Ditching net neutrality 'risks irreversible harm'

The research industry is renowned for its vicious arguments over points of principle: just look at any thread about open systems versus closed ones — say Google versus Apple — and you’ll that quickly discover a vehemence that borders on religious warfare.

World of schisms

But in a world of schisms, few arguments are as vicious as those around network neutrality. Telecoms firms around the world have spent millions lobbying lawmakers and arguing that they deserve the right to meddle with bandwidth-hungry services. Content providers and open Internet advocates, in return, say this unfairly punishes successful Web companies and promotes monopolistic behavior among broadband providers.

In a paper titled “The open internet – a platform for growth”, London-based consultancy Plum says that many of the arguments put forward by telcos are “myths”. And far from bandwidth-heavy services being problematic for broadband providers, it says, the reality is that as a matter of fact require services in order to keep growing — which means network neutrality is vital.

They argue that growing demand for content and applications is a problem We conclude that there is no reason to believe that adeparture from the open internet norm would be economically efficient - to put it more exactly, we find a departure from this model would risk irreversible harm.

But its findings are backed up with numbers. Residential service providers voice concerns that too much data is being used by clients, putting them in a dangerous position — nevertheless the reality is that the broadband industry across Europe is worth €155 billion, and that value is growing as broadband demand increases. Really, during fixed-line providers complain about data use, mobile networks say data is an important revenue driver for them.

The report as well takes that another common argument — that applications and services are parasites which profit from the investment made by telcos — and labels it a canard. Without applications, it says, demand for services would be low and telcos wouldn’t make money. Plus it’s not as if everybody wants to max out people’s connections: to tell the truth, it’s in the best interests of software companies to minimize download speeds to make services better.

The report undoubtedly makes for a strong piece of reading, however its provenance means it is likely to be dismissed by telecoms firms as a piece of propaganda — a harum scarum work that invokes the ghost of network discrimination when all telcos as a matter of fact want to do is prevent abuse of their networks. After all the report points out that though European governments have taken some steps towards enshrining network neutrality, there are increasing examples of online discrimination, just as:

The report considers some of the telcos’ main arguments for introducing more traffic management and says that, in practice, great content from providers just as the BBC drives demand for broadband connectivity, which in turn has driven fixed and mobile broadband earnings of in broad outline €155 billion in Europe in 2010.