Report Highlights Ofcom’s Move Away From Net Neutrality in the UK

Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, is expected to tell British ISPs that they do not have to adhere to the principles of net neutrality, according to ISP Review.

Net neutrality is the basic idea that no restrictions should be placed on content from different services on the internet. The fear is that companies such as BT may slow down or limit services that compete with their own (BT Vision for example) or charge companies to get faster service.

Ofcom had recently launched a consultation with ISPs and content companies on the issues of neutrality and is now expected to say that as long as companies are “transparent” about which content they are throttling, the principle does not have to be upheld. ISP Review notes that being transparent essentially means that that ISPs will use small print to highlight the potential throttling, “which of course nobody reads”.

In a BBC statement to Ofcom (.pdf), the public service broadcaster makes a distinction that’s worth noting: “We recognise that reasonable traffic management may be required in some circumstances in order to manage the network.” This basically means that if ISPs need to slow downloaded video than that’s OK, but they continue to say: “But this should be the exception and should be based on traffic type. In our view, discriminating traffic by content provider or origin will distort competition and deviate from the end-to-end principle which is at the core of the open and neutral character of the internet.” (My emphasis).

To me, there’s not much wrong with that practice. If somebody is pulling down hundreds of gigs of video meaning the network as a whole slows down that doesn’t seem fair. The problem comes when ISPs start throttling based on content provider, something which they’ve all talked about doing:

TalkTalk (.pdf):

[Its] perfectly normal business practice to discriminate between them. We would do a deal and look at YouTube and look at the BBC, and decide.

BT (.pdf):

We absolutely could see a situation when content or app providers may want to pay BT for quality of service above best efforts.

This sort of favouritism isn’t happening yet and some who have opposed net neutrality have said that it’s “a solution in search of a problem”. The key issue is that these companies are looking at doing this kind of throttling in the future, so while Ofcom says that right now the UK market is highly competitive and so doesn’t need net neutrality, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have it; just in case.

ISP Review notes that Ofcom is going to have to remain extra careful and keep a watchful eye on what the ISPs are doing. A lot of these arguments centre around ‘potential’ problems that could occur and while it might not be needed right now, as the internet expands (especially in video) having non-discriminated content will become more and more important.

via: GamePolitics

Image source.