What is it?
In it’s purest form, network neutrality provides transport to all traffic without discrimination. The idea is that the network carries any and all traffic and passes it on in the order it was received. However, there are variations on this definition.
Some would allow for quality of service(QoS) provisions within the definition of net neutrality. QoS allows for certain traffic to be passed at a higher priority. The network provide could, conceivably, charge to honour QoS provisions - and that fact is the start of the network neutrality debate.
If a service provider can charge to honour QoS, what’s to prevent them from degrading service for anyone who doesn’t pay for elevated service. Net neutrality activists point to events such as Telus blocking access for its customers to certain websites during a strike in 2005 and Shaw Communication’s (and here) decision to charge a fee to provide quality of service for users of competing VoIP solutions on Shaw Internet connections as indications that service providers will act against the interests of subscribers if they are allowed to.
What does it mean to me?
Well, that depends. Real time applications like voice over internet (VoIP) and videoconferencing (VC) work better when there are quality of service provisions. So, if those are your main applications, you’d like to be able to discriminate traffic and have VoIP or VC traffic delivered at a higher priority than, say, email traffic.
However, the fear is that service providers will extend the discrimination beyond classes of applications and in to specific sites. A large company could pay more to ensure that their website loads more quickly than their competitors’ sites. This would ‘encourage’ people to use that faster loading site and have a negative impact on the competitors. Practically speaking, anyone who could afford to pay for better deliver would and those who couldn’t would die.
This idea is very distressing to many in the Internet community. They point to the importance of neutrality in enabling innovation. Would Amazon have been able to build it’s business model if an existing bricks and mortar store could just dump a lot of cash into network access - causing everyone looking for books to go to the existing company site and not Amazon? Could some new search engine pay your ISP to load it faster than Google? In a world of many small businesses, the fear is that a few large ones could afford to play by the new rules at the expense of the many.
What is happening in Canada?
We’re behind the US, not surprisingly. In November 2006, CBC reported that the fight had arrived here. The telco’s want to let market forces dictate the evolution of services; activist organization, experts, and even big content providers (here, here, and here) want legislation.
Reading on the issue
NN fact and fiction (pro NN from FreePress)
Wikipedia Network Neutrality (neutral presentation of the issue)
Joining the Snake: A balanced and pragmatic approach to NN (from the Progress and Freedom Foundation)
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