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By Roz Roseboro, Analysys Mason

With regulation, what is fair? Depends on who you ask.

With the FCC’s Julius Genachowski announcing recently that his organization will be proposing rules that require Internet service providers to treat all content equally, aka net neutrality, I was reminded, yet again, of the tension that sometimes comes up between my telecom analyst side and my consumer side.

On the one hand, I fully understand that CSPs aren’t utilities anymore, so they need to be able to see a reasonable return on their investments — and providing differentiated services is one way they could get that return. It’s not fair that they should incur all of the expense for providing a high quality, ubiquitous internet connection, then watch Google, Apple and others take a free ride and capture a large chunk of the revenue. Capitalism would argue that CSPs who have paid for their own networks should be allowed to use the market mechanism to set the price of carrying content? If they don’t generate enough revenue, they won’t invest, and everyone suffers. I get it. I’m also dependent upon the telecom industry for my employment, so I’d be the last person to suggest anything that would harm the industry. And while I don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to any and all forms of regulation, one should never underestimate the impact of unintended consequences.

On the other hand, I’m not particularly comfortable with the idea that whoever pays the most will get the most favorable network treatment. Seems that could lead to too much of the message being controlled by too few people. We’ve already seen this happen to an extent in the media space in the U.S., with all the consolidation that’s taken place over the past few years. Some content owner pays for the best quality experience on the biggest networks, and you could find it difficult to receive content from other sources who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay up. Equal access to any sort of content, regardless of the source — and regardless of the content owner’s ability to pay — feels to me like the right way to go.

I’ve had similar internal debates on related issues like deep packet inspection. I understand these tools can be very beneficial for CSPs to better manage traffic — which leads to a better experience for everyone. As a consumer, I’m a little leery of someone knowing and keeping track of what I’m watching, reading, downloading, sending. I don’t mean to sound alarmist or paranoid, but who knows who would do what with such information. We’ve seen plenty of examples of things created with good intention being co-opted by those with less than good intentions.

What I can say for sure, is that issues like these are hotly debated among analysts at Analysys Mason. Net neutrality is just the latest one — and we will be publishing the conclusions we come to in an upcoming report. As I try to strike a balance between my professional and personal sides, I hope that regulators will also find the right balance between protecting both businesses and consumer interests.

Roz Roseboro is a senior analyst at Analysys Mason, leading the CSP/Operator Strategies and Infrastructure Solutions programs. She has produced research on business services, emerging markets, and telecom software professional services in addition to analysis of the network management systems market.