Net neutrality: Needless yoke or new opportunity?

Network World - The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality proceeding represents huge opportunities for network operators and equipment manufacturers to demonstrate that differentiated speed and service quality in vertically integrated networks will promote -- not diminish -- investment, innovation and consumer welfare.

The FCC is doing a public service by looking into Internet network management practices and user rights at this time. Even if some laissez-faire proponents may regard the proceeding a bit like Damocles' sword, all parties agree that the Internet is well beyond alpha-numeric e-mail. The FCC needs new rules to sensibly administer the evolving multimedia-rich, peer-to-peer, mobile, fast-changing Internet environment.

To date, network operators decide on their own whether to comply with voluntary net neutrality standards. The voluntary standards call for operators to allow subscribers to send and receive any lawful content, run any lawful applications and services, and to connect devices to their computers, laptops and mobile phones as long as those devices do not damage providers' networks. In FCC parlance, this is "subscriber choice" -- it is left to the subscribers to decide what they will do, providing it is legal.

Now the FCC is evaluating whether to put rules in place making it impossible for broadband network operators to decide on their own whether or not to honor subscriber choices; that is, to change these voluntary standards into mandatory ones.The FCC is also determining whether to require network operators to treat lawful content, applications and services similarly by prohibiting the preferential treatment of traffic from wholly owned or affiliated organizations (the non-discriminatory standard). What's more, the commission is considering whether to make operators disclose network management information so users can ascertain if they are getting the services they are paying for and to ensure operators are not manipulating their networks to favor services of wholly owned or affiliated organizations (the network management standard).

While many network operators view mandatory neutrality standards as onerous, there is opportunity in the timing. The rule-making is transpiring just as technology innovations and investment are driving explosive growth in peripheral application and content.

During the late 90s into the first decade of this century, investment flowed into broadband phone and cable networks. Market liberalization of local telephone markets, legislated in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, combined with cable's design and adoption of next-generation network architecture to migrate subscribers from one-way cable television to voice, data, video and Internet service bundles and to interactive programming and content. As telco and cable deployed more and more broadband capacity, users found increasing value in browsers, search engines and, significantly, applications to communicate and to consume and to create content, which they could make and share.