Can The Bandwidth Throttling/Net Neutrality/P2P Mess Be Cleaned Up?

News came out this week that Google Inc. filed a complaint with Canadian regulators saying Bell Canada should be prohibited from slowing P2P applications. Of course, this is just the latest in a long line of battles in the war over bandwidth metering/net neutrality.

Comcast and BitTorrent began a similar exercise earlier this year. Time Warner Cable’s test of bandwidth metering also has created a stir.

Of course, the whole problem centers around the fact that new bandwidth-loving applications like video, particularly in peer-to-peer applications, is sucking up a lot of bandwidth. And the network operators say the investment required to support heavy users of such applications often is more than the revenue they receive from those customers via their current Internet access pricing.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) vendor Sandvine recently released research that shows many of its service provider customers still are finding both sides of their residential Internet connection to be dominated by peer-to-peer file sharing traffic.

So, the question remains: What is a network operator to do so it can continue to justify investment in its network? It seems like a tough question.

However, one account I read mentioned that all the fuss over bandwidth metering is overblown given that if the Time Warner Cable test results in heavy Internet users fleeing to find other ISPs, then the cableco’s trial will have been a success, with both Time Warner Cable and those customers getting what they want.

Nonetheless, a lot of people in the communications industry believe finding the right balance between an open Internet that allows customers to pick and choose their applications and service providers while at the same time providing a model that enables network owners to justify the ongoing expenses of investing in and operating the underlying infrastructure is a huge deal.

Some folks have suggested that perhaps the solution is bringing together the network operators and over-the-top providers like Google and Vonage to work out a solution, preferably without involving regulators any further. But when this discussion arose as I was moderating an ATIS TechThink panel at NXTcomm earlier this summer, an audience member indicated that companies like Apple, Google, et al, have no incentive to come to the table for such a deal.

What do you think is the most workable solution?

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