The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

Tue Apr 29 22:07:56 UTC 2014

On 14-04-29 13:48, Jay Ashworth wrote:

> So, how do you explain, and justify -- if you do -- cablecos who use
> IPTV to deliver their mainline video, and supply VoIP telephone...

In Canada, our "net neutrality" rules are called the ITMP, for Internet
Traffic Management Practices which occured as a result of Bell Canada
throttling P2P and then wanting to charge UBB *solely to manage traffic*
(since the UBB rates had nothing to do with costs, they had to do with
moderating usage to reduce congestion).

The ITMP rules as well as section 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act
prevent undue preference and basically states thart if if apply an ITMP
(either throttling or UBB) it must be applied evenly to all content.

The apply "evenly" was even argued by the incumbents who stated that
everyonr had to pay the same UBB rate for all access in order to ensure
that the UBB ITMP plays an equal role in moderating usage. (users with
ower UBB rates or with some content exempt would then use mroe of the
network capacity and cause disproporaionate congestion which would hurt
those paying the higher UBB rates)

When an incumbent argues that its *broadcasting* service is on different
capacity and does not cause congestion to the telecom side of things,
then the "broadcasting" service does not have to play by those rules.

In the case of cablecos, their TV service uses different frequencies on
the coax, so they do not affect data transfers.

For Telcos, in the case of Bell, proper use of semantics and propaganda
convinced the CRTC that it FibeTV service was on totally different
network capacity right up to the DSLAM, and since there was no
congestion on the DSL last copper mile, the fact that the two shared the
last mile didn't matter because the congestion happened in the
aggregation network where FibeTV was already on a separate network.

So both cablecos and telcos get their wireline "broadcasting" execpt
from the net neutrality rules in Canada.

Currently, there is a complaint about wireless TV where the incumbents
do not charge UBB for their own TV service, while charging UBB for
competing services such as Netflix, or accessing content from a TV
station's web site etc.  In the last round, they basically admitted that
in the case of wireless, those service co-exist with other internet
traffic on the same pipe to the handsets.

The TV on mobile phones is the first true test of "network neutrality"
under the 2009 ITMP rules. Previous complaints had to do with fautly
throttling which singled out certain applications like games.

The Mobile TV service is one where the incumbents give their own TV
service an undue preference.

Bell Canada argues that because their TV service is "broadcasting", it
is under a different law (Boradcasting Act) and not bound by ITMP rules.