European ISPs Ask ITU To Limit Net Neutrality

judgecorp writes "The UN telecoms body, ITU, is busy writing new regulations for international telecoms — and European service providers, through their body ETNO have urged ITU to enshrine a two-tier Internet by defining a right for service providers to charge more for end-to-end quality of service, as opposed to best efforts connection. The two-tier Internet is opposed by Net Neutrality advocates, and has been outlawed in the Netherlands."

Comments

Re:Bell heads vs net heads.

[dgatwood]

No, guaranteed end-to-end quality is a private trunk line from point to point. This is basically not useful for general communication except in very rare situations. I can't imagine anyone sane being willing to pay for it unless the service providers deliberately add jitter or otherwise attempt to disrupt typical use of normal connections to force the issue, which is why the ITU should absolutely not recommend such an ill-advised concept.

Why would you not want this?

[SuperKendall]

To me, the danger (which has never come to pass in a lasting way) is that an ISP would potentially degrade services for competitors.

Again, that has not really come to pass (the Comcast DDOSing of torrents was about the only example, and they were spanked for it). Exiting laws, without network neutrally, prevent such shenanigans.

But I cannot see in any way why a consumer would not WANT to be able to pay for some premium network service with guaranteed levels of quality for one application (and by that I mean in the network sense) rather than having to pay for an entire internet connection with much greater speed and quality.

As we seek to replace phones and TV with pretty much just internet it makes a ton of sense to me to allow cable companies to charge for "premium internet" for a portion of content and/or services.

That is why network neutrally laws do much more harm than good; they protect against a danger that is not real while retarding the advanced internet of the future from arriving at our doors.

Re:Why would you not want this?

[tlhIngan]

Easy. It's happening right now on Comcast.

Use Netflix? It counts towards your 250GB limit. Use Comcast's Xfinity service? It doesn't. So you can end up paying more for Netflix once you exceed your 250GB limit, or you can use Comcast's service and get it all for "free". If that's not promoting Comcast's service overy say, Netflix/Amazon Prime/Vudu/ITunes/etc, I don't know what is.

Hell, why should Comcast route VoIP packets for you? They can jitter all packets to make all VoIP stutter annoyingly. Of course, they will happily sell you a phone service free from such irritants.

Or TV - you want Hulu? Sure, 250GB. BTW, we have a special deal if you take Comcast cable - you can use our Xfinity online streaming for free.

It's all about providers intentionally crippling the competition. Hell, you see it in Canada - where all the providers seem to rush headlong into UBB, forcing Netflix to reduce quality to save bandwidth. But of course, their TV over IP solutions are free from such limits. (And we have vertically integrated monopolies too - each of the big three own content produces, TV channels, TV stations, distirbution networks, last mile, and provide phone and internet service).

So they got caught once. It just means they'll be sneakier the next time around.

This fight will never end...

[pegasustonans]

Until networks are government-owned, said government is incorruptible and network neutrality is enshrined in the constitution.

Even then, it only ensures relative safety for the country which meets the above three criteria.

What I'm saying is, fighting against these laws isn't enough.

Someone in Europe or North America is going to enact a severely tiered internet at some point, and everyone in favor of net neutrality needs to be ready with an alternative that will change the game.

Re:Bell heads vs net heads.

[Dwonis]

The ITU shouldn't even be involved. X.500, ASN.1, OSI, and the rest of their ilk are proof enough that telco organizations are simply not capable of engineering good networks.

Why is a bonus a problem?

[SuperKendall]

Use Netflix? It counts towards your 250GB limit. Use Comcast's Xfinity service? It doesn't.

So what??

It's not harming in any other way, access to any other service.

What they are giving you is a discount that is reflected by the technical reality that they can transmit video to you over their own network for a lower cost than access to services on the internet at large.

Again it's not harming the quality of anything you receive from anywhere. It's not making it more expensive to get video from one source over another on the internet - just letting you access videos that are not technically "on the internet".

You are also getting files stored on your own hard drive for free without using any of your data cap! Does that piss you off also? Don't you think that if you play music held on a server in your living room Comcast should deduct that from your cap as well?

Here's a final question - name a single network neutrality bill that would prevent Comcast from doing what they are doing, and why.

Because quite simply, that's not something network neutrality laws address at all.

Re:Why is a bonus a problem?

[Microlith]

It's not harming in any other way, access to any other service.

Indeed, Comcast is not violating network neutrality here. Abusing their regional monopolies and leveraging it to give themselves an edge over Netflix is what they are doing.

Again it's not harming the quality of anything you receive from anywhere.

Which, in the context of Comcast's activities, is beside the point.

Here's a final question - name a single network neutrality bill that would prevent Comcast from doing what they are doing, and why.

Unfortunately there aren't any. A bill that would go a long way to solving the problem that is Comcast would be one that disallows carriers from owning media companies (and vice versa) and forces ISPs into the Common Carrier part of telecom law. Network neutrality and conflict of interest concerns solved.

Re:A world of difference

[mwvdlee]

Here's the problem.
1. You pay extra to access that specific site.
2. Other people who don't pay will see slowly degrading quality (simply by letting dead infrastructure hardware go unreplaced).
3. Soon everybody has to pay premium just to get NORMAL access to any site.
4. You'll see anti-competitive behaviour simply by not having a premium plan for specific competitors (nobody is forcing them to provide premium plans for every single website).