Net Neutrality And The Tragedy Of The Commons

"Net neutrality" has an appealing and politically correct aura to it, especially when it is linked to references to protecting freedom of speech and access to information, and mitigating the risks that large companies will suppress innovative services from small entrepreneurs. This aura is reinforced by the sometimes objectionable or customer-hostile behavior of these large companies and their unpopularity among consumers, from the old Bell System immortalized by Lily Tomlin to today's cellphone operators and cable MSOs. But at the same time network, storage, and processing resources are finite, even though impressive technological innovations have and continue to expand their capacities in ways that sometimes exceed even optimistic forecasts. "Free" in the sense of "unrestricted" is not the same as "cost free." Perhaps like the French or Germans the debate would be clarified if we used two different words in these two different contexts, i.e "libre" and "gratuit" or "frei" and "kostenlos" respectively. If unlimited access to and usage of finite resources are allowed, the risk is that a 21st century "tragedy of the commons" may ensue, in which a shared resource becomes unusable or unavailable for all or many. In order to avoid this very undesirable outcome, procedures and techniques must be established and exercised to manage traffic flows and provide continuous service even during periods when otherwise the network will become clogged by peak traffic demands, such as those which streaming video can generate. The questions then become: 1. Who gets to choose which, how and when traffic management schemes are operated and 2. What rules should be in place to ensure that these schemes are administered fairly and reasonably (and what constitutes "fairness") and not in a discriminatory and anti-competitive manner? Unfortunately as in many other areas much of the debate or arguments presented are either illogical or reflect very ill-informed opinion, like the people who object to plans for new cellular transmitters while complaining about poor coverage of cellphone service ("You can't have your cellphone and tweet against it too."). In this context one suggestion for operators is that they should move beyond data caps as a crude means to limit so-called "flat rate" usage, and certainly as a minimum ensure that customers know in real time when they are approaching their limit. They should develop and implement other approaches to "fair use" policies based on prioritized traffic handling in which the priorities are volume- and not content-or source-dependent.  Today, mobile broadband operators typically use unconditional throttling. Once the "fair use" level is reached, throughput drops to a predetermined level, which  typically frustrates effective or productive use of the broadband connection.  In contrast, prioritized traffic handling assigns users a lower priority in the network once they have reached their fair use level. Heavy users experience degradation in service only when competing for resources in a congested situation. For peer-to-peer users, the experienced reduction in throughput will be limited over time. Only in heavily loaded cells or areas will a peer-to-peer user experience serious issues.   Prioritized traffic handling enables operators to focus on dimensioning their networks for normal usage, while still permitting unlimited or "all you can eat" traffic. The consumer benefits from better overall quality and the reassurance of unlimited service, free of unanticipated large surprises in the size of  the bill. In the long run, an unlimited flat rate model with a fair use clause can be less expensive and more profitable for the operator than "bucket plans" with a banded scale of charges for different monthly data volumes. Bucket sizes are continually having to increase to keep pace with subscriber demand and to ensure competitiveness and market differentiation. Operators already have to offer buckets of 10, 20 or even 50 GBytes to compete. In contrast, the "fair use" level for an unlimited flat rate offer may only have to change relatively slowly over time, as it provides an “all you can eat” model, with service being differentiated instead through speed and price. If operators are not creative and responsive in their pricing and traffic management initiatives, then they may well be confronted with superficially and politically appealing restrictions on their behavior in the name of "Net Neutrality", which will be neither in their interests nor in those of their customers.

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