Net Neutrality, Americans Canadians, save your internet!!
May 8, 2008
This post was originally written around april of 2006:
This is a bad day for our american neighbors south of the border and potentially for many english speaking users of the internet.
The US Senate Commerce Committee rejected language in a bill which is making it”s way through the senate which would ensure network neutrality.
What is network neutrality you say? Well, the best place to find out is from OpenMedia’s Site, this issue has become more complex and spawned multiple issues and compaigns.
but if you’re going to press me, then I’d have to say, that the concept of network neutrality is simply this. The internet is a giant network, a whole bunch of wire with computers attached. The wires are controlled and maintained by telecommunications companies. Up until the laws I’m talking about take effect, access to the traffic on the wires is limited only by how much stuff you pay for and how fast the wires can move that stuff. A provider of content can put anything up and based on how much stuff is going over the wire they pay a simple fee. A consumer of content can again consume any content they like so long as they pay a simple fee for the amount of content coming their way. In a post net neutrality world where the telecommunications companies can now charge you arbitrarily for “better service” the traffic over the net will no longer be limited by how much you’re allowed to put up or download. Additional limits will be imposed such that sites the telecoms think should pay more (popular sites including blogs, commercial interests, video providers, anyone really) could be slowed down or shut down altogether in extreme cases. Additionally consumers who use particular services or devices could also experience arbitrary charges to “improve” or “guarantee” those services or the functioning of the device. The reason I put these in quotes, is that these services are already as stable and fast as they can be for now and the only way to make these guarantees or improvements is to degrade everyone elses service.
It will be interesting and somewhat depressing to find out what the impact will really be once the greedy get their hands dirty. Hopefully Canada won’t follow suit. One interesting possibility is that this might create opportunities for Canadian companies, although the way the system works the telecoms can throttle either or both ends of the connection.
Canada is far behind in this debate in the media at least but the greedy are everywhere and we need to keep an eye on this. Mark Evans suggests that the Canadian Telecom Review panel have started to put digs in for network neutrality. However I find it astounding and somewhat naive of the panel to come out with this
The panel believes telecommunications service providers, in most cases, have little or no incentive to interfere with customer access
If this were true, then why is the US having fits about this in the senate and in the media?
Mark Goldberg seems to think that we in Canada are taken care of by existing law, now not being a lawyer or a net neutrality expert I have no grounds to challenge this but the above naivete is concerning and I’d like someone to show me the nice solid language that unambiguously protects network neutrality in Canada.
I wonder if external countries providing content to americans could propose some kind of exemption for external traffic. I’m sure it wouldn’t fly but wouldn’t it be interesting if foreign gonvernments started pressuring the US government to protect the neutrality of certain external content.
The problem of net neutrality is significant and almost inescapable as the telecoms own both ends of the connection. There is talk of secondary wireless networks, this would be the only workaround that I can see, to provide content on a separate network. The neat thing about this, is that it is technologically and economically possible. Wireless routers are cheap and can be modified for very little money to extend their range considerably.
It would be disappointing to be driven to create such a network but the pieces are in place to create such a thing. It wouldn”t take much to do something. To find out more about community wireless movements in your area check this site.
I wrote this originally quite some time ago. One thing I have noticed is that this is creeping into Canada through the packages offered by the high-speed service providers. It now costs 2 to 3 times what it used to for reasonable speed. High speed lite is several steps backwards into the past, at 256kbps it’s too poor to use for anything but the most trivial email and light web surfing. So I’m now quite worried that Canada is paying so little attention to this issue that ISPs are just quietly creating packages that prevent the majority from having fair and affordable access.
Vivre le net libre!!
Canadian links of interest:
OpenMedia’s Site, this issue has become more complex and spawned multiple issues and compaigns.
tumblr net neutrality entries
