Why the economics of the Internet look totally different in North America

Why the economics of the Internet look totally different in North America - The Washington Post: "It's worth pointing out that paid transit is different from paid peering. When Netflix complains about paying Comcast, it's talking about the latter. Paid peering is a bit of separate beast.

Cloudflare's data offers more insight on the bigger picture, which is that paid transit is very common. That's a talking point often advanced by people who say Netflix is complaining a lot about nothing, or that efforts to ban "Internet fast lanes" overlook the fact that the Internet is already non-neutral thanks to paid transit. If there's already an existing market where companies pay each other to carry traffic, the argument goes, then what's the big deal about paid peering or, in the last-mile Internet, paid prioritization?" 'via Blog this'

Comcast tells NY PUC data caps aren’t actually “data caps”

Comcast tells government that its data caps aren’t actually “data caps” | Ars Technica: "The FCC doesn't seem to offer its own definition, but the commission asked its Open Internet Advisory Committee to examine a variety of concerns related to Internet service, resulting in an August 2013 report titled 'Policy Issues in Data Caps and Usage-Based Pricing'. The working group that wrote the report consisted of seven people—including Kevin McElearney, senior VP for network engineering at Comcast. Comcast’s friends at Netflix were represented as well, along with T-Mobile, the Writers Guild of America, the National Urban League, Union Square Ventures, and Northwestern University.

Here’s how Comcast VP McElearney and his colleagues defined data caps in their report (emphasis ours):

"Data caps are often considered to be a form of UBP [usage-based pricing]. The term data cap is characterized by several phenomena. In general, if a user is within a cap, he or she pays a set price. That is, the cap defines a limit on amount of data per month per household expressed in gigabytes). Exceeding the cap could subject a household to alterations to its Internet access, possibly after one or more warnings, such as reduction of access speed,additional charges, suspension of service, or even termination of service.

The termination of service has received particular attention in public discussion, though to date, this appears to be a rare event, as noted below. A cap is rarely, if ever, a hard and fast ceiling on a customer's ability to access the network. A cap is usually better understood as a threshold after which the user is subject to a different set of conditions for access, such as movement to a higher priced tier, different product or different speeds. As discussed below, another way of thinking of this is as the boundary between different ‘tiers' of service."

Fudge - and fudge served up to the NY PUC that is considering its proposed Time Warner merger. Will they eat fudge? 'via Blog this'

ROAD TRIP! An FCC road trip – Leahy demands net neutrality debate across US

ROAD TRIP! An FCC road trip – Leahy demands net neutrality debate across US • The Register: ""Your announcement last week that the Commission will be holding a series of public roundtables to discuss approaches to protecting an open internet was a welcome and much-needed step," Leahy wrote to the FCC's big cheese.

"While the roundtables the commission is holding in Washington will help to promote further public input, I strongly urge you to expand your listening sessions outside of the Beltway."" 'via Blog this'

FCC To Host Net Neutrality Round Tables

The FCC To Host Net Neutrality Round Tables | TechCrunch: "At the risk of being too pleasant on a Monday morning, the idea isn’t a bad one. Discussing net neutrality issues will allow for more granular arguments and, hopefully, less space for generic statements of broad philosophical bent that do little to advance the conversation.

Here’s the schedule:

 September 16 (morning): Policy Approaches to Ensure an Open Internet

September 16 (afternoon): Mobile Broadband and the Open Internet

September 19 (morning): Effective Enforcement of Open Internet Requirements

September 19 (afternoon):  Technological Aspects of an Open Internet

October 2: Economics of Broadband: Market Successes and Market Failures

October 7: Internet Openness and the Law" 'via Blog this'

Canada & Morocco - horrendous mobile rip-offs

My mobile operator 3UK has now secured free roaming and calling to UK from 16 destinations - including the US, Australia, and several European countries (but not Germany, Spain or Netherlands). But that highlights the hideous price gouging in countries without agreements, gouging which should be criminal.
Here's Canada, just over the border, and Morocco, southern edge of Europe a few miles from Spain:

Calling a UK number.	£1.40 per minute Canada, £3 Morocco.
Calling a local number.	£1.40 per minute Canada, £3 Morocco.
Texts to UK.	35p per text.
Texting a Canadian number.	35p per text.
Receiving calls from any number.	99p per minute Canada, £1.25 Morocco.
Receiving texts from any number.	Free.
Using internet and data.	£6 per MB.
Using voicemail.	£1.40 per minute.

Net Neutrality in Practice, the Dutch Example

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating: Net Neutrality in Practice, the Dutch Example by Nico Van Eijk :: SSRN: To be presented at TPRC'42 - the best academic telecoms conference in the world: "The regulator in charge – the Authority for Consumers and Markets – took a first decision on applying the new rules in a case where Internet access in trains was blocked for congestion reasons. In another case, a service similar to WhatsApp was inaccessible via wireless networks. In two cases, the Authority investigated the bundling of data packages with free services (i.e. a mobile subscription with ‘free’ access to Spotify).

To deal with these cases, a new guideline has been drafted by the ministry involved. The consultation process on the guideline has recently ended.

 The conclusion of the paper is that putting net neutrality into more material regulation is much more complicated than defining it in a more abstract sense. Putting the rules into practice is even more challenging. In our view, the Dutch example shows that if regulation is too detailed, the development of services might be hampered and might to some extent ridicule the true objectives of net neutrality. The focus should be on a dynamic and evolutionary approach, offering the opportunity to adapt interventions quickly, depending on the specifics of the case. In order to establish such a more flexible framework, the present provision needs to be amended." 'via Blog this'

Reminder: the open Internet is like an English pub, imperfect but egalitarian and common carriage

Chapter 9 of the book: British public houses are – as we saw in the common carriage discussion in Chapter 2 – granted special rights and given special duties, primarily that to accommodate all-comers who so request. How does the Internet currently resemble a pub? It has its share of gaming[628] and gambling, of queuing and noise, of public lounge and saloon, of the snug (in certain areas), of spam, of video, of music, of piracy (those smuggled CDs), and of course many people of a religious persuasion are convinced it’s a den of vice – it certainly is a place to meet romantically (or otherwise). It has its private privileged alternatives – the members’ club, the nightclub with its VIP room, the other more private spaces with their reserved tables and guest lists. It is related to the coffee houses which provided the first insurance (Lloyds) and stock market speculation in London. It is a place for all people and all seasons. It is also the place for debate and conflict, even violence and police response. More libel is committed in an evening’s ‘character assassination’ in a local pub than in a year of a newspaper, hence the popularity of the widest viewed English language soap opera, ‘Coronation Street’ and its ubiquitous gossiping in the ‘Rovers Return’ pub. The pub is monitored in several ways: first the police license its hours and services; second, police make (somewhat) random visits to check on activities; third, publicans in the United Kingdom often install video cameras to film the entrance. Furthermore, popular pubs have security guards on busy evenings. You might say that the surveillance is as methodical here as on the Internet. We accept these measures of surveillance – though both cameras and security guards (who are now licensed by a regulator to ensure they are fit and proper persons) as well as some licensing authority decisions continue to grate.

Pubs, like ISPs and Internet content providers, have complex economic value chains which constantly threaten the independence of the local public house. Parliament has continually intervened in the past twenty years to ensure that the ideal of the public house, the common carrier, as a public space, is maintained with at least some defence against the tyranny of the economics of scale and scope that tend towards the concentration of pubs with brewers in vertically integrated national or even multinational conglomerates. The idea that pubs are ‘free houses’ unconnected to each other and selling any beer or other service they wish is a romantic but false idea, and many pubs are parts of chains tied in one way or another to each other, or vertically integrated with beer suppliers. However, rules prevent over-monopolization of this market, and untied pubs and guest beers predominate since the abuses of competition were recognized and acted upon in the early 1990s.[629] Radical regulatory action saved pubs: the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) investigated the market.[630] Its report found a complex monopoly existed in favour of brewers who owned tied houses or who had tying agreements with free houses in return for loans (brewer loans) at favourable interest rates. MMC recommended barring any one brewing company owning more than 2,000 licensed pubs. Government followed this advice: the Beer Orders[631] modified the recommendations of the MMC report. The Office of Fair Trading in 2000 concluded that there seemed to be a reasonable amount of competition nationally, even if some regional and local concentration existed, and government followed its advice and revoked most of the Beer Orders.[632] In 2009, Parliament once again investigated pubs,[633] and after nearly a decade of deregulation their findings were different. Parliament urged self-regulation by pub chains to be taken more seriously:

Since the British Beer & Pub Association code of practice was updated in 1997 the industry has changed and we suggest that this code of practice should be revised … if the industry does not show signs of accepting and complying with an adequate voluntary code then the Government should not hesitate to impose a statutory code on it.

They recommended urgent government action to the industry, not relying on the previous light mixture of regulation and self-regulation. Pubs are by no means a common agora and debating house paradise lost, but the mix of law enforcement, licensing and pro-competitive changes has restored some tenuous vitality and independence to the trade.

I raise the pub issue not only because of certain similarities of economics and speech freedoms associated with both the Internet and pubs historically, but also to illustrate the specific, sustained and careful consideration which Parliament has given to maintaining some openness in the industry. If it is willing to devote such time and energy to pubs on behalf of one part of its electorate, can it not also find resources to devote to fully exploring net neutrality and the Internet? 

Wikipedia Zero & Net Neutrality: Are BBC & other Public Service Broadcasters also exempt?

Dear Mr Moller

Wikipedia is exempt from Net Neutrality as a public service, you say. Who regulates what forms that service that has to be part of an Option Zero Internet? Is not the BBC a much better resourced and regulated public service than you? Is all their video to be Option Zero on mobile too? When is enough enough? The BBC considered this position and rejected it eight years ago - I was there (and urging them) when the correct decision was taken (see pages 95-103 in Net Neutrality). Neutrality for some is discrimination against others. You are unprincipled, opportunistic or ignorant.

Wikipedia Zero and Net Neutrality: Protecting the Internet as a Public Space « Wikimedia blog:

"We believe that free access to public interest resources can be provided in a manner that keeps the playing field level and avoids net neutrality issues. The Internet has tremendous potential to bring education and services to people for free. Beyond Wikipedia, this includes potentially life-saving access to health and emergency services or disaster relief.
Policymakers can design laws that uphold and affirm net neutrality without damaging the Internet’s ability to spread the free information it was designed to share. In the United States, the FCC’s previous Open Internet Rules, for example, simply focused on prohibiting blocking and unreasonable discrimination against content providers. Similarly, the recently adopted Marco Civil bill in Brazil does not prohibit free Internet connection as long as ISPs do not monitor, filter, or block content." 'via Blog this'

Facebook Zero’s Gateway Drug - Morosov

Facebook’s Gateway Drug - NYTimes.com: "when development becomes just a means of making a buck, the losers will always be the people at the bottom. Thus, to Silicon Valley’s question of “Is Internet access a human right?” one could respond by turning the tables: What kind of “Internet,” and what kind of “access”?" 'via Blog this'