CTIA and Public Knowledge Debate on Net Neutrality
What was interesting about this debate between the CTIA and Public Knowledge, which took on the subject of net neutrality and how the proposed FCC rules should be modified for mobile network operators, if at all, wasn’t the arguments themselves. It’s the insight I had–insight that CTIA’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Chris Guttman-McCabe hinted at in his arguments, but did not take to their logical conclusion.
The debate was about 90 minutes and could be summed up in a couple of sentences. Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge’s President & Co-founder, basically took the position that while the wireless does have unique challenges, and should be given a little more latitude in terms of applying reasonable network management principles, they should adhere to the same basic guidelines as is being proposed for wireline-based Internet services. Chris Guttman-McCabe suggested that wireless is far more competitive, it’s not clear that net neutrality principles need to be applied to wireless, and that applying the same principles the same way may, in fact, cause unintended harm to both consumers and the industry.
Net neutrality advocates would prefer that service providers, be they wireless, wireline, fiber, or whatever, would prefer that the service provider “just serve bits.” Don’t differentiate, don’t prioritize. Just serve them as they come. Seems reasonable and even supportable.
Remember that a mobile phone has two functions: as a telephone that you can make and receive voice calls on, and as a data device. While people like myself tend to think of a mobile phone primarily as a data device now, the vast majority of the world still views it as a voice device. However, both travel over the same radio spectrum and the same backhaul connection. That “last mile” connection to your mobile handset, however, is constrained by radio spectrum–spectrum which is in both short supply and high demand.
Let’s say a wireless operator experiences network congestion in a particular area, say around Moscone Center in San Francisco during a high-tech trade show even. If you’re been to a high-tech trade show at Moscone Center in San Francisco and tried to use your iPhone (or any other phone) on AT&T while there, you’d see the result–nobody could use the service at all. Taking the pro-net neutrality argument to it’s logical conclusion, where one bit of data is no more important than another, how do you device what bits make it through in a congested environment? Is a traditional call using GSM or CDMA more important than other bits? What if that voice call happens over data (e.g. with Skype)? If an operator prioritized more traditional forms of telephony over the newer, TCP/IP based methods of telephony, would that be a violation of net neutrality principles?
Unlike the other “wired” access methods, where one can upgrade the infrastructure to provide more bandwidth to end users in the last mile, or even lay more cable, mobile network operators cannot do this without more wireless spectrum–spectrum assigned and allocated by the FCC to both government, commercial, consumer, and amateur use. The spectrum allocated by the 700 Mhz spectrum auctions from a couple years back are now assigned to the mobile operators, but the previous “users” of that spectrum have not cleared out yet. Operators are chomping at the bit to start using this spectrum to roll out 4G wireless services.
Given the bandwidth crunch and net neutrality mandates, how is a mobile network operator going to solve congestion issues? What is “reasonable” network management practices? Who decides what is fair? Can anyone point me to a document that describes what constitutes reasonable network management practices?
At the end of the day, I have to side with CTIA. This issue is incredibly complex and needs more discussion, specifically around what constitutes “reasonable network management principles” and how to handle traditional voice calling and SMS in a truly “net neutral” world. What do you think?
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Tags: Cellular network, Code division multiple access, ctia, gsm, Mobile network operator, Mobile phone Fnord
Comment by tom
most of what i have been reading lately is actually saying that it is the back-haul connections between the towers that are limiting the capacity not the radio interface. i often read reports that cell towers in major cities are connected via 1.5 mbps t1 lines. at least for right now faster back haul links should be a priority over spectrum increases.
as far as the long term answer we need lots of very small low power cell all over the place. lately i read a lot about a future where things roam seamlessly between 3g/4g and private funded wifi spots in homes. i do not see this a viable in the long term. as the masses subscribe to mobile broadband they will be expected to be able to cut off there home connections. i think what is needed(and will eventually prevail) is something i used read a lot about but never see written anymore. we need radio transceiver on every lamppost(or on many of them) that are controlled by the carriers not individual users. as the world cuts out its land line phones perhaps much of that wiring can be reused to light up very small hot spots outside of peoples houses. it does not really matter if the technology is wifi or 3g/4g as long as the users do not know the difference. they just want phones, devices, and laptops that work every place they go.
Comment by Aaron Huslage
It appears that you might have colluded QoS with other Net Neutrality provisions. Last I worked on this issue, a couple of years ago, it was completely allowable for an operator to prioritize voice traffic over other traffic (standard QoS). It was not, however, allowable for that provider to prioritize voice traffic to/from any one provider (including themselves) and not any other. QoS remained a service differentiator, but one provider was not able to discriminate based on source/destination of the packets.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Backhaul is a problem, @tom, but it is far from the only problem. What you describe is something similar to what I’m told MetroPCS is doing: deploying a lot of smaller towers in neighborhoods.
@Aaron it’s not just about QoS. It’s the fact that by nature of what the operators already do (prioritize their own non-IP voice traffic over all data), they potentially run astray of net neutrality rules.
Comment by Bob
I have never had the problems as you mention near Moscone Center when in Europe. It’s like all the “bars” are painted on the phone, calls don’t get dropped, etc. This leads me to think a lot of the problem is that the US operators like AT&T just haven’t make the same kind of investment in infrastructure as the European operators. It’s not a problem with radio spectrum in as much as it can be solved by using a smaller cell sizes. If the cell size is too large for the number of active customers in it, then there will be problems. People know how to solve this problem. It doesn’t need additional radio spectrum. Just more radios.
I think the underlying question regarding “network neutrality” is should an operator be able to give preference to services it make more money on than lower revenue services. Should, for example, Comcast now that it is buying NBC, give better service to NBC shows than an other content provider. Can they use their monopoly position to squeeze out the competition?
The stakes in this debate are significant. One of the bad outcomes will be that there won’t be one Internet. An end customer will have to subscribe to multiple providers to get all content. IMHO, this is what will happen if we don’t have some reasonable regulations in place. Given the pubic statements from providers like AT&T, I don’t trust them to do the right thing. They seem to consistently saying they will do what everyone fears.