Net neutrality - is transparency enough?
14 September 2010
All the talk last week was about net neutrality, what with the closing date for Ofcom's consultation on the issue, the Panel's own seminar that we held in partnership with Polis (the LSE media think tank), and a day-long BSG conference on the topic.
The buzz word in the UK debate is transparency. Consumers are using increasing amounts of data, lots of it time sensitive. So Internet Service Providers (ISPs) take steps to manage the data flow - or traffic - across their networks. They might prioritise or delay certain types of traffic, or cap the amount of data consumers can use at a certain time. They might even decide to prioritise their own content - particularly those ISPs who are starting to offer TV services over the internet - or ask content providers to pay to have their content prioritised.
Many argue that this is ok as long as the process is transparent - in other words that consumers are told about the particularly techniques the ISPs use and can decide to switch if they aren't happy. But this is complicated information, even for the more tech-savvy consumers. Will people really be able to make meaningful comparisons using this kind of information? Also, for transparency to work consumers have to be able to switch. A tall order if, in common with many rural consumers, you only have a choice of one provider. Difficult too for all those people whose broadband package is part of a bundle or whose ISP changes the terms and conditions mid-way through a contract.
We also think transparency misses out some of the important citizen dimensions of the problem. While enabling consumer choice is important, it won't necessarily protect the things we consider important to society as a whole. Public services are a good example. There are two ways in which public services could be negatively affected by traffic management. They could suffer from being in the shadows of more appealing commercial services that take advantage of paid-for, prioritised service. Thus public services become less attractive - for instance, NHS eHealth versus private eHealth. They could also be actively discriminated against - particularly if those services are high bandwidth, like iPlayer or future eHealth services.
Getting to the bottom of these issues will be complicated. Different people will have different needs at different times, and what is good for the individual may end up having a negative impact on things we all value. To get to the bottom of it we need to have the debate based on a real understanding of the views and experiences of consumers and citizens. There won't be any easy answers, but this approach will allow us to really understand the nature of the problem.