Net neutrality laws needed more than internet filter
Disappointment, if repeated often, inevitably leads to resignation. So it is no surprise that the prevailing sentiment among those who take an interest in communications policy in Australia is an overarching air of futility.
Following the less-than-illustrious examples set by Graham Richardson, Richard Alston and Helen Coonan, Senator Stephen Conroy has found himself the target of a barrage of articulate, well-orchestrated criticism over his internet filtering plans.
Critics claim the Government will spend a fortune in a fruitless attempt to prove what everyone already knows – that the plan cannot be feasibly implemented on a practical level, will dramatically slow down everyone’s internet speeds, and represents totally incoherent, government-mandated censorship of a number of perfectly legal websites.
The critics are correct. The plan is simply unworkable on a practical level (although the Government seems determined to spend a fortune in its attempt to disprove this). But as important as the battle over the filter is, there is an even more significant encounter looming on the horizon.
The issue is net neutrality. It’s not yet a household phrase in Australia, but it has the potential to be, and soon. Speaking in Thailand a year ago, Conroy said he was “very interested in sharing information” on issues including net neutrality, citing Japan as an example of “the challenges that occur when very fast broadband is widely available and services begin to fill capacity to the point where [such] issues emerge.” Contacted last week by the City Hub, Conroy’s office had not replied with details of any forthcoming policy prior to publication.
So what is net neutrality? Simply, it reflects the status quo operation of the internet in Australia (and most places for that matter). Currently, the web works on a first-come first-served basis, with data processed in the order it is sent. But a number of big telecommunications providers in the US, such as AOL and AT&T, are not keen on this arrangement – they want the ability to stream certain types of traffic (for example, VoIP) faster and others (such as peer-to-peer connections) slower.
In Australia presently, there is no barrier stopping a carrier from engaging in predatory activity towards competitors. The big carriers love the idea of prioritising certain packets of data, because as Simon Sharwood of TechTarget points out, the wider context of this issue is bigger profits for telcos. Failing to enact net neutrality legislation opens up the possibility of charging users more for unimpeded connections; if this was to occur, the impact on smaller carriers would be devastating, effectively placing them at the mercy of the carriers whose networks they utilised. Of course this would have a flow-on effect on consumers.
But there’s an even more worrying aspect. The communications department was depicted by an observer in a recent profile as “full of lightweights” while Conroy’s own command of policy detail – in the estimation of a prominent media boss – was described as “hopeless”. The real worry here is that Conroy’s advisers simply do not have the technical knowledge to resist the charms of the big telcos.
The irony is that the Government’s recent fibre-to-the-home broadband announcement was startling, bold, and exactly the sort of policy reflective of an administration that grasps the importance of high-speed broadband in the coming century. To have it teamed with the terribly backward-looking and ill-conceived filter represents an exceptionally curious policy mismatch. The issue of net neutrality, meanwhile, could go either way.
– BY SHANT FABRICATORIAN
