European ISPs Ask ITU To Limit Net Neutrality 120
judgecorp writes "The UN telecoms body, ITU, is busy writing new regulations for international telecoms — and European service providers, through their body ETNO have urged ITU to enshrine a two-tier Internet by defining a right for service providers to charge more for end-to-end quality of service, as opposed to best efforts connection. The two-tier Internet is opposed by Net Neutrality advocates, and has been outlawed in the Netherlands."
Why would you not want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
To me, the danger (which has never come to pass in a lasting way) is that an ISP would potentially degrade services for competitors.
Again, that has not really come to pass (the Comcast DDOSing of torrents was about the only example, and they were spanked for it). Exiting laws, without network neutrally, prevent such shenanigans.
But I cannot see in any way why a consumer would not WANT to be able to pay for some premium network service with guaranteed levels of quality for one application (and by that I mean in the network sense) rather than having to pay for an entire internet connection with much greater speed and quality.
As we seek to replace phones and TV with pretty much just internet it makes a ton of sense to me to allow cable companies to charge for "premium internet" for a portion of content and/or services.
That is why network neutrally laws do much more harm than good; they protect against a danger that is not real while retarding the advanced internet of the future from arriving at our doors.
This fight will never end... (Score:4, Interesting)
Until networks are government-owned, said government is incorruptible and network neutrality is enshrined in the constitution.
Even then, it only ensures relative safety for the country which meets the above three criteria.
What I'm saying is, fighting against these laws isn't enough.
Someone in Europe or North America is going to enact a severely tiered internet at some point, and everyone in favor of net neutrality needs to be ready with an alternative that will change the game.
Re:Why would you not want this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy. It's happening right now on Comcast.
Use Netflix? It counts towards your 250GB limit. Use Comcast's Xfinity service? It doesn't. So you can end up paying more for Netflix once you exceed your 250GB limit, or you can use Comcast's service and get it all for "free". If that's not promoting Comcast's service overy say, Netflix/Amazon Prime/Vudu/ITunes/etc, I don't know what is.
Hell, why should Comcast route VoIP packets for you? They can jitter all packets to make all VoIP stutter annoyingly. Of course, they will happily sell you a phone service free from such irritants.
Or TV - you want Hulu? Sure, 250GB. BTW, we have a special deal if you take Comcast cable - you can use our Xfinity online streaming for free.
It's all about providers intentionally crippling the competition. Hell, you see it in Canada - where all the providers seem to rush headlong into UBB, forcing Netflix to reduce quality to save bandwidth. But of course, their TV over IP solutions are free from such limits. (And we have vertically integrated monopolies too - each of the big three own content produces, TV channels, TV stations, distirbution networks, last mile, and provide phone and internet service).
So they got caught once. It just means they'll be sneakier the next time around.