After last week’s excitement – when the New York Times boldly but inaccurately claimed that Google and Verizon were cutting a sweetheart deal over internet traffic – the truth has turned out to be less dramatic but potentially more worrying for US consumers and net users.
Instead, Google and Verizon have announced a joint policy proposal, intended as a framework for the future regulation of US internet provision.
In a nutshell the two companies are putting forward a system of regulation that suits them both, as you might expect. One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smart-phones.
Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.
All this is a far cry, though, from the New York Times’s suggestion that a specific deal between the two was in the works, which was bluntly denied by both companies.
In fact, the joint policy framework suggests the complete opposite, in certain respects. What the Google-Verizon proposal seeks to do is define current thoughts on net neutrality and apply them to what the document calls “wireline broadband”, while placing fewer such restrictions on wireless provision and what it terms “differentiated services” offered in addition by an ISP.
The details are vague – the whole proposal is only two pages long – but here is how it would apply to users.
The proposal would split net consumption into three categories: wireline internet (accessing the internet via wires to a modem – DSL connections, for example), wireless internet access (via an iPhone or a wireless data card), and the hitherto unknown “differentiated services” (over Verizon’s Fios fibre-optic network maybe?) of specialised content or services.
The proposal suggests four areas of regulation – but the first three would only apply to “wireline internet” users:
• Consumer protections, to safeguard users’ access to legal content, devices and applications (hello, Comcast?)
• Non-discrimination requirements, to guarantee net neutrality:
In providing broadband Internet access service, a provider would be prohibited from engaging in undue discrimination against any lawful Internet content, application, or service in a manner that causes meaningful harm to competition or to users.
• Network management, in which broadband providers would also have to meet “reasonable network management” standards and practices.
Only the fourth area would apply to both wireless and wireline users:
• Transparency, with ISPs “required to disclose accurate and relevant information in plain language” about what they are offering.
A provider which met all four of those conditions could be rewarded by being able to offer “additional or designated services” for additional fees (presumably), as well as “traffic prioritisation,” which is what the original NYT story maintained. The examples for these suggested by Google and Verizon today included “healthcare monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services or new entertainment and gaming options.”
Needless to say, the lack of regulation applying to wireless access and the possibility of future “designated services” doesn’t please anyone outside the telecoms industry, or indeed at the FCC.
Susan Crawford, a specialist on internet regulation, blogged:
The key trade-off being made here is between the treatment of wireless services, on the one hand, and the treatment of nondiscrimination, on the other. Google gave on wireless, and so there’s no policy suggestion for wireless net neutrality that has been provided by the companies. That’s a huge hole, given the growing popularity of wireless services and the recent suggestion by the [FCC] that we may not have a competitive wireless marketplace.
Meanwhile, Dan Gillmor is concerned the “designated services” might turn into a “parallel network that could, in the long run, become the default network”:
For Verizon’s part, the acceptance of what sounds like fairly serious neutrality rules on current wire-line networks was welcome. But I see the rest as a Trojan Horse for a modern age. Verizon and other carriers have every incentive, based on their legacies, to push network upgrade investments into the parallel Internet, not the public one.
The FCC isn’t happy either, so this proposal may not go much further. If it spurs the FCC into action, for a change, that would be something.
