Can the Internet Really Be Neutral?

The recent standoff between Comcast and the FCC has put the spotlight yet again on net neutrality. To refresh your memory, a neutral network is defined as one that is free of restrictions on the equipment that may be attached, on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams. This puts a lot of strain on the service providers’ business model, specifically those that are primarily connectivity providers.

Unlike the traditional POTS service, Internet access services are marketed at a flat rate. In other words, carriers receive the same monthly revenue with no direct correlation to the amount of bandwidth or applications the end user actually consumes. As revenue is completely decoupled from network traffic, the ever increasing bandwidth consumption results in a dramatic decrease in the carrier’s revenue per bit.

Service providers have always funded this model by land-grabbing, i.e. keep adding new subscribers to the network. Problem is, as the broadband subscriber market is becoming saturated, the land-grabbing is over, net subscriber growth numbers are plummeting and revenue growth is compromised with more and more revenue transitioning to content providers. Understandably, service providers want a piece of that pie, but find it difficult to insert themselves into the value chain.

Content providers rightfully say that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use. They add that, just as telephone companies can’t dictate to customers who to call and what to say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their networks and market power to control activity online. However, they conveniently forget that voice users pay for what they use. (At least, traditional POTS users do; it may be different for certain VoIP applications).

Cardozo Law School professor Susan Crawford states that “a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come/first-served basis, without regard for QoS considerations.” In other words, the network should be a best effort network. And that opens up opportunities for service providers. First, they have to let their best effort networks really be best effort. It doesn’t make any sense to add capacity when you reach 40 percent utilization. Over-provisioning a best effort network doesn’t help their case. Everybody will quickly find out that the Internet is not neutral since applications have very different requirements. It is more beneficial for data applications such as e-mail and file transfers than for applications that require low latency and low jitter, such as voice and video.

That is the reason these applications typically run within the carrier’s “walled garden,” i.e., they are hosted and delivered solely on the carrier’s network and their customers pay for both the content and the QoS required to deliver it with the highest possible user experience.

Over-the-top content runs outside the walled garden on the best effort network. As mentioned above, the exponential growth of this traffic is a major source of grief for the service provider since he is cut out of the revenue stream. However, carriers can insert themselves in the value stream and improve the user experience by extending the walled garden to an “open garden.” Open garden refers to the delivery of content and applications that are built and delivered by a partner. They can be hosted in the carrier’s network, in the partner’s network, or in a hosting or CDN network. The fundamental difference is that these applications or services are not built by the carrier, but are based on a partnership with the application provider and as a result, the carrier commits to treat this traffic with the same level of services as his own walled garden traffic. If the best effort network is really best effort, this adds tremendous value for everybody: the owner of the content, the consumer and the carrier that provides the connectivity.

The open garden model gives the carriers the ability to add value in the delivery of applications or content, which makes them relevant and provides them with a business model able to generate new revenue and the funding necessary to continue network investment to keep up with traffic. Most importantly, the model should not be impacted by net neutrality since it is only making content and application delivery better, instead of blacklisting and degrading specific applications.

Luc Ceuppens is senior director, head of product marketing, High-End Systems Business unit at Juniper Networks (JNPR).

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