There’s an interesting discussion going on at Slashdot about this story in the Independent that large ISPs such as Tiscali, BT, and Carphone Warehouse want the BBC to pay up or face traffic shaping to limit the amount of bandwidth consumed by people using the iPlayer to stream video. Of course, network neutrality has already been a big issue in the US, but the issue there has been different for several reasons: 1) instead of one target there are many (Google, AOL, MSN); 2) some of those most in favour of being allowed to create priority traffic and additional charges are aiming to hurt competitors (for telcos, VOIP providers; for Comcast (cable operator supplying both Internet access and TV), other providers of streaming video). In this country, for the moment, we’re looking at a single large target that is not in competition with ISPs.

However, the essential argument remains the same: all users, including the BBC, are already paying for bandwidth. Aren’t we being asked to pay twice? I’m sure ISPs would love to have done this before wrt bandwidth-sapping stuff such as P2P and VOIP (and it seems as though at least some ability to differentiate among services will be built into BT’s 21CN), but there wasn’t a single large target they could shape or bill. My impression from ISPs of my acquaintance is also that much of the industry is in fact built on uneconomic, wafer-thin margins; but whose fault is that? We’ve seen over and over again that “unlimited usage” is not in fact unlimited.

But the bigger issue than money is control. This piece was about coffee machines, but it was a great illustration of network non-neutrality in action (unfortunately, the subs cut the line I originally had in it that “This is a matter of network neutrality” - damn it, because it was the best line I’ve written all year).

I think people will always protest change, no matter what it is, especially if it’s going to cost them money. (Though they often forget afterwards- who remembers now the giant protests when domain names stopped being free?). But network neutrality has done very well as a way of inspiring experimentation and development. The House of Lords report on personal Internet security (which deserves its own post) seems willing to dent network neutrality just a bit if it means greater safety. (Cue Benjamin Franklin.)

wg