Opinion: Absence of net neutrality rules harms consumers

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 15 March 2007 12:03

Your IT - Home IT

Who benefits from the absence of rules requiring net neutrality? Not consumers, whether they are individuals, families, businesses or other organisations.

Who wants to be able to discriminate between different types of data traversing the Internet? Who wants to be able to deliver packets to or from certain addresses more quickly - and more expensively - than others?

It's the carriers, the ISPs, the companies that supply them with equipment (eg Cisco), and 'free market' zealots. You don't hear most businesses or consumers saying "oh, please make it more expensive for me to use some web sites or services," or "yes, I'd love you to slow my communications so that someone with deeper pockets can get better service."

Look at what happens in Australia. The biggest ISP (BigPond) is part of the biggest telco (Telstra). Telstra owns the copper network that connects most homes and business premises, so ADSL providers have to use Telstra's facilities. Some install their own DSLAMs in Telstra exchanges, others act basically as retailers of Telstra's service.

Largely due to its size and deep pockets, Telstra is able to out-market most ISPs. The 'mums and dads' market - and BigPond has been running a 'your kids need broadband' campaign for months - would probably be hard pressed to name an alternative broadband provider.

As my colleague Adam Turner has pointed out, Telstra's low-end plans mean customers can download movies without incurring excess data charges only if they use the company's own BigPond Movies service. Why? Because downloads from BigPond Movies are unmetered. If the customer wants to use a competing movie service such as ReelTime, they have to face swinging excess data charges of up to $150 per gigabyte, move up to a higher-priced plan, or switch to a different ISP.

To quote Adam, "BigPond's 200MB and 400MB plans have destroyed broadband in Australia. By locking people into such pathetic plans, Telstra is suffocating innovation and competing businesses. Thanks to BigPond, many homes lack the download speeds or monthly download allowance to do any of the things that make high speed internet access worth having. This of course means there's little point in companies offering services such as Video on Demand because hardly anyone can use them."

Without net neutrality rules, things are likely to get worse. I'll tell you how on the next page.