Despite the defeat of a 'Net neutrality amendment in the U.S.
Congress in early June, the heated debate about whether network operators
should be able to charge some Web sites and content providers more
than others isn't going away.
At first glance, it might seem that in a market economy,
infrastructure providers should be able to charge whatever they want. But a case in
Canada provides a perfect example of why that might not work
well.
On one side of the 'Net neutrality debate are the infrastructure
providers. In the U.S., these include companies like Verizon and
AT&T. They argue that they should be able to charge some Web
content providers more than others and apply QoS schemes for
traffic like voice and video. The reason for allowing tiered
services is that Internet traffic is booming and infrastructure
players say they need to charge more to cover their infrastructure
build-out expenses.
On the other side of the neutrality debate are content providers
such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as academics and
consumer groups. They argue that allowing infrastructure providers
to charge content providers more for some services will ultimately
create a two-tiered Internet - one for the rich (or those
well-connected to the infrastructure providers) and one for the
poor.
In Canada, Shaw Communications recommends that users signing up
for non-Shaw VoIP services pay a $10 monthly QoS fee to ensure
their voice service is reliable. That doesn't seem like an
unreasonable policy. After all, VoIP requires higher QoS treatment
than, say, file sharing. The catch in this case is that in addition
to being an infrastructure provider, Shaw also offers a cable telephone service, which competes
directly with other VoIP offerings. By recommending consumers pay a
fee to ensure their non-Shaw VoIP is reliable, Shaw is making its
own voice offering more attractive.
In an ideal world, the Internet would be ruled by market forces.
Unfortunately, infrastructure providers can't be trusted to treat
all content providers equally, so some regulation is going to be
necessary to ensure healthy competition.
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