After changing its mind about throttling Bittorrent traffic last month, Comcast has pulled a 180° on network neutrality. Last week, Comcast announced plans to publish a consumers’ “bill of rights and responsibilities,” detailing what subscribers should expect from their ISP and laying out network management best practices.
Naturally, the “Save the Internet” crowd isn’t satisfied with Comcast’s declaration. Being protocol-agnostic wasn’t enough for them, and neither is a consumer bill of rights. Customers will only be safe from evil ISPs, they say, with aggressive neutrality mandates like Rep. Markey’s proposed legislation.
On one hand, Comcast’s declaration is good news for Bittorrent users, and illustrates the responsiveness of market forces. And as a Comcast subscriber, I’m all for non-discriminatory networks. (Though I seed torrents quite rarely, it’s nice to know the option exists.)
But declaring a consumer “Bill of Rights” is a risky approach. Comcast is ceding key ground to interventionists by implicitly admitting that consumers have some inherent right to unfiltered, unmanaged networks. They don’t—despite what lawmakers like Byron Dorgan have suggested.
Essentially, Comcast is saying “If we have to be neutral, then so should all the other guys. Otherwise, they’re violating consumer rights.”
Yet some ISPs are making just the opposite argument, identifying the benefits of curbing bandwidth-intensive applications. In comments filed last week, Bell Canada contended that throttling is in the public interest, explaining that 95% of subscribers suffer on account of file sharing. GigaOM posted a story yesterday that lends further credence to claims that peer-to-peer traffic is a major culprit of network congestion.
Perhaps we shall see a competing bill of rights—one holding that customers have the right to affordable broadband access free from file sharing-induced slowdowns.
As bandwidth demand continues to grow, ISPs must make tough choices. Between price increases, bandwidth caps, and protocol discrimination, it is far from clear what’s best for the average user. If AT&T’s prediction is correct that in three years time, 20 typical households will consume as much bandwidth as the entire Internet does today, then carriers will need to invest billions upgrading both the backbone and last-mile. Discouraging investment through regulation poses a far greater threat to the Internet’s future than hypothetical neutrality violations.
If neutrality truly is as virtuous as its proponents suggest (and I suspect it is) then it will ultimately triumph on its own merits, without the need for government intervention. Still, exclusionary, proprietary networks may yet play an invaluable role in propelling connectivity, despite closed systems’ shortcomings. Who knows what will work out best in the long run? Market experimentation is the only way to find out.
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(Though I seed torrents quite rarely, it’s nice to know the option exists.)
If everybody did this we would soon have to pay to download this stuff even though collectively we have the bandwidth.
Come on, all you are doing here is promoting the crushing of new enterprise and predatory practices on the internet on behalf on those in charge of it. The initial response of Comcast to throttle down on the top 1% of users during busy times. this is a simple solution, as torrent users tend to keep their computers on and it generally doesn’t matter to them when they download as long as they get the bandwidth at some time of day they are using a untapped resource. The off-peak bandwidth is vastly more useful than peak bandwidth, and should be utilized somehow. Bandwidth is cheap also and if these downloads were not look down upon they wouldn’t be nearly as threatened. No high-speed ISP would think of shutting down You-Tube as they don’t want to touch the shit-storm that would probably capitulate.
Shawn, I agree with you that Comcast’s decision to limit seeding during peak usage times makes a lot of sense, and I wasn’t saying that ISPs should have to let torrent users seed to their heart’s content during peak hours. It’s just that I’d personally prefer an ISP that didn’t pass judgment on whether my application is more “valuable” than yours. You may think YouTube viewers deserve to push traffic through the pipes during peak hours more than torrent seeders, but then again I’m not so sure that watching sneezing pandas is that much more important than disseminating the latest release of open source software.
Again, I’m fine with what Comcast has been doing and they have every right to manage their network as they see fit without regulation. But I don’t see why there couldn’t also be room for ISPs that address network congestion in a protocol-agnostic manner, even if such an approach might end up costing more to the customer.
wow, i guess i did a very bad job of explaining myself. I am a strong supporter of net-neutrality. What i was saying is that the swich from there old way of dealing with too much traffic (sending out close requests to any clients connected to Comcast customers on the bittorrent protocol–even to those people on other networks who were connecting to those on Comcast’s network, that was another line they crossed) to a strict not by traffic type throttling of its heaviest users. Note that this not only effects P2P users, just by those who have historically used the most bandwidth.
What i was trying to say is that discrimination is greatly wrong, and as open-source software can be much more important than cute you-tube videos, the ISP’s if they turn to discriminating will simply limit whatever is best for their pocketbook, there is nothing that would make them do it in the common good. And if they can provide youtube, and cant afford to NOT provide it, even when it uses AS MUCH bandwidth as P2P applications, then clearly bandwidth is very, very cheap and a non-discriminatory policy of dealing with bandwidth hoggers is much more preferential.
A common way that has been used against this is having both a bandwidth rate and throughput limit on connections, but from a marketing perspective telling consumers that a resource that really is for the most part extremely cheep and underutilized is expensive and need close watching is not smart. Furthermore it is really only during peak hours that there is any shortage. Forcing those customers that are maintaining full loads to slow down during peak times is the perfect solution, not only does this limit the the userbase that is effected to a much small base than before and maintains bandwidth-type neutrality, but it also fits the nature of what is being sent. Heavy bandwidth uses, with the exception of servers serving the general public (which are not on these ISPs), tend to be moving non-time-critical information.
Shawn, you raise several legitimate concerns about the potential for network discrimination, and I personally share many of your values when it comes to choosing my ISP.
But when it comes to net neutrality, would an ISP really start to engage in the sort of activities you describe? Not likely.
Sure, Comcast limited Bittorrent seeding during peak hours, but that really only affected a tiny minority of users, and it was only implemented because seeding wreaks havoc on DOCSIS 1.1 nodes. And widespread backlash and harsh blogosphere criticism has prompted Comcast to change its policies.
Net neutrality supporters make highly questionable assumptions about ISP market leverage. Could an ISP really threaten to shut down (or at least degrade) YouTube? Not a chance. Google would say “screw you” and the ISP would be left either alienating its user base or making do without extra YouTube money.
What about stifling smaller video websites (or competing voice services) you say? I still have serious doubts about whether consumers would stomach such a move, especially considering the vigilance of netizens.
Obviously the skewed broadband marketplace (which I’ve often discussed) complicates this whole debate. When you can’t ditch your provider for another, that certainly gives the ISP quite a bit of leeway. But ISP choice is improving. Most people can get DSL, cable (sometimes 2 cable co’s even), satellite, wi-fi, 3G, Wi-Max, and in a couple years even 4G (LTE)