April 2008

According to the Inquirer, The head of British ISP Virgin Media called net neutrality “a load of bollocks.”  The Telegraph reports that Virigin is well on its way to signing deals with companies to provide premium service for their sites. Under this system, Virgin could, say, provide blazing fast downloads off of Amazon’s site, but screechingly slow ones for iTunes users. Of course, Amazon would have to pay Virgin a premium for the privilege of having their data delivered quickly.

Users will probably not understand why their iTunes downloads take all day, and end up switching to a faster site. The ISPs say it is within their rights to treat traffic on their network as they see fit. Under this logic, they could force companies to cough up cash or have their sites blocked altogether. So let me ask: How is this any different from an extortion racket?

It looks like the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, Canada’s version of the FCC is about to weigh in on the net neutrality debate. As in the US, the government agency waited until the ISPs started to manipulate their customers internet experience before stepping in. A few weeks ago, Bell Canada admitted they were throttling BitTorrent traffic; but they didn’t stop there. They weren’t just messing with their own customers, but the customers of third party ISPs who lease bandwidth on Bell’s network.

Bell’s announcement came the same week that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. announced that they will begin distributing some of their shows for free via BitTorrent. The ISPs argument that traffic shaping only affects those engaged in illegal activity is beginning to sound weak. More and more companies are turning to BitTorrent and other forms of P2P file sharing as a cheap and easy way to make data available.

Canada’s other main ISP, Rogers, has been in the throttling game for a long time. But recently, they  decided to go a step further and, according to Digital Home Canada,  they have begun to “inject Rogers content onto the webpages of Digital Home and other content providers.”

Essentially, Rogers is slapping up ads for themselves on other people’s webpages. If this doesn’t drive home the need for net neutrality laws, I don’t know what will. Yet, Canada’s Industry Minister, Jim Prentice, continues to turn his back on net neutrality, saying it’s up to customers to chose another ISP if they are unhappy with their service. Excuse me, Mr. Prentice, but when both of the country’s main ISPs are actively working to reshape the internet, where are consumers supposed to turn?

The battle for net neutrality continues to wage in Canada. In a letter to the Hill Times, Cisco Systems takes on net neutrality advocate Charlie Angus, a New Democratic Party MP from Ontario.

Cisco using the same tired old line, i.e. “We do it because we love you.” According to the networking giant, they need to throttle traffic, gouge customers and restrict your access to certain sites because it helps them make the internet a better place.

Says Cisco, “There are legitimate reasons for use of network management tools by internet access providers to improve the internet experience as long as there is no anti-competitive effect.”

No anti-competitive effect? If memory of my homeland serves me right, there are, at best, two internet service providers in even the biggest markets in Canada. Many folks in rural areas are lucky to have one broadband option. Cisco, Bell and the rest want to continue to protect their monopoly over these hard-to-wire rural areas, keeping third party providers off their networks. That’s the real debate here. And as far as I’m concerned, that is the very definition of anti-competitive.

The FCC is hitting the road this week to hold a hearing on net neutrality in Palo Alto. This is the second public hearing they’ve held on subject, Comcast tried to hijack the last one by hiring folks to crowd the room so that regular folks couldn’t get in.

The government agency will be hearing public testimony, which is expected to focus on the Comcast/BitTorrent issue. The hearing is set for Thursday, April 17, at Stanford University. You can sign a petition in advance of the hearing here.

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an editorial backing the big ISPs and their efforts to reshape the internet.

They discussed Comcast’s recent attempt to throttle BitTorrent traffic, a move made, Comcast says, in the interest of their customers, claiming the bandwidth downloaders eat up slows traffic for everyone.

Well Comcast customers had a different opinion of the ISPs actions and threw a fit. The FCC and Congress seemed to agree and got involved. Comcast reversed their stance last week and has decided to play nice with BitTorrent. Which brings me back to the Journal’s editorial. They claim the markets worked because Comcast capitulated on the issue, but what they failed to mention is that it was only the threat of government intervention that got them to reconsider things. If not for that, no doubt, BitTorrent users would still be out of luck.