After more than a year of debate in Washington, the fate of Network Neutrality--and with it the future of the Internet--remains unresolved. A strong tide of public opposition to new telecommunications legislation in both the House (H.R. 5252) and Senate (S. 2686), led by Save the Internet.com and other advocacy groups, forestalled what would have been a major victory for a relative handful of cable operators and telephone companies. Had Congress completed its rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, broadband network operators would have been free to institute new "tiered" or "differentiated" levels of service, based on discriminatory, fee-based traffic-management schemes.
The matter will now be taken up anew in 2007 in the 110th (and now Democratic-majority) Congress. At stake is nothing less than the future of the Internet. In particular, Congress's handling of the network neutrality issue will determine whether network operators will have the ability to discriminate in their carriage of the data that comprise a major part of society's "central nervous system"--the news and information, emails and websites, that have become a part of everyday life. Instead of the common-carriage, all-data-are-created-equal tradition of the Internet, the new, Un-Neutral Net will allow operators to favor their own content and that of their affiliates, while relegating competitive and unaffiliated content to the slow lanes of the Internet.
Although the technology that underlies the principle of network neutrality is complex, the basic concept itself is simple. As Craigslist founder Craig Neumark has observed, "Net neutrality is just about fairness and a level playing field." In the absence of an enforceable policy of network neutrality (encompassing nondiscriminatory transport of all data, unfettered access to all Web content, and open interconnections to all networks), the full promise of the broadband era will never be realized. Especially now that residential Internet access has been reduced in most communities to a choice of one of two providers--the local cable monopoly or the local telephone giant--the diversity and openness and competition that characterized the Internet in the dial-up era faces four major threats:
• Data Management: involving the use of type-of-service (TOS) and quality-of-service (QOS) provisions of the Internet protocol (IP) to favor some data traffic over others. Instead of resolving disputes between competing claims on network resources in an evenhanded, equitable fashion, policy-based routing will be employed to expedite the delivery of content affiliated with the network owner, while relegating competing content to slower lanes of traffic.
• Proprietary Content: involving the use of a variety of enhancements (e.g., fiber optics, local caching, navigational aids, menus, program guides, start screens) to highlight the network operator's own and affiliated content at the expense of other fare (including noncommercial programming), which will be excluded from proprietary delivery systems and from on-screen menus and program guides. Even when such enhancements are made available to other programmers, the cost involved will be prohibitive for most nonprofits and many smaller businesses.
• Differentiated Access: in which (as the local telephone giants have made clear) an entirely new class of premium data delivery will be introduced, giving priority service to those content providers willing to pay fees for such treatment. Even while these broadband providers have vowed not to block, degrade, impair, or otherwise discriminate against non-premium (i.e., non-sponsored) content, the result is the same: some online programming, including information vital to our democracy that derives from noncommercial sources, will be relegated to the slower lanes of these new broadband systems.
• Differentiated Service: in which the broadband access environment is characterized by tiered levels of service, subscription plans, and pay-per-click programming, lending a much more commercialized quality to the Internet and introducing a general distinction between the "haves" and the "have mores"--a new version of the digital divide that will affect all of us in one way or another.
Taken together, these developments threaten to undermine the "level playing field" that Neumark and others justly celebrate, in which all content providers are accorded equal treatment in the online environment, and all users enjoy access to any Internet resource, service, or application. Instead of the open, diverse, two-way communication system in which innovation and alternative viewpoints have long thrived, the Internet will become a closed, proprietary system. Dominated by the cable and telephone company giants that control the vast majority of last-mile connections, the new Internet will be everything that the existing Internet is not--discriminatory (with premium service for network-affiliated and sponsored content, and degraded service for everything else), expensive (with higher prices for basic service and a new range of on-demand and "pay-per-bit" transactions), and invasive (with tracking and analysis of our every move online).
A key to understanding what will happen to the Internet here, as well as with the emerging interactive digital TV system and wireless, mobile communications, are the online control technologies racing off the assembly lines. With names such as "NetEnforcer," "Service Control Platforms," and "Bandwidth Manager," these technologies are designed to empower a Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon to exert much tighter control over the flow of data coming into our homes, businesses, and wireless devices.
One refrain often heard from the opponents of network neutrality is that there isn't any evidence that the cable and phone companies actually intend to discriminate. Never mind that such corporate giants as Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are sufficiently concerned about the prospects of a discriminatory Internet to call for legislation guaranteeing network neutrality. And contrary to the claims of net neutrality opponents, there is mounting evidence of the existence of new products that will give the major broadband providers the power to control the once free-flowing Internet--to slow down or speed up access to online content; to track user movements online; and to impose a raft of new fees for content providers and consumers alike.
Listed below are ten ways in which the Un-Neutral Net will stifle diverse voices, widen the Digital Divide, and violate our right to privacy in shocking new ways.
1. Detour Ahead
Over half of the Web's estimated 600-plus billion pages derive from nonprofit sources. With the cable-telco duopoly's plans for tiered access (i.e., charging content providers for guaranteed high-speed delivery), all of that noncommercial content, along with perhaps three-fourths of commercial programming whose producers either cannot or will not pay the operators' extortionate rates, will be squeezed onto the digital equivalent of a dirt road. Traffic on this last vestige of the erstwhile "public" Internet will move at a crawl, leaving most users with little alternative than to turn to broadband's new private, premium lanes, where Network Neutrality is no longer the rule of the road. As MoveOn.org noted in an alert circulated among millions of Internet users in 2006, "Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer."
For information on industry's plans for a tiered, private Internet, see Motorola's "MultiProtocol Label Switching" (MPLS.pdf below) white paper, which tells phone and cable companies how they can "achieve their aggressive revenue targets" by creating a "tiered" Internet (with "Gold, Silver, and Bronze…pricing schemes…," and "… bandwidth limits to ensure that services do not receive more than their committed bandwidth levels"). See also Cisco Systems' white paper, "Cisco and the Service Provider IP Next-Generation Network Journey," (CiscoNextGen.pdf below) which describes "the transition from a basic highway to a value-added, personalized toll way"; and Operax, "Efficient Network Resource Control--A Source of Competitive Advantage," (OperaxNRC.pdf below) which explains how "...bottlenecks are a tactical tool and ... [how] efficient control over bottlenecks is necessary to create financial value from scarce network resources."
2. We Interrupt this Program…
The future of the Internet is video, and the future of video is peer-to-peer (P2P), which harnesses the power of individual PCs to create ad hoc distribution networks that rival the mainstream media in their reach. But the Un-Neutral Net has an answer for P2P--shifting it to the slow lane or blocking it altogether--and in the process the videos we've enjoyed on YouTube, Ourmedia.org, and dozens of other sources of independent media will look more like slide shows (if we can still see them at all, that is). For insight into industry's plans to throttle the Internet (under the guise of maintaining "quality of service" [QoS], no less), see Juniper Networks' "Building the Next Generation Multi-Service Broadband Network," (JuniperBroadband.pdf below) which features "bandwidth control to facilitate service level[s]..., Lawful Intercept, billing, and access controls...," including QoS ("a critical tool for network control") to limit "... packet flows that are not desirable in the network, such as peer-to-peer ... application flows."
3. First-Class Postage
Both AOL and Yahoo have already unveiled plans for new charges for e-mail, and, as noted in "The End of the Internet?," under the new pricing schemes of the cable-telco broadband cartel "…all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail." Depending on the volume of e-mail we send and receive (and nonprofit organizations that depend on e-mail to reach their members will be particularly hard hit), new charges for such online communications could reach hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month. As e-mail incorporates more multimedia aspects and features, moreover, the tiered pricing schemes of the Un-Neutral Net will favor those corporations that can afford to pay for such services, giving an unfortunate new meaning to the term "rich media."
4. The Purloined e-Mail
Charging for e-mail is one thing, but blocking e-mail altogether is another, and that's precisely what happened in 2006 at AOL. As reported by CNET News.com, "the Internet service provider, which has roughly 20 million subscribers in the United States, began bouncing e-mail communications with the URL "Dearaol.com…." Although this act of e-pistolary censorship was only temporary, in light of the emerging climate of coercion and control online, with personal files routinely turned over to government agencies (and shared with marketers, as noted below), we can expect further incursions like the e-mail blockage perpetrated by AOL, with e-mail filtering based on content as well on the origin or destination of such traffic. So, too, will e-mail be analyzed ("anonymously," we'll be told) for keys to the kinds of advertising content to which senders and recipients are most likely to respond. In its comprehensive Privacy FAQ concerning Google's Gmail service, for example, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) explains that "Gmail is supported by advertisers who buy keywords, much like the Google search engine's AdWords advertising program. Gmail uses 'content extraction' (the term used in Google's patents) on all incoming and outgoing e-mail in order to target the advertising to the user. For example, if the user is having an e-mail conversation about applying for a job, Gmail might present the user with ads about online job search sites and resume writing services." While Gmail subscribers might be aware of such surveillance techniques (at least those subscribers who manage to plow through Google's 1,800-word Privacy Policy and its 1,000-word Privacy FAQ), non-subscribers who send e-mail to a Gmail address receive no such warning. As EPIC points out, "Gmail violates the privacy rights of non-subscribers. Non-subscribers who e-mail a Gmail user have 'content extraction' performed on their e-mail even though they have not consented to have their communications monitored, nor may they even be aware that their communications are being analyzed."
5. Hijacking the Net
Although broadband providers such as AT&T and Verizon have vowed that they will not block any websites, they have also made clear that there will be no free rides on the Un-Neutral Net. As a preview of things to come, a small North Carolina network operator blocked competitive Internet phone traffic in 2005, and in 2006 Cox Interactive, the third-largest cable company's broadband division, blocked access to Craigslist. Cox claimed the problem was due to technical issues related to new "security suite" software. But, as others noted, the blocking of Craigslist by Cox went on for a number of months.
For a view into the future of such behind-the-scenes machinations, see Allot Communications' "NetPure Policy-Based Internet Filter" (NetPure.pdf below) and "Service Control Solution Benefits for Carriers," (AllotControl.pdf below) whose broadband management technology "allows carriers and service providers to have greater visibility into the network to inspect, identify and analyze hundreds of applications and protocols, track subscriber behavior, prioritize traffic and shape traffic flows."
6. The New Digital Divide
Broadband prices in the US are already among the highest in the world on a megabit-per-dollar basis, some 10 to 25 times what broadband users pay in Japan, for example. Even though the average Internet access fee today (around $30 a month for DSL, $40 for cable broadband) is far below the early days of metered pricing (e.g., CompuServe's $22.50 per hour for 9,600-bps access in the early 1990s), we can expect prices to skyrocket once the new cable-telco regime has completed building out their tightly controlled dynasty. Not only will basic access rates increase (with the tiered levels of pricing mentioned above), but a range of new on-demand fees and pay-per-bit schemes will drive premium service beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest families. See, for example, Alcatel's "Broadband Applications Fueling Consumer Demand," which explains how the phone industry is being urged to make money from video, gaming, home networking, and audio-on-demand. See also Alcatel's "A Guided Approach to Broadband Entertainment Services," which divides the Internet into a "public garden," a "walled garden," and a "gated garden"; and Cisco Systems' "Deploying Premium Services Using Cisco Service Control" (CiscoPremiumServices.pdf below) shows how new business models to "meter" online communications will profoundly affect the Internet's future.
7. The Transparent Network
At the heart of the Un-Neutral Net and its discriminatory practices is a technology known as "deep packet inspection" (DPI), which allows broadband operators to analyze the traffic in their networks and to route it accordingly: affiliated or sponsored content into the fast lane, unaffiliated content into the slow lane, and competitive or "undesirable" content into oblivion. Thus Allot's DPI technology enables broadband providers "to analyze network usage; to control service delivery; to ensure quality of experience; to maximize ROI on infrastructure investments; and to increase average revenue per user." Sandvine (SandvineNetworkManagement.pdf below), similarly, offers "new strategies and technologies that can characterize, quantify and help price subscribers' online behavior--opening a window that reveals which subscriber applications offer the greatest potential for profitability." See also Cisco Systems' "Cisco Service Control: A Guide to Sustained Broadband Profitability," (CiscoBroadbandProfit.pdf below) which details how network operators will know "who" you are, "what" you are doing, and "where" you reside.
8. The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television (ITV)
Both the cable and telephone industry are working to transform television into a two-way medium better able to deliver personalized advertising. Their broadband connections will be primarily used to generate enormous revenues by selling advertisers, marketers, and programmers access to individual viewers. There will be ads for each of us—based on the tracking of our online and offline activities, including what our TV viewing habits are. As one ad-tracking firm executive recently remarked about interactive TV, "…when you combine the emotional power of television with the targeting capability that is not unlike the Internet, it really is a very powerful proposition for advertisers." To see what the next generation of targeted TV looks like, see Comcast Spotlight's Addressable Advertising service and the Visible World interactive advertising demo.
9. The One-to-One Paradigm
One of the main reasons that network operators favor an Un-Neutral Net is the opportunity such a system will offer for personalized, addressable advertising--zeroing in on individual users based on their real and perceived interests, needs, and preferences. Consumer privacy on the existing Internet is already under duress, and if the cable and telco broadband duopolists have their way, we'll have even less protection in the future. As U.S. PIRG and the Center for Digital Democracy made clear in their November 2006 Federal Trade Commission complaint, the policies governing consumer privacy on the Internet have failed to keep pace with the developments that continue to re-shape the online world. Privacy policies designed for a largely static, text-based World Wide Web offer little protection in the dynamic Web of the present. The data collection and interactive marketing system that is shaping the entire U.S. electronic marketplace aggressively tracks us wherever we go, creating data profiles used in ever-more sophisticated and personalized "one-to-one" targeting schemes. Thus one of the hidden costs of the Un-Neutral Net (in addition to all of the inflated real costs) is the loss of privacy we'll suffer, as the erstwhile level playing field is increasingly tilted in favor of invasive advertising and marketing practices.
10. Lo-Fi Wi-Fi
The Wi-Fi revolution, releasing broadband from its wired tethers and bringing the Internet to airports, coffee shops, and other public gathering spots across the country, has been an unprecedented success. So much so, in fact, that the immediate response of cable and telephone companies to the specter of municipally run, wide-area wireless networks was to attempt to have them outlawed. Cable and telco lobbyists sought legislative protection from community Wi-Fi at the state and federal levels, enjoying some success in the states (e.g., Texas, Pennsylvania) but failing (thus far) to persuade Congress that municipal broadband is the latest incarnation of creeping socialism.
The less-good news, however, is that Wi-Fi is still crammed into the crowded 2.4 GHz band (which it shares with garage-door openers, baby monitors, and a variety of other devices), and the prospects in Washington for the designation of additional unlicensed spectrum are uncertain. And while come cities are still undertaking city- or nonprofit-run networks (e.g., Boston), the most popular model appears to be joint ventures with commercial access providers (e.g., the Google/EarthLink alliance in San Francisco). These mixed-use projects, unfortunately, are proving to be a mixed blessing, with free or reduced-cost access limited to the lower rungs of the broadband ladder (a mere 300 kbps for advertising-driven free access in San Francisco, for example, while 1 Mbps service--still modest by broadband standards--will cost $20 a month). Thus the same tiered service and aggressive advertising of the Un-Neutral Net, it appears, will afflict many community broadband projects as well.
Many observers believe, moreover, that the future of wireless broadband lies in more robust WiMax implementations, which permit wider range access and even connectivity to users in transit. Unlike Wi-Fi, however, WiMax operates in licensed bands, such as the 2.5 GHz spectrum, where Sprint Corp. already holds licenses and leases for channels that reach 80 percent of the US population. "Unfortunately," as wireless expert Sascha Meinrath points out, "unbeknownst to most consumers of these technologies, control over wireless technologies is quickly and covertly being consolidated under the oversight of a few enormous corporations whose main interest is bolstering their profit margins, not building telecommunications systems for the public good." The Un-Neutral Net, in other words, may soon be coming to a wireless network near you.
Network neutrality, it is clear, is more than an idle concern. It is not, as the network owners and their well-paid consultants suggest, a "solution in search of a problem." Rather, the principle of network neutrality represents our last, best hope of preserving a vital noncommercial, civic core in an online environment that grows more commercialized every day. As we have noted elsewhere, the possibilities for democratic discourse, for educational advancement, and for cultural expression will be greatly reduced in a delivery system that favors big business over small, e-commerce over e-democracy, and public relations over public service. Free of such market-based controls, on the other hand, the new broadband networks could bring a vast array of new programming to the home, at once extending the reach of the high-speed Internet (which currently reaches less than half of the nation's households) and enhancing its content (much of which is currently constrained by the bandwidth limitations of inferior broadband service). But for the full potential of the broadband era to be realized, we will need to have a strong policy of network neutrality in place.