Network neutrality
Encyclopedia : N : NE : NET : Network neutrality
| The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this article is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of [Citing sources/example stylecitation], [Footnotefootnoting] or [External linksexternal linking]. Please see the relevant discussion on the [talk page] for further details. The term Network neutrality was coined in 2005 by Columbia University law professor Tim Wu. It has traditionally meant the neutrality of the basic internet protocols with respect to the diverse ways in which they can be used. This is more often called "content neutrality" or "application neutrality". In accordance with the network engineering principle of layering, the network protocol, IP, was designed only to ensure that information moves from one computer to another. A neutral network, in this sense, does not inspect the information that it moves, but leaves interpretation to higher-layer protocols. By design, IP may provide different levels of service and priority. More recently the term has been adopted by advocates of Internet regulation, who insist that it simply means the application of common carrier rules to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and broadband telecommunications carriers. These rules would require ISPs to manage all Internet traffic on equal terms. Without such rules, they claim ISPs could charge differently for a block of traffic that has particular content or originates from a particular source. Critics dispute this interpretation of common carrier law, noting that offering different levels of service for different fees is a legitimate practice, as long as pricing is rational and non-discriminatory. They further note that Internet access over the cable network has never been regulated by telecommunications law, yet no instances of real discrimination have occurred on US cable Internet access networks. And they further note that broad-brush provisions in Network Neutrality legislation such as the Snowe-Dorgan amendment would ban many widely used service offerings and hamper the development of new services such as VoIP. Network neutrality has become a contested area of law in the United States as a result of statements by Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T, about free-riders: Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? ... for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts! While telephone companies were once subject to common carrier rules, cable operators have not been. Recent FCC and legal actions have freed DSL from telecommunications regulation, placing it on the same legal ground as cable Internet access.
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BackgroundBecause of the framing of network neutrality in terms of the prospect of "prioritizing particular applications," debate has tended to focus on whether network providers should be allowed to speed up or deprioritize such applications. This has resulted in considerable contention and confusion, and it has also led many to conceptualize network neutrality in terms of applications as such, rather than in terms of how the network layer brings about flexibility and uniform information flow.Broadband Internet access has most often been provided to users on a bulk pricing model based on bandwidth. A long-running debate over the prospect of offering quality of service—prioritized treatment of information flows for particular applications—over the IP layer (using certain fields provided in the original protocol) has led us to where we stand today. Bulk pricing, i.e. one price to all home users of, say DSL or cable modem, broadband may appear to eliminate the ISP's ability to leverage price discrimination to recoup consumer surplus, but if the ISP can provide for varying levels of service to websites at various implicit prices, then ISPs can potentially regain their leverage. In order to properly exercise price discrimination, the seller needs sufficient information with which to distinguish among its customers. Essentially the basic question has been whether there is any possibility that a method may be found to use the existing Internet Protocol for the purpose of QoS. The Internet2 project concluded, six years ago, that the IP protocol was essentially not amenable to the purpose with equipment available at the time. This development was the basis for the testimony of Gary Bachula, Vice President for External Affairs for Internet2, to the Senate Commerce Committee's Hearing on Network Neutrality. Bachula's conclusions regarding regulation are not supported by the engineers who conducted the QoS experiment for Internet2, however. While these developments proceed, network providers often enter into peering arrangements with each other that include terms stipulating how certain application flows should be treated. In addition, network providers often implement various policies such as blocking of port 25 to prevent insecure systems from serving as spam relays, or other ports commonly used by decentralized music search applications (often called "P2P" though all applications on the Internet are essentially peer-to-peer). They also present "terms of service" that often include rules about the use of certain applications as part of their contracts with users. Most "consumer Internet" providers implement policies like these. However, the effect of peering arrangements among network providers are only local to the peers that enter into the arrangements, and cannot affect traffic flow across the global network. And users directly experience the effect of port blocking and other policies. In the meantime, network engineers recognize the benefits of the design of the Internet Protocol, specifically in terms of its serving as a flexible platform for application innovation. Cogent Communications has issued a statement that it practices network neutrality. While the prospect of accomplishing QoS across the IP layer has been the subject of ongoing research for many years, recent regulatory and judiciary developments have marked the occasion for major incumbent broadband providers to declare that they will begin offering priced, prioritized delivery by directly shaping—as a differentiated, priced service offering—the behavior of the network layer in service of particular applications, sources and destinations, as it was designed to do. Network neutrality rules seek to counter this development. The discussion of how the existing practices of network providers often already do not administer to users the full capacity of the Internet as designed, combined with the fact that the IP network design does not serve low latency applications well when the network is close to capacity, has resulted in a debate on network neutrality conducted not in terms of the Internet's actual design merits, but in terms of the prospect of network providers differentiating their services by charging for prioritization. In the early 2000s, legal scholars such as Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig raised the issue of neutrality in a series of academic papers addressing regulatory frameworks for packet networks. Wu in particular noted that the Internet is structurally biased against voice and video applications. The FCC subsequently adopted principles which ensured "consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice." In 2006 a bill called Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 was introduced in the US House of Representatives, which referenced the principles enunciated by the FCC and authorized fines up to $750,000 for infractions. An attempt to amend the bill by Democrat Ed Markey with additional network neutrality regulations banning fee-based Quality of Service offerings was defeated 269-152. Residential broadband providers such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T propose tiered service offerings, which they claim allow them to recoup their investment in the last mile of the Internet, and encourage future network development. Some claim that as bandwidth-intensive peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent become commonplace, the traditional Internet congestion management system (based on good behavior at the network's endpoints) may no longer be viable, so alternate methods may become necessary. These alternate methods include bandwidth limits and priority-based Quality of Service for voice and video. Proponents of tiered pricing include some large communication companies, manufacturers of network equipment, academics, Internet engineers, and business-oriented interest groups. They argue that the Internet is in the midst of tremendous change due to fiber to the home, peer-to-peer applications, VoIP, and IPTV, and regulations offered to date are potentially damaging to network operation and investment. Those favoring neutrality include some content providers such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, academics, Internet engineers, media reform and watchdog groups, musicians, bloggers, and most of the major public and liberal consumer advocacy groups including Free Press, Consumers Union and Common Cause. They contend that any non-neutral scheme could allow ISP's to unfairly discriminate and control which data they prioritize, such as data from their own sponsors or media interests, resulting in a two-tiered Internet. They generally claim that passage of the COPE Act turns control of the Internet over to the carriers, who will then convert it into something resembling cable TV. DebateSome broadband providers proposed to start charging content providers in return for higher levels of service. Packets originating from providers who pay the additional fees would in some fashion be given better than "neutral" handling, while those content providers who do not pay the higher fees would get a lesser level of service. Given this ability to accelerate the handling of selected packets, the service providers would perhaps give Quality of Service guarantees to given senders or recipients. This points out that once the net moves away from common carrier rules there are at least two levels of pricing: the price an ISP charges consumers for access and the price the ISP could charge Websites by varying bandwidth. Advocates of "non-neutrality" point to advantages with respect to rationing what perhaps will be scarce bandwidth. Indeed, the topic was opened because of what may be a substantial increase in bandwidth consumption as multi-media uses of the Internet expand. Carriers want content providers who support bandwidth-intensive multi-media Internet traffic to pay the carriers a premium to support further network investments. On the other hand, advocates of network neutrality observe that any practice that shapes the transmission of bits in the transport layer based on application designs will undermine the design for flexibility of the transport. Others claim collecting premium fees from certain "preferred" customers would distort the market for Internet applications in favor of larger and better-funded content providers and against small providers. They argue for banning such financial arrangements, even if those payments might offset total network operating costs ultimately charged to consumers. There is also the question of the service impact on the end user who has purchased broadband access from a carrier, only to experience differing response times in interacting with various content providers, some of whom paid the carrier a "premium" and some who did not. Numerous commentors have cautioned that authorizing incumbent network providers to override the separation of the transport and application layers of the Internet signals the end of the authority of the fundamental Internet standards and indeed, of the standards-making processes for the Internet themselves. The debate has moved into the regulatory and legislative arena in a somewhat unusual way, because those who prefer to leave the status quo unchanged are advocating legislation in the U.S. to formalize elements of "net neutrality." Those would want to change by introducing "non-neutrality" do not presently want any further legislation. The two proposed versions of "neutrality" legislation to date would prohibit: (1) the "tiering" of broadband through sale of voice- or video-oriented Quality of Service packages; and (2) content- or service-sensitive blocking or censorship on the part of broadband carriers. These bills have been sponsored by Representatives Markey, Sensenbrenner, et. al., and Senators Snowe, Dorgan, and Wyden. Advocates of continuing with the status quo include content providers such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and several prominent social-action non-profits, and media critics such as Robert McChesney. On the other hand, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and other companies in the telecommunications industry who want to offer "non-neutral" Internet broadband services are calling for the Congress and regulators to take a "hands off" approach. Presumably they do not feel the need for additional enabling legislation or regulation to make such changes. The telecommunications companies have found allies in various groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the League of United Latin American Citizens -- alliances the telecommunications companies forged in exchange for promises to provide improved Internet services to certain communities. Complicating the discussion is the practical reality that the Internet is a highly federated environment composed of thousands of carriers, many millions of content providers and more than a billion end users - consumers and businesses. Prioritizing packets is complicated even if both the content originator and the content consumer use the same carrier. It is probably infeasible if the packets have to traverse multiple carrier networks, because the packet getting "premium" service while traversing network A may drop down to non-premium service levels in network B. Further, the discussion has been very U.S.-centric and very terrestrial-network centered, even though the Internet is inherently global and mobility is the fastest growing source of new demand. The immediate debate over "neutrality" does not capture the many dimensions of this topic; for example, should voice packets get higher priority than packets carrying email? Some further discussion of neutrality follows. Other aspects of \"Neutrality\"Classification of Internet traffic according to Type of Service required is built into the structure of the IP datagram in the form of a 3-bit wide Precedence field and has always been part of the Internet's architecture. Until the emergence of multimedia and VoIP, this field was rarely used in practice. (The original deployment of TCP/IP was on a dozen computers connected by 56 Kbps modems, an unsuitable platform for voice.) By practice, the original "ARPAnet" and the later Internet have typically forwarded packets on a best-efforts or "neutral" basis. The older routers did so because they weren't capable of segregating traffic by priority without introducing delay. Modern routers have more advanced logic that enables them to route in real-time across several Classes of Service. Although the incumbent carriers have raised questions regarding "neutrality" as they have asserted that they wish to charge users offering materials and applications for special treatment, there are other dimensions to the neutrality debate. For example: Columbia University Law School professor Tim Wu described the Internet as not a neutral network, having evolved to give data applications preference over those that require low latency and low jitter, such as voice and video: "In a universe of applications, including both latency-sensitive and insensitive applications, it is difficult to regard the IP suite as truly neutral." Therefore, Wu states that regulations on Internet access networks must allow broadband operators to make reasonable tradeoffs between the requirements of different applications, but regulators should carefully scrutinize network operator behavior where local networks interconnect.Wu, Tim, "[Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination]." Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law Vol. 2, p. 141 (2005). Law professor Susan Crawford, on the other hand, proposes open access (or unbundling) as a means of promoting network neutrality. Crawford defines net neutrality differently from Wu, insisting that the Internet's transport layer should not be shaped in accordance with particular applications but rather provide only the transport service appropriate to the careful file transfer that was defined in the early 1970s as the Internet's canonical application. According to Crawford's view, bits are bits, and accurate timing of packet delivery is a form of anti-competitive discrimination that ultimately leads to corporate control of the public commons. Crawford argues that networking is a commodity, like electricity, best provided by the government. In Wu's view of net neutrality, the network should adapt to the diverse needs of emerging applications; in Crawford's view the network's traditional service structure provides a flexible transport designed to support a broad variety of applications. \"Dumb\" versus \"Intelligent\" networksNetwork neutrality is a theory of network design closely related to the end to end principle. Under this principle, a neutral network is a dumb network, merely passing packets, insensitive to the needs of applications generating and consuming those packets. By contrast, an intelligent network distinguishes between the types of data carried on the network and treats each one appropriately according to service requirements and network state. These terms merely signify the network's level of knowledge about and influence over the packets it handles - they carry no connotations of stupidity, inferiority or superiority. Regulatory Related ConsiderationsThe topic is very much complicated by differing regulatory histories of the Internet versus most communications services. The Internet was essentially unregulated, while most telecommunications services were highly regulated. The "neutrality" debate in some sense represents a convergence in that carrier services are now much more deregulated, while neutrality advocates may bring more regulation to the Internet. Some of the arguments associated with network neutrality regulations came into prominence in mid 2002, offered by the "High Tech Broadband Coalition", a group comprising developers for Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft. However, the fuller concept of "Network neutrality" was developed mainly by legal academics, most prominently law professors Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, the first government official to endorse Network Neutrality. It is worth noting, however, that the ideas underlying Network Neutrality have a long pedigree in telecommunications regulation. Proposals for network neutrality laws are generally opposed by the cable television and telephone industries, and some network engineers and free-market scholars from the conservative to libertarian, including Christopher Yoo and Adam Thierer. Opponents argue that (1) Network neutrality regulations severely limit the Internet's usefulness; (2) network neutrality regulations threaten to set a precedent for even more intrusive regulation of the Internet; (3) imposing such regulation will chill investment in competitive networks (e.g., wireless broadband) and deny network providers the ability to differentiate their services; and (4) that network neutrality regulations confuse the unregulated Internet with the highly regulated telecom lines that it has shared with voice and cable customers for most of its history. According to this view, the Internet has succeeded in attracting users and applications because it has been an oasis of deregulation in the midst of a highly regulated telecom market. Critics of Internet regulation in the name of "net neutrality" also say the Internet is much less neutral than proponents claim, pointing to such practices as the Type of Service header in the IP Datagram, the practice of active queuing described in RFC 2309 and the existence of Integrated Services and Differentiated Services enabling Quality of Service over IP. According to this view, the Internet is still very weak at meeting the needs of real-time and multimedia applications, and its continued evolution is stymied by the onerous regulations proposed in the name of network neutrality. These views may be said to contrast with the historical development of network neutrality, which involves a retreat from intrusive regulation, and expanded investment in network construction, consumer and business subscriptions, and the technology sector which requires an open and neutral platform for its business model; they may also be said to more accurately describe the Internet as it has been and may become if not stifled by overly-zealous regulation. Approaches to network neutralityNetwork Neutrality proposals can take many forms. While all share some features, some of the specific proposals are:
Background on the political controversyFor many years, Internet access across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) was governed by common carrier regulations. These guidelines required unbundling of communications services and ISP functions. However, on August 5, 2005, the FCC reclassified DSL services as Information Services rather than Telecommunications Services, and replaced common carrier requirements with a set of four less-restrictive net neutrality principles. This sparked a debate over whether or not Internet Service Providers should also be allowed to discriminate between different service providers by offering higher network priority to higher-paying companies and customers, allowing some services to operate faster or more predictably and ultimately become more acceptable to end users.Cable modem Internet access had always been classified an Information Service and not regulated by common carrier law, just as the high-speed data links that make up the Internet's core are non-regulated. Supporters of net neutrality regulations argue that the current FCC principles are too weak to prevent telecommunications companies from charging fees to certain content providers in exchange for preferential treatment, which they believe will threaten innovation and entrepreneurship on the Internet. They see the Internet as a "level playing-field" which rewards the best ideas rather than the most well-funded ideas and believe that net neutrality guidelines are necessary to maintain this dynamic. Opponents of net neutrality regulations argue that the Internet is not a level-playing field as companies such as Google and Akamai are free to achieve a performance advantage over smaller competitors by replicating servers and buying high-bandwidth services. Service discrimination, against the real background of today's Internet, actually makes the Internet more neutral, according to this view. Telecommunications companies, having invested billions of dollars in new network infrastructure, believe they have the right to operate the network with minimal government interference. They believe that imposing net neutrality regulations would prevent them from expanding and improving Internet access for their customers, stifling incentives to develop new technologies and possibly leading to higher prices for consumers. There is currently a debate in Congress over how to best balance the concerns of both groups. Relevant trendsSome trends affecting the debate are:
Legal historyOriginally, the Internet was not legally available for commercial use. It became available in the early 1990's.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, consumers and businesses began to attach new devices to their internet connections, and use internet services that were not in existence in the mid-1990s. One reaction of many broadband operators was to impose various contractual limits on the activities of their subscribers. In the best known examples, Cox Cable disciplined users of virtual private networks (VPNs) and AT&T, as a cable operator, warned customers that using a Wi-Fi service for home-networking constituted "theft of service" and a federal crime. Comcast blocked ports of VPNs, forcing the state of Washington, for example, to contract with telecommunications providers to ensure that its employees had access to unimpeded broadband for telecommuting applications. These early instances of "broadband discrimination" prompted both academic and government responses. FCC Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 announced a new set of non-discrimination principles, which he called the principles of "Network Freedom". In a speech at the Silicon Flatirons Symposium in February 2004, Powell stated that consumers must have the following four freedoms:
Under pressure from the FCC and consumer groups, the broadband operators generally relaxed their most glaring restrictions on network usage. In early 2005, in the Madison River case, the FCC for the first time showed a willingness to enforce its network neutrality principles. The FCC imposed fines on a local telephone carrier that was blocking voice over IP service. As Michael Powell stated, "The industry must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if the Internet is to remain an open platform for innovation." That case however, is no longer a precedent, as the laws that it followed no longer apply. CongressBy late 2005, network neutrality regulations were included in several Congressional draft bills, as a part of ongoing proposals to reform the Telecommunications Act of 1996. They would generally require internet providers to allow consumers access to any application, content, or service. However, important exceptions allow providers to discriminate for security purposes, or to offer specialized services like "broadband video" service. These regulations generally forbid ISPs from offering different service plans to their customers.In April 2006 a large coalition of political bloggers and citizen/consumer-oriented lobbying groups such as Free Press and MoveOn created "Save The Internet," a political-action lobby endorsing network neutrality regulations. Within two months of its establishment, over 1,000,000 signatures were delivered to Congress in favor of a network neutrality. Campaigns have also been launched by content providers (including Google, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon.com) in support of neutrality and regulation, and by service providers (including AT&T and Verizon) against it, called "It's our Net" and "Hands off the Internet." The following legislative proposals have been introduced in Congress to address the network neutrality question:
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California), one of the Democrats who voted for the Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill, said: "I think the bill is a blunt instrument, and yet I think it does send a message that it's important to attain jurisdiction for the Justice Department and for antitrust issues." Neutrality as lawNet neutrality in the common carrier sense has been instantiated into law in many countries, including the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Japan, but none of these countries bans tiered service plans as American regulations would. In Japan, for example, the nation's largest phone company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, operates a service called Flet's Square over their FTTH high speed internet connections that serves video on demand at speeds and levels of service higher than generic internet traffic.[link]In the United States, New York has established net neutrality as a telecommunications standard See 16 NYCRR Part 605. Many advocates have spoken loudly on its behalf. This, combined with worries over favoritism by telecoms, prompted Congress to begin hearings on the subject. On February 7, 2006, Congress called upon prominent members of the technology industry to testify on behalf of the standard, including Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP), and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google. In his testimony, he said, "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success." Critics regarded Dr. Cerf's testimony as hyperbolic, since only one example of the abusive behavior he decries has ever been recorded in the US (the Madison River case.) Market economics of network neutralityThe arguments against network neutrality as a principle take several forms, as the principle of neutrality is defined in several ways. The first and most common says that packet-level discrimination is absolutely necessary in order to provide Quality of Service on any packet network. Quality of service commitments could help market additional services. Another argument says that service bundling creates the revenue streams necessary to encourage investment in the networks of the future. If a broadband carrier is, for example, allowed to charge more for a high-priority voice service when competing services such as Skype run at standard priority, the carrier's voice service will sound better, and this will limit Skype's appeal while increasing the carrier's willingness to invest. One response to this argument concedes that discrimination results in greater profit for broadband carriers -- but asks whether the costs in terms of application innovation are worth it. In the example, the operator is exploiting a bottleneck in the network to extend its monopoly from the network service to another sector entirely, in this case messaging applications. It also asks whether allowing discrimination is the best way to encourage network deployments. In other words, there may be less distortionary ways to encourage carriers to build out their network, such as using the tax code, or government funding. Another argument against network neutrality relies on the economics of congestion. A neutral network is like a public good, leading to collective action or tragedy of the commons-like problems. Hence a provider may need to discriminate as between users or usage to ensure maximum network performance. For example, if someone uses up too much bandwidth, this argument suggests, a network operator should be allowed to slow it down. The typical answer to this argument goes as follows. There may be more and less distortionary ways of managing bandwidth -- and blocking or disfavoring certain applications is more distortionary. A more neutral way of managing bandwidth is to manage bandwidth at the consumer side - i.e., to limit the users to, say, x gigabytes per month after which their transfer rate is reduced, instead of banning applications (systems of this type have been employed in other countries, e.g. Australia). However, service providers in the U.S. have resisted these arguments, suggesting that they do not want to charge their users for using higher bandwidth, either because this might not be technically feasible or because it would be a major pricing change which might not be matched by competitors or accepted by the marketplace. Instead, service providers have been proposing to charge content providers to offset the higher bandwidth charges of the end users. This argument omits the fact that content providers already pay a service provider to host data on Internet for end users to consume. It is possible that bandwidth limits aren't the central issue in this debate, but that latency is. Neutralists argue that charging for access to priority services amounts to "double taxation" If standard service goes for one price, and enhanced service for another, it is arguably consistent not to allow access to enhanced service to those who haven't subscribed to it. Another argument is deregulatory. It says that network neutrality is a fine idea but that it will require government intervention, and intervention will invariably and inevitably lead to unintended consequences. This argument leads to a larger debate over whether government can ever act in useful ways, which is difficult to summarize. However, in response, some advocates of network neutrality have argued that FCC action alone is sufficient. Others argue that legislation will simply replicate common-carriage principles already long in place for many communications networks. This argument can also be opposed on the grounds that most high-speed network providers are cable or telephone companies who are still granted local monopolies by the government. Government granted monopolies must be regulated because if the monopolies act improperly market forces don't exist to correct the behavior. Evidence for this can be found in the self-same telephone monopolies work to eliminate competitors from reselling access to their networks—networks paid for with public funds.[link] The networks regulated by the Markey Amendment are not monopolies, however. Advocates and opponentsAn electronic petition supporting net neutrality has over one million signatures and several hundred organizations also support it. A broad coalition of leading voices including Steve Wozniak, Susan Crawford, and David Reed have endorsed a distinctive legislative proposal for net neutrality.http://www.dpsproject.com Most of the major internet application companies are advocates of neutrality regulations, including IAC/InterActiveCorp, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Earthlink and especially Google. Software giant Microsoft has also taken a stance in support of neutrality regulation.http://static.publicknowledge.org/pdf/nn-letter-20060301.pdf Non-profits in support include Moveon.org, Consumer Federation of America, AARP, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project, Free Press, the Christian Coalition, and TechNet.http://cdn.moveon.org/content/pdfs/MoveOnChristianCoalition.pdf Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web) has also spoken out in favor of net neutrality.Common carrier implications of network neutrality regulation is strongly opposed by the Bell companies and by some major cable companies. They view non-discrimination as compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment because they think that cases like Chesapeake and Potomac and even FCC v. Turner stands for the rule that Telcos and Cablecos are First Amendment speakers, and as such cannot be compelled to promote speech they disagree with. Cable operators, like Comcast have taken a somewhat mixed position -- they have repeatedly affirmed that they consider neutral networks desirable, but think regulation is a mistake. The Bells, on the other hand, have actively pushed for tiered networks, arguing that they're more application-neutral than the idealized TCP/IP Internet. Non-profit pro free-market organizations, including the Freedom Works Foundation, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Progress and Freedom Foundation, New American Century (also referred to as PNAC), and the Ludwig von Mises Institute oppose neutrality regulations.http://www.freedomworks.orghttp://www.nationalbcc.org/http://www.pff.org/ The Weekly Standard hasn't taken a side, arguing that using eminent domain against the Telcos is the best alternative. Finally, network equipment manufacturers such as Cisco, 3M, and the National Association of Manufacturers believe neutrality regulations are premature. However, observers such as Democratic Media point out that manufacturers have much to gain with a revamped network architecture: offerings like Cisco's Service Exchange Framework promise significant new revenue opportunities should the rules of net neutrality change.http://www.democraticmedia.org/issues/netneutrality.html Some U.S. technology trade associations, have remained noncommittal on the issue. The U.S. financial sector has similarly remained neutral, though advocates hope this will change as the heavily Internet-dependent banking industry considers both sides of the debate. Examples of discriminatory access by ISPsBelow are examples listed by SaveTheInternet of past examples of abuses by ISP companies where they blocked rivals or unfavorable opinions about themselves.
Relevance of municipal wireless and other \"third pipes\"Much of the push for network neutrality rules comes from the lack of competition in broadband services. For that reason, municipal wireless and other wireless service providers are highly relevant to the debate. If successful, such services would provide a third type of broadband access with the potential to change the competitive landscape. For similar reasons, the feasibility of broadband over powerline services is also important to the network neutrality issue. However, as of the Spring of 2006, deployments beyond cable and DSL service have created little new competition.Cablescos in response to this threat have lobbied Congress for a federal preemption to ban states and municipalities from competing and thereby interfering with interstate commerce. However, there is current Supreme Court precedent for an exception to the Commerce Power of Congress for states as states going into business for their citizens. See also
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