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A few thoughts on the problem with a tiered internet and why ISPs who deliver content need net neutrality to avoid a conflict of interests.

Net Neutrality definition Tiered Internet Definition

Now its fair to say that the antiquated telephone network is not up to the job of delivering the world wide web over the next few years, the rise of video an voice applications specifically have increased bandwidth usage significantly in the past year and will continue to do so as those services get more sophisticated and become more mainstream.

This increased usage may require some major network upgrades, and those certainly wont be cheap – especially when the data throughput at the core starts to reach the limits of current industry standards. And dont let anyone tell you that this network upgrade is not the users responsibility, a company that doesn’t make these changes can continue to take your dollars and do nothing to improve your service – therefore letting your service degrade away as bandwidth usage increases.

What the large ISPs are suggesting (mainly the ones who have a hand in providing content of some description) is that the connection they provide is managed by them, and therefore they can prioritise packets as they please. Content providers will then have to pay the ISP to get a prioritised service & guarantee service to your door. Skype, YouTube and iTunes (for example) will have no choice but to pay – their service simply would not work without that guarantee.

There is an argument that this already happens, and its called Quality of Service (QoS) – that argument is rubbish. QoS is a way of prioritising network data by TYPE, not by source (although that is possible, it should never be used that way by an ISP). The purpose QoS is to make sure data that needs to be transferred real time (a voip callr video chat) has priority over important (a video stream) data, which has a higher priority over data that is not urgent (web page, data download). A user wont be able to tel the difference when browsing a website with QoS on, but they may have trouble having a skype call on a busy network without it.

The tiered internet will not prioritise your connection from third party providers, they will only make sure you get a quality connection when you sign up to their video and chat service, your video-on-demand movies will only stream smoothly if purchased from them. At that point, it is IN THEIR INTEREST to delay packets from the competition – to sabotage the companies who are not paying them! They will be in a unique position of power – making money from the user who pays for internet connection, the user who has to use them for content services AND their content service competitors will be paying them to get a service good enough to compete!

Once they have the customers to create this monopoly on internet users, how long before the ISPs own the internet?

This means that assuming the big telecom companies want to get into the content delvery in a big way (and that seems to be a direction a lot of them are heading), they NEED the net to be neutral to avoid a monopoly case against them. If they have no power over the content that runs down the ‘pipes’, then they have no conflict of interest & therefore can compete on a level playing field. Now they can include promotional material with your monthly bill, they can automatcally set your homepage to their content sign up page and they can offer bundles to hook you in, but they will do all these things without effecting the service provided by their competitors.