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WATCH IT, BUSTER—Unless
you want intergenerational warfare (read voter backlash from everyone who uses the web)--then keep your
FCC mitts off my Internet.
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WILL THE INTERNET BECOME LIKE FLYING COACH SEATS FOR MOST OF US?
GUEST BLOG—By Danielle Kehl, Sarah Morris reprinted
with permission from New America Foundation www.Newamerica.net. Originally published with the headline
“Internet Coach Class” on May 29, 2014.
If you want a glimpse into
what the speed of your Internet connection might look like under the newly
proposed Open Internet rules, take yourself back to the last uncomfortable hour
of a long plane flight. You know the feeling. You’re back in economy class
wondering if seats have actually gotten smaller these past few years (they
probably have), and amazed when you glance up front and see how appealing
business class has become. That’s what the Internet could look like soon.
With all the talk about fast
lanes and paid prioritization recently, the Federal Communication Commission’s
proposed rules could lead us down a path where regular and premium service
levels make Internet service look a lot more like air travel. Some advocates
are worried that a section of the rules allowing carriers to negotiate
individually with content providers for service as long as it is “commercially
reasonable” could allow ISPs to charge different websites for faster or
higher-quality content delivery. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said that this
won’t lead to fast lanes and slow lanes online, but it’s hard to see how the
current proposal would adequately protect against this type of behavior. So as
the debate over the potential impact of these rules continues for the next few
months, it’s helpful to consider how premium service can inherently lead to
degraded service for everyone else.
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WHY, O’ WHY—Look,
I’m as
liberal as the next hipster
and as a bonafide expert
on “nuts,” I ask why
do they always pick
on the little guy?
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Just take a look at the
airline industry: Tiered service has been common in air travel for years, with
airlines offering special amenities and improved service for those who can
afford to pay more, while everyone else gets crammed into regular seats.
Although almost everyone would prefer to travel more comfortably and wait in
faster security and boarding lines, it’s often challenging for airlines to
convince people to pay the premium for first class: It can cost up to ten times
more to fly business instead of economy on a trans-Atlantic flight, and both
seats get you to the same destination. So while airlines try to make first
class more appealing with new amenities and personalized attention, they
simultaneously have an incentive against improving the quality of “regular”
service as a way to protect their higher-end business.
If you want a glimpse into
what the speed of your Internet connection might look like under the newly
proposed Open Internet rules, take yourself back to the last uncomfortable hour
of a long plane flight.
And as airlines have
struggled financially in recent years, it appears they may even be actively
degrading economy class options. According to an October 2013 Wall Street
Journal article, in a reversal of a half century trend of gradually improved
seating, airlines have spent the last decade trimming first legroom and now
seat width in order to squeeze more seats into economy class. This allows them
to expand higher-fare sections—particularly new mid-range options like economy
plus which offer added legroom for a fee—without reducing the number of
ticketed passengers on the plane.
What’s more, this tactic has
the added benefit of increasing the appeal of premium options while still
maintaining the premium price. As the article notes, “[p]ressure in economy
cabins also lets airlines upsell coach passengers.” This nuance is critical
because it illustrates the incentives for airlines not only to make more seats
available by reducing their size, but to increase the disparity between economy
and premium seats to make the premium seats even more attractive to flyers.
Now, do you see what would
happen if we enter a world of “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” on the Internet?
Some argue that it’s not a big deal for a big company to pay for a “fast lane,”
but the precedent would open the floodgates for many new types of
discrimination online. And it will make the remaining Internet capacity on the
network worse for those who cannot pay the fee.
It’s helpful to consider how
premium service can inherently lead to degraded service for everyone else.
Under the proposed FCC
rules, Internet service providers would have to carry all traffic at some
minimum service level (we’ll call that economy class). So to sell seats in the
fast lane (first class), it must be sufficiently attractive to content
companies so that they would actually be willing to pay more. This means faster
speeds and better quality of service, but it also requires making sure that the
regular lanes don’t improve at a pace that would threaten the premium business.
In other words, there is a
risk that ISPs, in an effort to either make the fast lane more appealing, will
be encouraged to unnecessarily limit capacity for everyone except those in the
fast lane. Or they might squeeze additional customers into the regular lane to
make more room for premium customers – effectively degrading regular service
during peak congestion times. And, the more attractive the fast lane becomes,
the more an ISP can charge for carriage in that lane.
There’s an important
distinction in this analogy as well. For airlines, degrading service requires
physically shrinking the size of seats. On the Internet, since bandwidth
consumption is growing steadily, an ISP simply could choose not to improve the
capacity of the network and the quality of your Internet experience would still
gradually decline.
Which brings us back to the
Commission’s proposed rules that were released for public comment earlier this
month.
As airlines have struggled
financially in recent years, it appears they may even be actively degrading
economy class options.
The new rules are based on a
presumption that business arrangements for prioritization of certain types of
content would be valid, though, as we’ve noted, there are mixed messages coming
from the FCC about whether fast lanes would actually be permitted.
Unfortunately, the legal theory on which the agency is relying to implement
these rules necessitates discrimination, which is why the rules must permit
some degree of individualized negotiation and bargaining.
Changing the rules
themselves would require a different source of authority – what advocates refer
to as authority under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act. Some also argue
that either way, the rules adequately protect against slow lanes because of the
“minimum level of service” requirement – a term of art that will be defined
precisely during the comment period on the proposed rules. Leaving aside the
challenge of actually determining what a minimum level of service might look
like, if the framework is based on a presumption in favor of paid
prioritization, it’s difficult to envision how it can actually protect against
an Internet full of bandwidth haves and have-nots.
Whether we’re on track for
fast lanes and slow lanes or merely fast lanes and adequate lanes, Internet
users should be concerned about what’s in the proposal and should question
whether they want a divided Internet. This kind of Internet is not the type
envisioned by advocates of network neutrality, which is based on the
fundamental principle of nondiscrimination and has been integral to creating
the space for innovation, public debate, and free expression online that
Americans enjoy today.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Danielle Kehl
Danielle Kehl is a policy
analyst in the Open Technology Institute at New America where she works on
technology policy and how it intersects with broader domestic and foreign policy
concerns. Her main areas of focus are U.S. broadband policy and Internet
freedom. Her writing has been published in a number of outlets, including the
Journal of Information Policy, Slate, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Sarah Morris
As a senior policy counsel
for the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation, Sarah Morris
assists in the research and development of policy proposals related to open
technologies, broadband access, and emerging technological issues.
ABOUT NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
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