[IT]Irish broadband market needs to be unbundled

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http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/finance/2006/0609/3747490597BW09WIRED.html

Irish broadband market needs to be unbundled
Danny O'Brien

Wired on Friday: Why is it that so many of our technology policies are imported - or, at least, heavily cast in the mould of US policy? In part, it must be because the US has the population, the political funds and the technological adoption to shout even its most niche political debates from the rooftops or, these days, from the desktops.

Take the battle over network neutrality. First mentioned in this column last November, this esoteric topic has now become a resounding US political issue, involving high-cost lobbying and hundreds of thousands of involved net citizens.

A campaign to support network neutrality legislation, savetheinternet.com, has garnered 770,000 signatures.

The mighty, billion-dollar telecommunications companies, which are against the legislation, have run TV advertisements across the country in an attempt to discredit it.

But what, exactly, is network neutrality? And, with an eye to that policy immigration effect, should we adopt it in Europe or, even, in the Republic?

The telephone and cable companies that provide broadband in the US have been muttering about charging websites and other net services for access to their customers - an inversion of the traditional rule that internet users pay for their own access in order to reach the rest of the internet. Ed Whitacre, chief executive of telecoms company AT&T, suggested that it was ridiculous that Google could use his broadband connections for free.

Google, of course, doesn't get the internet for free. Like everyone else, it pays for its own connection - millions of dollars for the amount of data and speed it requires. What Whitacre is describing is a double-charge, with a hint of a threat attached. Pay again, or we'll degrade your service for our customers. Pay more, and perhaps we'll degrade your competitors instead.

Network neutrality is a regulatory attempt to prevent this hostage-taking. Advocates of net neutrality call for a law that says broadband providers cannot preferentially treat one site or service over another. Google's access to AT&T customers could not be denied simply on the grounds that it is Google - and AT&T could not give preference to its own internet services just because they were owned by the same company. Like must be treated as like, no matter who the owner.

It sounds sensible and, of course, is fought bitterly by the telephone and cable companies. It is pre-emptive regulation, these companies say, pointing out that, despite the sabre-rattling, no US telecoms company has yet been caught practising such discrimination. Enforced non-discrimination would deny the broadband market the chance to experiment with, and charge for, new premium services that may help them provide universal broadband adoption in a fast-moving competitive internet world. "Don't regulate the net", say the phone companies on their own campaigning website.

The phone companies' rhetoric rings a little hollow. The telcos may not have discriminated yet, but they've certainly mulled publicly over the possibility.

And their fear of regulation seems a little belated, given telecommunications is one of the most regulated industries in American business.

And as for recouping the costs of broadband roll-out, US telecoms companies are neither spectacularly poor nor desperately competitive (28 per cent of US broadband markets have only one provider; 94 per cent have a choice of only two). Nor have they been particularly successful at providing broadband to the masses: last year, the US trailed 16th in the world for adoption.

Sounding familiar yet? Might network neutrality be worth importing to a similarly struggling, and quasi-monopolistic, Irish broadband market?

Perhaps, at some point. But at the moment, both the US and the Republic suffer from a more immediate malaise than the threat of discrimination: lack of competition.

In the case of the US, that competition may never come. The most dedicated attempt to give consumers a choice of high-speed internet providers and open access - called "local loop unbundling" in Europe - has been a failure in the US. Originally drafted so that local telephone companies would be obliged to open their phone lines to other companies to provide DSL internet, a combination of poorly drafted laws, supreme court decisions and weak regulation has meant that both cable and phone lines are locked out from internet broadband competition.

It is largely in this atmosphere of monopoly power that the protection of network neutrality has been sought.

The Republic, however, has a chance to escape such a desperate state. Local loop unbundling has created a vibrant, competitive broadband market in the UK and other countries. There are hopeful signs that ComReg and Eircom may yet get it together to successfully implement it in the State.

With competition, the network neutrality rules may never be needed. A service that blocks Google, or gives fast access to the highest bidder at the expense of free services, may have its place, but it's not the free internet, and it's unlikely to be popular with consumers who have a choice.

In the US, network neutrality is an attempt to fight off the resurgent monopoly power of the phone companies. The Republic still has a chance to break that monopoly power down: freeing the internet, without ever being faced with having to make plans to save it.

Danny O'Brien is activism co-ordinator with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

© The Irish Times