Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1924421.1924435
Viewpoint
Asymmetries and Shortages
of the network
neutrality Principle
What could neutrality achieve?
ThE dEBATE on network neu- trality has reached sufficient notoriety to eliminate the need for detailed explana- tion. A simple definition
will suffice: “network neutrality” is understood as the principle by which the
owners of broadband networks would
not be allowed to establish any type of
discrimination or preference over the
traffic transmitted through them.
What is indeed interesting to remember is the origin of the debate.
In February 2002, the U.S. the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC),
launched a proposal considering DSL
connections as an “information service” and, thus, not subject to access
requirements telephone companies
must fulfill. The following month, the
FCC launched a similar draft for cable
networks and requested comments on
what the regulatory regime that would
finally prevail should look like. The
comments received by the FCC, particularly those of the High Tech Broadband Coalition (HTBC) Group, which
integrates different associations and
partnerships of the ICT industry, represent the starting point of the subsequent controversy.
9
We recall the beginning of the controversy because, since then and perhaps as an inheritance of this beginning, it has been restricted to fixed
broadband networks. Indeed, academic papers, political opinions and media
comments have appeared in favor of
or against network neutrality but have
always shared one issue: the opinions
provided continue to limit the fight
to the scope of traditional networks
(telephone or cable). Take as the most
prominent example the two articles
recently published by
Communications on the topic. Van Schewick and
Farber’s Point/Counterpoint explicitly
played on the landline carriers’ court.
6
In his less prescriptive, more descriptive (regulatory) Viewpoint, Larouche
uses a broader term (ISPs) but takes a
similar approach.
3
It is not our intention to provide
new arguments underlining the virtues of the supporting or opposing
positions. The matter we would like
to stress is the narrow-mindedness
of the approach that is adopted repeatedly. It must be remembered that
the defenders of network neutrality
base their arguments on the need to
avoid closing the door to any innovation: the Internet would simply be a
platform necessary for the competition between application developers
(see, for example, Weinstein7). With
this idea in mind, there are three axes
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