Some Thoughts on Net Neutrality in Wireless

I generally find it too hard to get worked-up about net neutrality, as in competitive markets, everything tends to sort itself out. In the UK I have a choice of mobile broadband providers - some open to all content/apps and some more restrictive, with an array of price plans, coverage and customer service. I choose which I like.

The US tends to be more complex, because of the relative lack of true nationwide competition, and the barriers to consumers having (or trialling) multiple service providers, because of a lack of contract-free prepaid offers. It's much more difficult to exercise choice if you're locked into a 2-year monthly contract with onerous penalty exit clauses.

One solution may be for the FCC to impose a trial region (state?) for true open-access, let it run for 24 months and scrutinise the impact on user behaviour, network management, congestion and so forth. However, this would need to be imposed *after* network build-out, to give a true apples-for-apples comparison with differentiated-service territories. Even then, it would be necessary to monitor ongoing opex and operations to ensure a "fair fight".

The observation I'd make is that there appears to be clear consumer appetite for broadband pipes, even if they sometimes get congested. Another option could be that some form of naked and unmanaged pipe should be made available on a mandatory basis - perhaps as a percentage of total capacity in the air and backhaul, so customers could opt for best-efforts if they wanted, versus a fully-managed virtual partition of the rest of the network.

Comments

[c smith:]

However, this would need to be imposed *after* network build-out,...

A complete non sequitur. Nobody will build a network unless they can see a reasonable chance of getting paid for doing it. This is the entire "net neutrality" issue in a nutshell. Net neutral mean no network. End of story.

Sep 23 07:15 PM