Felix Cohen (London, oD): AT & T, the quintessential Baby Bell, was one of the sponsors of last week's Westminster e-forum on the 'Policy Challenges of Web 2.0'; Mr Jim Cicconi, from AT & T, talked extensively on the subject of internet infrastructure, the globalisation of knowledge, promoting broadband through public policy and a number of other laudable topics. Unfortunately, he talked rather more extensively on what he coyly called Network Management. Or Intelligence in the Network. Or Traffic profiling. But never Network Neutrality.
Net Neutrality is a big debate in the States at the moment because new web applications such as youtube require significantly more bandwidth than older, text only sites. This has got the telecoms industry concerned about the capacity of the existing internet infrastructure, with concerns about internet 'brown-outs' by 2010 unless we can significantly up capacity, because
in three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today
Which is entirely ridiculous; for reasons Valleywag have explained better than I could.
What does this have to do with our kingdom, or indeed OurKingdom? Well, the new CEO of Virgin Media, Neil Berkett, has come out against Net Neutrality somewhat aggressively, labelling it as
a load of bollocks
and stating that Virgin is already profiling the traffic through its network. Let's not forget that Virgin Media is, well, a media company. Ashley Highfield, the recently departed BBC director of future media and technology, was frank when talking about the iPlayer and it's relation to network neutrality.
we should not have to subsidise the ISP's infrastructure upgrades"..."I don't think any content providers should pay ISPs to deliver their content: Users would, I strongly believe, react very negatively to a situation in which certain video content was throttled or downgraded or even not made available because that content provider had not paid a levy to a particular ISP.
Network connectivity, or the burgeoning demand for it, has some people caught in a Malthusian trap. there are certain truths to what Jim said; the need for bandwidth is increasing at an exponential rate, the current capacity of the networks is pitiful compared to what will be needed and something must be done. His standpoint, however, is that the networks must invest in a solution that adds very little capacity to the overall network, but creates several opportunities for the connectivity companies.
For Jim, the solution is the aforementioned 'intelligence' into the network. This 'intelligence' will then get used to prioritise certain traffic over other traffic. So youtube, which demands a low-latency connection for transmitting smooth video, could expect to pay more for each bit of data it sends over the network, unlike, say openDemocracy, which continues to pay the 'normal' rate. Until Jim turns around once more and decides that, well, perhaps our well formed and political articles are not high priority traffic either, now that Fox are prepared to give a back-hander to ensure their bits get to you faster than openDemocracy, or MoveOn's.
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/v/l9jHOn0EW8U&hl=en"]
The other way to invest in a network is simply(!) to make the 'pipes' that it consists of much, much wider. It used to be thought that there were really hard limits to the speed that the UK would be able to achieve with our current 'last mile' architecture (the cables connecting you to your local exchange). I was amazed when I first saw my Dad's 128Kb/s ISDN line. Or rather, lines, as two phone lines were needed for that speed in the mid 90's. Now, I run a backup connection for openDemocracy on our phone line that runs at 24Mb/s without requiring a separate line or disrupting the ability to make a phone call. And the cost has dropped to £20 a month (we use Be, they're great).
After Jim was done extolling the virtues of Network Management, Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group stood up up, called Jim out on his coyness, and made a great point; the internet has only succeeded because of the availability of bandwidth for any purpose, which has encouraged some crazy and dangerous ideas, but also some very successful businesses. Jim, it seemed, was happy to just disagree with that, so, uh, I guess Becky is wrong.
Except she's obviously not; profiling traffic on the internet destroys the purpose of the internet; that it should be a tool as easy and cheap to use for youtube as is it is for Tibetan activists trying to get news out of their country. What Jim is suggesting is, in many ways, a privatised national high-rollers table for content distribution. Sure, people can continue to blog, but if you get too popular, or you wanted to stream some video, you'll have to pony up the extra cash and accept that you're competing with the old, big media institutions. Which hardly seems to be the democratisation of the media you were lauding earlier, Jim.
It's going to be a long fight to keep the internet free of commercial traffic control, but an important one. We're starting to see the opening skirmishes in this country, and Jim Cicconi's presence at the e-forum clearly shows that this is an important fight for the network industry. It's an important fight for the consumer as well, and one we must win, unless you want to wait twice as long for OurKingdom data than you have to for anything from the Murdoch empire?
