Net Neutrality In the News
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Oct 16, 2008
Telecoms’ Holy Grail of Internet Profits Is the Next Frontier in Corporate Spying Timothy Karr, Huffington PostYou would think that AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner execs had turned a page and formed a new front in defense of your online rights.
Late last month, they lined up before the Senate to mouth principles that would, in their words, ensure that Internet “consumers have ultimate control over the use of their personal information and guards against privacy abuses.”
The issue spins around the use of a content-filtering technology called “deep packet inspection” or DPI, which allows network managers to inspect, track and target user Internet content as our information passes along the Information Superhighway.
Headlines following the Senate hearing struck a reassuring note, declaring these companies were taking a stand with consumers and “keeping their distance” from DPI.
But we did our own packet inspection and found that the telcos’ actions often speak louder than their testimony.
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Oct 15, 2008
Vodafone: Net neutrality won’t work without second network Lynnette Luna, Fierce Broadband WirelessVodafone said it doesn’t believe network neutrality will be successful in the wireless world without a second network.
According to David Leftley, head of technology economics with Vodafone Group’s R&D, a second network is needed to provide an alternative, intelligent Internet that can prioritize the content it carries. The solution Leftley proposes is an IPX, and is already being developed by mobile operators. The IPX will include a number of private, global IP backbones designed to guarantee quality of service when users connected to different mobile operators communicate with one other.
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Oct 15, 2008
Vodafone gives network neutrality a thumbs-down Mikael Ricknäs, IDG NewsVodafone doesn’t believe network neutrality will work as capacity demands increase, forcing operators to build out faster networks. Instead, a second network is needed, according to David Leftley, head of technology economics at Vodafone Group R&D.
Network neutrality typically refers the way Internet access or backbone providers deliver packets on a first-come, first-served basis, and do not prioritize packets of one type, source, or destination.
That Internet model has so far meant a free lunch for application providers, companies such as Google currently sit on top of networks which the large network operators happily have put in place, according to Leftley.
That has to change, according to Leftley. His idea of how future networks should be financed and built is at odds with the principles of network neutrality.
“There are the network neutralists who believe we just build an infinite capacity network, as big as you can. Bandwidth is infinite, the carrier has no differentiation, and all content has infinite value. The application provider, on the whole, ignores the carrier. There is no value exchange, so I don’t see how that can work,” said Leftley, in panel discussion on the future economics of the Internet at the Wireless World Research Forum in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Instead, what is needed is an alternative, intelligent Internet that can extract and distribute the value of the content it carries, Leftley said. The solution he proposes, IPX (IP Exchange), is already being developed by mobile phone operators.
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Oct 15, 2008
Forget Net Neutrality, ISPs To Serve Up “Address Not Found” Alistair Croll, The New York TimesThere are a lot of bad things on the Internet: spam, child porn, malware, phishing and so on. Until recently, it’s been up to people to protect themselves, using security software or web site blocking. Lately, however, governments and legislators have been calling for service providers to limit where users can go, both to stop criminal activity and to protect na?ve surfers from straying onto malicious sites. Recent advances in DNS may soon let carriers comply with such regulations.
In June, three major carriers agreed to purge child pornography hosted on servers their customers operate in their data centers. Having signed New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Internet code of conduct, every major U.S. ISP has also agreed to eliminate access to certain newsgroups. It’s not just in the U.S., either: Australia’s hotly debated Plan for Cyber Safety blocks content that isn’t child-friendly. Subscribers can opt out, but they’ll still be blocked from content the government deems illegal.
Blocking dangerous destinations is difficult. They change often, so firewalling their addresses doesn’t work well. Inspecting user traffic is CPU-intensive, and deep packet inspection (DPI) has privacy concerns (which hasn’t stopped Sweden.) So it’s been hard for carriers to enforce regulations. Australian regulators acknowledged this, saying that “if there is infrastructure in place to block [a bad site] then it will be required to be blocked” but didn’t specify how carriers would enforce the block.
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Oct 15, 2008
FCC chairman backs use of ‘white space’ spectrum Marguerite Reardon, CNET NewsCompanies lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to access unused spectrum known as “white spaces” won a big victory on Wednesday when Chairman Kevin Martin threw his weight behind the proposal citing findings in an FCC report that was also issued Wednesday.
Martin held a press conference with reporters early in the day in which he pledged his support for the use of the white space spectrum and announced that the issue would be up for vote at the FCC’s next open meeting on November 4. Martin has long been in favor of opening up additional spectrum that can be used to offer wireless broadband services.
The FCC finished testing several proof of concept devices in real world tests this summer to see if companies can develop products that use buffer spectrum between licensed broadcast channels. This spectrum known has “white space” sits between broadcast TV channels in the 150 MHz to 700 MHs spectrum bands.
The commission’s Office of Engineering Technology (OET) newly released report states that devices with geo-location and sensing technologies could be used with some conditions. But the report said devices with sensing-only technology would have to undergo another round of testing within the FCC labs.
Several technology companies, including Motorola, Microsoft, and Google have been lobbying the FCC for more than a year to open up these channels, which would provide between 300 MHz to 400 MHz of unlicensed spectral capacity throughout the country that could be used by anyone.
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