The idea that all Internet traffic gets equal bandwidth, regardless of content, is up against strong resistance in the UK, warns Jim Killock
Did we win the net neutrality debate? If you’re reading US news stories, it would seem so, but in the UK, we’re in fact on the verge of another serious defeat: the European Council is pushing to weaken rules on Internet content to allow more blocking and discrimination. Net neutrality is the idea that all communications on the Internet should be treated equally. Whether you’re a small web service, an individual sharing files or a web behemoth such as Google, your messages and content should be sent along each Internet pipe in the same way, without deciding that one or another deserves better treatment.
Net neutrality advocates say that this lack of discrimination is what fuels innovation and competition, as any small start-up can compete on equal terms with anyone else. Everyone can get their product or content delivered to the same standard.
On the other hand, ISPs in particular think they should be able to charge people to get a higher priority on their networks. They argue that the Internet suffers from ‘congestion’, and some kinds of content need prioritisation. Multiplayer, networked games for instance, need instant and reliable communications, and video is dreadful if it keeps stopping and starting. As such, these ISPs think they should be able to charge for increased reliability for particular specialist services, and argue that net neutrality rules would be a barrier to this type of innovation.
In the USA, there are in effect only two major ISPs serving the whole country, which makes these arguments especially dangerous, as two companies could quickly cut off access to services and extract unavoidable tolls from services. In Europe, there have been a larger number of ISPs, although the number has reduced, while the UK market is dominated by Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and BT.
However, a common argument is that UK ISPs aren’t in the same position to damage Internet services as their equivalents in the USA, as disruption would lead to customers shifting. Even small numbers of customers ‘switching’ cuts profits hard, as the margins are pretty tight.
European ISPs are very interested in ways to reduce customer switching and push up the profits from Internet contracts. You’ll have noticed that most of them now provide cable-like TV services, which aren’t quite TV, and aren’t quite Internet services either. These sports, TV and film services supply content over local networks direct to customers, but don’t use the Internet. As subscriptions are bundled, customer switching is reduced, as people get used to receiving content from their particular provider.
What’s that got to do with net neutrality? Well, ISPs increasingly compete with Internet services. By providing content, they’re in the same game, and aren’t quite the neutral party they once were. There’s an increasing risk that they’ll want competitors supplying similar content across the Internet to pay for the privilege of reaching customers.
Whatever the motivation, European MEPs and the Commission have been keen to sound very supportive of net neutrality and the Open Internet. The last commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said she wanted to introduce legislation that would protect the Open Internet. In the event, her draft legislation was criticised by Internet activists as doing roughly the opposite, with all kinds of exceptions that would allow ISPs to slow down and speed up different kinds of content.
The EU Parliament decided it would rewrite the proposal, and came up with a draft that many people thought was going in the right direction. By April last year, before the EU-wide elections, Parliament could claim to have stood up for net neutrality.
Once the Commission and Parliament have looked at a European law, it passes back to the nation states, in the Council of Ministers. This body allows each country to negotiate directly with the others to shape legislation.
It has now spent several months looking at the next proposal from the EU Parliament, an revised it to pretty much to the same position at which it started. It seems that European governments, including the UK, don’t want to stand up for net neutrality. Many of them, of course, are being lobbied by the big ISPs, many of which are former state monopolies, such as BT, that retain close links with their governments.
One of the Council of Ministers’ introductions is loopholes for ‘specialised services’, which permit blocking of websites for pretty vague reasons, and allow the slowing down and speeding up of Internet traffic. What happens next is that the Council of Ministers, Commission and Parliament sit down and thrash out a compromise.
With two of the three bodies rather hostile to net neutrality, we have a problem on our hands. The question is whether the European public will stand up and be heard, and whether MEPs will find the nerve to stand up to the member states.
The EU institutions aim to thrash out an agreement by mid-summer. It’s going to be a tough fight. And it raises a serious question about the extent to which the European public are paying attention to their institutions, and are being informed about the decisions they make. Somehow it’s a very different matter to the USA, where the President has had to make his views clear. Do we know where David Cameron (or perhaps a different prime minister by the time this is published) or Claude Juncker stand on net neutrality?
The member states can also be accused of using the EU to create potentially unpopular policies in this manner. We all know in practice that the UK will be one of the voices raised against strong net neutrality. The UK government has an interest in making it easier to block content in case it makes it hard to implement default porn filters.
It’s also close to BT, whose advice has been to avoid regulation that would restrict what it can do. But the way the UK behaves in negotiations isn’t a matter of public record. Only final votes are recorded against individual states, which allows the UK to push network discrimination without being held to account, or having to explain its stance to the British people.
It’s hard to imagine every EU state writing its own legislation on net neutrality, or other Internet regulation. It’s complex and requires cross-border cooperation, but that’s no excuse for making the processes opaque and unaccountable.
The question of net neutrality in a sense arises from slow Internet speeds and poor connections. If you take a look at the countries with high speeds, you’ll find a different kind of Internet developing, with many different platforms. The net neutrality debate doesn’t seem to be so relevant in South Korea or Japan. Could it be that the USA and Europe are currently trying to answer the wrong question: how do we manage scarce bandwidth and slow Internet speeds, rather than how do we get the fast speeds that would enable the services we want in the future? Somehow, the net neutrality debate feels like one in which our politicians are failing and choosing to manage decline, as well as being far too prone to pander to vested interests.
See https://savetheinternet.eu for more information.