Posted by: Hank Hultquist on September 2, 2010 at 12:37 pm
As discussed in my last blog, for many years proponents of extreme versions of net neutrality regulation have fulminated against the practice of “paid prioritization.” In a recent series of letters, Free Press argued that the Commission should in no circumstances permit ISPs to be compensated for the provision of “router-based prioritization,” and that such prioritization is not taking place today.
At the time, Free Press was responding to a letter filed by the Minority Media and Telecom Council that urged the Commission not to adopt a blanket ban on payment for prioritization. According to MMTC:
“Today, when [businesses] sign up for Internet access service, many of these businesses also enter into voluntary arrangements with their broadband providers for the provision of enhanced quality of service capabilities as part of their Internet access service as well as other specialized offerings. These agreements allow [businesses] to identify a portion of their traffic as requiring better than “best effort” handling. This capability allows these businesses to ensure that the performance sensitive applications that they wish to run, such as VoIP or IP-based video conferencing, receive the service quality needed to function properly.”
Free Press responded at the time by insisting that such compensation arrangements were inconceivable under the IETF documentation for Differentiated Services (DiffServ).
Yesterday, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative (OTI) basically endorsed the practice described by MMTC. According to OTI: “[t]he intended purpose of DiffServ is user-driven differentiation of traffic.” It would seem that Free Press owes MMTC a clarification.
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Posted by: Hank Hultquist on August 31, 2010 at 11:22 am
One of the central dogmas of the Church of Extreme Net Neutrality (CoENN) is that quality of service on the Internet, or using the preferred nomenclature of the CoENN, “paid prioritization,” is the equivalent of a deadly sin.
The CoENN creed against quality of service states that paid prioritization of Internet traffic: (1) has never been contemplated by standards organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); (2) does not exist on the Internet today and, to the extent it exists anywhere, is probably being used nefariously by the pagans; and (3) if it did exist on the Internet, it would be available to and affordable for only a small number of deep-pocketed hegemons.
These iniquities of paid prioritization are spelled out in a recent filing at the FCC in which Free Press preaches the old time religion of the dumb network. But, like so many dogmas, this one turns out to be, well, not exactly true.
Which leads me to the letter we filed yesterday in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding to correct the record with respect to paid prioritization. In a nutshell, we point out that, contrary to the CoENN’s claims: (1) the IETF documents clearly contemplate and permit differentiated pricing of Internet traffic based on the use of prioritization; (2) paid prioritization of Internet traffic is widely available to businesses today; and (3) such prioritization is often voluntarily purchased by small and medium-sized enterprises, including minority-owned businesses and community organizations.
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Posted by: admin on August 17, 2010 at 4:57 pm
By Joan Marsh, AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory
I got a lot of reaction to my original blog entitled Wireless is Different. Some good, some critical, but all of it important to the debate. I welcomed it all, especially the responses from those that disagreed, because it creates an opportunity for a better explanation, a more detailed understanding of what’s actually happening out there on our wireless networks.
Some just are not convinced that wireless is in fact different in any way that matters to the net neutrality debate. While they didn’t rebut the fundamental points I made regarding the finite nature of wireless network capacity, they viewed the argument as a strawman for some underlying intent by wireless network providers to block apps and services at their whim. At its core, this opposition is rooted in a fundamental concern about who is going to control the apps and services that wireless network providers deliver over their finite and shared wireless infrastructure.
The answer to that is quite simply: the customer. User consumption is fueling the new mobile broadband revolution and there is not a wireless network provider out there doing anything but trying to keep up. Again, let’s turn to some facts.
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