Like their south side University of
Chicago economists, the Editorial Board of the Tribune waxes poetic and snarky about the virtues of the
marketplace and how it can solve any and all network neutrality ills. See https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-net-neutrality-internet-obama-competition-20190902-vf3jeqzmcngwblzky77a7ktzly-story.html?utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletters.
While I am not a neutrality absolutist,
I cannot share the newspaper’s “all clear” conclusion that the marketplace will
solve all bandwidth ills. The Editorial
Board dismisses a particularly egregious throttling episode as “humiliating
customer service failure” for Verizon when the company’s software automatically
slowed transmission speeds of California first responder handsets as they
tackled life and property threatening fires.
Does deliberate slowing down of transmission speed and commensurate service
degradation warrant an all clear, A-OK seal of approval, because the tactic
gets obliquely identified as a possible consequence of bandwidth hogging?
How many service providers can get
away with offering poor service as leverage for upselling? Perhaps no one on the Editorial Board
remembers the woes besetting Intel when a minor, undetectable degradation in a
microprocessor triggered a massive recall and mea culpa.
The editorial writers do not seem to
appreciate that service degradation happens all the time and a forensic analysis
of the cause during and after the fact has proven quite difficult at identifying
the cause and culprit. Whenever content on the web stops streaming seamlessly,
three possibilities exist:
1) the last mile Internet Service Provider
has deliberately slowed transmission speeds, because it needed to conserve
bandwidth, by throttling all video traffic to standard definition DVD quality, and
by punishing high volume users who may cause congestion;
2) the ISP has targeted specific sources
of content or types of content for throttling; or
3) network congestion somewhere, somehow
affects quality of service without intentional degradation.
The Editorial Board is woefully naive
to think that a rising tide of innovation and market driven pricing can solve any
of these 3 quality of service problems.
Upselling to faster transmission speeds for so-called last mile delivery
will not remedy problems elsewhere in the Internet cloud. Insatiable demand for video has prompted ISPs
to throttle complete categories of content, even after frequent network
upgrades.
Lastly, without disparaging ISPs,
one should acknowledge that they have both the ability and incentive to
throttle competitors’ content. Simply
put, throttling is easy and effective, without being readily detected. A last
mile ISP can always blame someone else, e.g., content providers like Netflix,
for any quality of service problem.
I agree the Internet and neutrality
enforcement does not require heavy handed regulation. Still, a cop on the beat can resolve the
likely instances of carrier misbehavior. Just ask any California fire fighter.
