Does Net Neutrality Neuter The Internet?

by Paul McGoldrick

There has been a lot of press and technology pundit noise recently about net neutrality. Most people mean by that that there is no difference in the way content from any one site is handled from that from any other site. That sounds very egalitarian and in the full spirit of what the Internet has always been about. But should it be real?

Wow, people are saying, has McGoldrick lost his marbles? Is he on the side of the likes of Verizon? Maybe, and probably.

When the Internet came into being it was a means of digital communication between places of academic learning: hard wired sites that allowed the exchange of information in fairly unsophisticated formats – but in quite large volumes.

When Joe Public (the likes of me and you) came to the so-called World Wide Web it was in a form that allowed us initially to log on using dial-up facilities. We didn’t bother to go to any kind of sophisticated sites because we simply could not abide the download times that we would have had to endure; so we allowed ourselves to be content with nice clean HTML sites that loaded quickly. And we abhorred the likes of Disney with their constant cookies.

From home most of us are now connected to the web using some kind of DSL, mostly ADSL. Whatever the speed of connection that we actually have we are now in a position to download all sorts of content that we probably could not have foreseen just those few years ago. We have browsers that deal with unwanted cookies; that ban pop-up advertising from our screens. We can view regular web pages plus all sorts of other still and moving content.

And we happy with the fact that all the content that we download is with the same priority, whoever wrote it, invented it, or produced it.

But should we expect the same on a mobile device? I am as much a Luddite about the use of mobile phones as I am about electronic payment systems. For me a phone is a device you make and receive phone calls on. But that simplistic approach is hardly the norm in this day and age, and the era of smart phones – the Android and iPhone for personal use and the Blackberry for business – requires the users to get as much as they can for their money from a simple RF connection.

But should they?

When I use my domestic Wi-Fi network to communicate to my telco’s ADSL connection I know that at the central office there is a huge pipeline available for my use and the other (potential) 9999 users of my telephone prefix. The chances that the pipeline is going to be completely filled by digital downloads and uploads plus good old fashioned landline chatting is remote in the extreme. But what happens with a mobile wireless connection?

It may seem that there are a lot of cellphone antennas around but the fact is that it doesn’t matter how many channels are crammed into the authorized spectrum there is an absolute limit to their numbers. They were designed for voice communication bandwidths and the fact that they now handle all sorts of other content does not widen the spectrum just by hoping it does.

So why should you be able to watch a movie on your mobile with the same priority that someone can talk or text? Why should you be able to spend the day surfing? When you look at the charges that cellular phone providers can make for these non-talk/text services do you really think that they are in proportion to the cost of bandwidth of low-speed voice and text?

It is perfectly fair to argue that the whole idea of paying for bandwidth is absurd: the facilities exist, you could say, therefore they cost nothing more for the providers whether they are used or not. But, in practice, in 2010, things have gotten out of control for those providers and something has to change. Providing more channels is not an immediate solution although spectrum from the old analog TV channels is becoming available – but hardly on the cheap – and restricting services and/or access, at least for a while, is the most logical way to go. If the rumors are to be believed AT&T already has major bandwidth troubles in markets like the Bay area…

The fact that Verizon has chosen to try to get a new story written for mobile data services is not therefore surprising and it is a fairly natural marriage for them to be talking with Google to find a set of algorithms that can manage channel bandwidth while maximizing revenues. My attitude certainly is that if you want to use massive amounts of bandwidth on your hard-to-see display then be prepared to compromise in some way or another. It may come across to some users as a form of censorship but if it puts you off using a mobile for, frankly, fatuous purposes I won’t be upset about not getting a busy signal the next time I need to call 911.