Net Neutrality at Westminster

An interesting meeting on Network Neutrality at the the Digital Economy All-Party Parliamentary Group last night. Despite the wide range of speakers, there was a remarkable level of agreement that:

• The term “Network Neutrality” has too many definitions to be useful – “Open Internet” is preferable;
• All connections must provide access to the Open Internet, described elsewhere by the Minister, Ed Vaizey, as providing access to all legal content, not discriminating against competitors, and having documented traffic management practices;
• Traffic management to protect scarce bandwidth, to protect against security threats or to provide for different protocols is acceptable;
• Charging users and/or service providers for premium services (e.g. guaranteed bandwidth or quality of service) is acceptable;
• Clear information for users and easy switching between providers are necessary if market forces are to work to ensure the Open Internet continues to be available. Neither of these exists at the moment (it was suggested that only switching banks is harder than switching ISPs!), though there are promising developments in both information (Broadband Stakeholders Group) and switching (Ofcom);

The only real point of difference was whether market forces and self-regulation will be sufficient to protect the Open Internet, or whether some form of intervention by regulators or legislators will be needed (everyone felt this would be a bad thing!). There are clearly economic pressures in both directions – if ISPs make more money from premium services they may allocate bandwidth to those and reduce their Open Internet provision, but on the other hand the Open Internet is likely to be where new services arise that encourage users to buy more bandwidth in future. At present those pressures seem to lead to different behaviour by mobile and fixed-line providers, so it is not clear which will prevail in the long run. It was noted both market and technology are changing rapidly, so regulators may need to intervene quickly if the trend turns against the Open Internet. However most speakers felt that the new European Telecoms Directive's provisions on Network Neutrality provided sufficient tools to allow that.