Net Neutrality DOES NOT Mean the Internet’s Demise

Why do some want us to believe that net neutrality will make the sky fall?

Once again our esteemed colleague Johna Till Johnson predicts that the Internet sky is falling -- this time she ominously foretells that net neutrality will destroy peering and make the Internet as we know it go poof. This is nonsense! Peering is a win-win arrangement created and sustained in a net neutral environment, and it will not be destroyed by the status quo.

Johna reasons that because net neutrality prevents ISPs from charging users differentially based on content type or service quality, ISPs will be forced to recoup local access costs through peering charges, which in a tremendous leap of logic she predicts will become so exorbitant that ISPs will simply stop peering with each other. There are several things wrong with this picture.

First, most broadband ISPs currently charge more for faster service, and rates have been trending up. Also, many broadband ISPs have announced the advent of charging users by the bit. Given this, it seems to us that ISPs are doing a fine job of recouping their broadband infrastructure investments from user subscription fees.

Second, it would be completely illogical for ISPs to stop peering with each other. Peering is in everyone's best interest. It connects users at the end of each broadband link to the content they seek, which is dispensed largely from data centers linked to backbone ISPs or from CDN-owned servers within multiple networks. Backbone ISPs and access ISPs must play nicely with each other to satisfy their customers' needs. Why for heaven's sake would they hurt their customers and themselves by balkanizing?

As we've pointed out in past blogs, the Internet is an ecosystem with four key stakeholders -- content originators, content distribution technology vendors, ISPs, and content consumers. For the system to function, the interests of all four stakeholders must be aligned. Johna intimates that ISPs should be able to do whatever they want regardless of the effect on other stakeholders. We think this is a sure way to break the ecosystem, and make the Internet go poof.

• net neutrality