Network

Neutrality
and Mobile
EuroCPR
29 March 2011
 Neutrality ‘Lite’
• Common carriage
• Quality of service guarantee
• Lowest through-put guarantee
– Not maximum speed
– 2Mbps is universal service broadband
definition
– Should be feasible with LTE
• No blocking of rival applications/P2P
• FRAND for premium content
– FRAND can mean exclusivity in
narrowband networks
– Al Franken’s fears: everything goes
premium
– And video’s future is on CDNs – is this
Prior art....
 Common Carriage not new
• Began with obligations on inns/boats
• Determined by public function of
networks
• Continued into modern networks
• E.g. Railways and telegraphs
• 1844 Railway Regulation Act
– Setting both emergency access (‘kill
switch’)
– AND Parliamentary trains
• FRAND end-to-end access at set cost
 Managed services FRAND
Fair
Reasonable and

Non-discriminatory

Access

• means Murdoch, Berlusconi and

Disney
– can’t cut exclusive deals to
freeze out competitors
• Universal service must also be
considered
 Three wise monkeys
‘We have received no complaints’ is
NOT
‘I have not listened to any

complaints’.
• Some regulators are:
– Seeing no evil
– Hearing no evil
– Speaking no evil.
• BEREC analyzing the problem
sensibly!
 Europe leads on mobile
neutrality
• Essential – for dongle users
– ‘Fixed-mobile’ convergence
demands equivalence of
regulatory treatment
– Subject to reasonable traffic
management
• Critical for developing nations
– 5.3 billion mobile users today
– 3b people will only access the
Internet via mobiles by 2015 -
Mobile broadband maturing
That begins at transparency
• Realistic 3G & LTE speeds
– Who told DSL Prime about 50Mb/s LTE
in 1000 German villages by end-
2010?
• What’s the minimum speed at peak-
time?
• Not ‘up to’ lab-tested maximum!
• NOT blocking Skype
• Building High Definition VOIP fast
lanes
 Private Internet Censorship
• This is shorthand for what ISPs have
to do
• ISPs are not evil – they’re capitalists
• Regulators are meant to regulate
capitalism
• Innovation does not take place at ISP
layer
• Do they innovate more than
Skype/Google/ Facebook?
• If so, why do voice phone calls still
 Losing liberty?
• ISPs important intermediary limited
liability
• Based on their wise monkeys role
• Behavioural advertising – PHORM
• Blocking and filtering
• Throttling on non-transparent basis
• Removes 2000/31/EC Art.12-14
exemption
• Freedom of expression vital to
ISP as secret policemen?
 2011 articles
‘Three Wise Monkeys’
 www.globalpolicyjournal.co

m/
‘Mobile Net Neutrality’

 ejlt.org//article/view/32

More ssrn.com/author=220925

 www.essex.ac.uk/law/sta

ff/profile.aspx?ID=832