then they should be charging C directly, not charging the sites they visit - that's just insane.

I don't know how any of these companies think they can possibly justify it - they already have the means to cover their costs, it's not the content providers' fault that the ISPs are greedy enough to try to charge coming and going.

Re:Neo-coms

[GauteL]

"What is it with these neo-communists on /. who think that people shouldn't be allowed to pay for higher quality service if they want it? Do you guys picket the airlines for offerring first class and coach?"

The customers of Nextgentel are the consumers that pay for their broadband connection. The only reason consumers pay for broadband is that there are content providers out there that create a market for the ISP. These content providers may or may not be commercial, but they all pretty much already pay some ISP (which may or may not be Nextgentel) for their high-bandwidth Internet Connection. So when a consumer tries to access some content he/she has already paid for accessing that content, and the provider has already paid for delivering it.

What the ISP is trying to do is squeeze money out of both sides, both the consumer and the provider. The result is that consumers (that have paid for their service) will have a hard time getting to smaller indie-sites, non-commercial sites and other content providers that can't afford to pay these extortion fees. Only the big ISPs has enough muscle to be able to do this sort of thing, and thus it serves to limit the number of ISPs available and thus reducing competition.

Also, it reduces the choice of the consumer, negating one of the big sales points of the Internet in the first place. Because it reduces choice, it has a strong possibility in limiting free speech as only big media corporations will have the money to have their voice be heard.

You don't have to be a communist to object to these to effects.

Re:Neo-coms

[spathi-wa]

I am posting the parent a second time (parent not my post) with easier to understand labels.

The examples may be poor but they only serve an illustrative purpose.

Parent post follows:



I don't quite think you understand the issue.

There are four parties involved.
A. The content provider [e.g. YouTube]
B. The content provider's ISP / Hosting provider, whatever [e.g. Comcast]
C. The consumer [e.g. You]
D. The consumer's ISP (in this case NextGenTel) [e.g. AOL]

Note - [YouTube] is _NOT_ a customer of [AOL].

If [YouTube] wants to serve more content at higher speeds, no problem, they pay [Comcast] more money.
If [You] wants to get more content at higher speeds, again no problem, they pay [AOL] more money.
No one has any problem with that concept.

The problem is when [AOL] decides that they can extort money out of [YouTube], by throttling the traffic between [You] and [YouTube] unless [YouTube] pays them some money - regardless of the fact that [AOL] doesn't actually provide any service to [YouTube]. They try to use the justification that with there being so much high bandwidth content around that they can't handle the load anymore, so someone has to pay. But they gloss over the fact that someone _IS_ paying: [You], the customer that actually requested the content from [YouTube] in the first place.
If [You]'s internet habits are really costing [AOL] money, then they should be charging [You] directly, not charging the sites they visit - that's just insane.

I don't know how any of these companies think they can possibly justify it - they already have the means to cover their costs, it's not the content providers' fault that the ISPs are greedy enough to try to charge coming and going.