isen.blog

From: alberto@magenta.cl
Subject: f2c feedback
Date: April 5, 2006 5:45:29 PM EDT (CA)
To: ISEN@ISEN.COM

Dear David,

It was a real pleasure attending f2c in Washington this week and having the opportunity to meet you and your guests there. Unfortunately, I was not able to talk to your audience about our "net neutrality" problems in Chile. Next time.

I was looking after support and help from the Internet community for our case, but I saw a lot of pessimism, regret and complain among your crowd. My personal view of the NN issue is that you have a lot of resources to fight against discrimination from the telcos starting from your marvelous constitution. You mentioned civil rights and I personally think NN is all about it.

We (humans) have built a wonderful public space (it used to be called cyberspace) that should have all the privileges and protection we give to other public spaces. Think about the sidewalks, plazas and parks, air, etc. You are allowed to use these spaces to talk, walk, think, etc. The space created by the Internet, even though it is of virtual nature, should be treated similarly, that is, nobody has the right to ban or block your rights to talk, think or express yourself as you wish in that space. Your first amendment works OK here, doesn't it?.

Obviously, you have to pay for the access there, no free rides. However, whomever gives you that ride is not allowed to impose rules of his own once you reach that space. Railroads won an extra margin by buying and selling livestock and grain because they were the transportation monopoly from the US West to the US East in the 18 hundreds. Telcos are the railroad robber barons of today, this is old story new stage, no news about it.

My opinion: trust your institutions, they are strong, they will protect the average American from abuse. However, you must be working 7 by 24 to catch an eye on what the telcos are doing. You have to build technical tools to monitor what they are doing, how they discriminate your packets, how they manage their part of the Internet. Educate their clients, make them know how their civil rights are being violated.

To create a "fast lane" Internet is a sophisticated way of discrimination, market position abuse and anticompetitive behavior. It is very easy to see that this "simple" action will inevitably lead to the death of the current Internet. Who will invest in increasing the capacity of the "slow lanes" if they don't get any dollar extra for that?. Who content provider will use the dirt road an punish his business and his clients Web experience? Who will be able to resist the telco extortion if her competitors switch to the "fast lane"?

I used to think the Internet would evolve to a QoS network all by itself if market forces were allowed to work freely. In fact, once an ISP decided to install QoS to prioritize time sensible traffic, such as audio and video, then all the others would have had to follow suit. A VoIP customer would have appreciated the QoS service its ISP was willing to give him. In turn, the ISP would have preferred to work with a QoS first tier provider for its backbone connection. That's how a technological improvement is transferred to the end user by the market. All the incentives were placed in the right direction. Today, however, I have changed my mind. NN should be enforced even though there would be good technical reasons to allow discrimination among packets. Watching how the telcos have behaved so far it would be easy for them or others to abuse QoS in order to prioritize any traffic they choose, not necessarily real time traffic. It is easier to fool around the intelligence of a QoS capable Internet, than to manipulate the stupid network.

Other issue raised in the seminar was a lack of definition for Net Neutrality. It seems to me that whenever you use a term like that so extensively, it finally ends up losing its meaning. My definition is quite simple: NN means that all packets should be treated equally on the Net. This means that all ISPs should commit not to prioritize any packet from others in any way.

A different story is bandwidth (symmetrical or not). Bandwidth (legally) is the customer right to deliver (or receive) a certain amount of packets or bits to (from) the Net per unit of time. The more bandwidth you demand the more you have to pay. But, that doesn't mean that the routers inside the Internet should treat my packets preferentially to those of others. They would have to wait their turn to be delivered on a first come first served fashion as those of anybody else. Pure democracy. Skipping a queue is a nasty thing to do or to tolerate. Think about vehicle traffic jams. Why should the Internet be different?

If you feel NN is being jeopardized in the US, then you need to know more about the Chilean Internet. I will summarize it for you and the reason why I attended your seminar in the first place.

Telefonica is the current incumbent phone company in Chile. They bought CTC 15 years ago. CTC used to be operated by the Government as a traditional PTT. They hold more than 90% of the copper wires whithin the country and they are in a position to provide Broadband connections to 75 to 80% of the population today. Their main competitor at the home level is VTR, the cable TV monopoly, owned by Liberty. However, the home passes of VTR account only for 25% of the population.

My company, RedVoiss (an Internet Telephony Service Provider), sued Telefonica for anticompetitive behavior under the Court for the Defense of Free Competition (TDLC, per its Spanish acronym) in Chile. Our antitrust laws forbid a monopoly to exert market power in illegal ways, as in anyplace.

What are the nasty behaviors of Telefonica we denounced in Court?

1.- To make independent ISPs, who need to provide Broadband connections to their clients through Telefonica's copper pairs, sign a wholesale agreement (Megavia) under which the ISP commits not to use the pipe for VoIP in any of its forms. Also, the ISP cannot use Telefonica ADSL service to do VPNs, Web and many other things without Telefonica's previous approval.

2.- Telefonica actually blocks the VoIP ports (SIP and H.323) to all its clients who access the Internet through its ADSL service, directly or indirectly through independent ISPs.

3.- Telefonica forbids independent ISPs and end users to install any equipment behind the ADSL modem without its written approval.

4.- Telefonica forbids its clients to share its Internet access internally, if hired as single user, or externally (with your neighbor, for instance).

5.- Telefonica discriminates among single users and multiusers of its ADSL service, charging the later significantly more than the first, even though the hired bandwidth is the same.

6.- Telefonica bundles its traditional phone service with Broadband access at a LOWER monthly price than the price it charges for the same Broadband service included in the bundle, when this service is provided as stand alone.

7.- Telefonica installs, by default, an ADSL modem with a USB port only, so that its clients are able to install just one computer behind it. If they ask for an Ethernet modem, Telefonica will charge them US$ 30 to replace the modem and a permanent rent of US$ 2 per month additional. The cost difference from one modem or the other is less than one dollar for the volume of modems Telefonica buys today.

These are REAL Net Neutrality problems. These are not solutions in search of a problem, but nasty behavior from a monopolist, not to be tolerated by anybody who knows what the Internet freedoms are.

I hope you can help me make these issues known among your community. I am anxious to colaborate with any effort to impose NN worldwide. I know what is at stake and I wish both, the US and Chile can cooperate as well as we did when we signed our Free Trade Agreement.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Sincerely,

Alberto Mordojovich
CEO RedVoiss
http://www.redvoiss.net
Santiago, Chile

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