Germany: Chancellor Merkel Supports Fast Lanes for "New Uses" of the Internet

In the series "World leaders views on Net Neutrality", the next episode comes from Germany's Chancellor, Ms. Angela Merkel,

[See President Obama's position - "What's Next for Net Neutrality?" - here]

Adam Westlake reports to Slashgear that "German leader Angela Merkel made comments earlier in the week on the topic of net neutrality .. Merkel's position is in favor of a two-tier internet, where the "fast lane" will be for priority speeds, as long as ISPs have been paid their additional fees, while the other lane is supposed to act as the internet we know today. She feels that the future development of new uses for the internet is actually dependent on a two-tier format, as opposed to net neutrality proponents who feel a single, equal net is needed for growth.

.. new advancements like driverless vehicles or telemedicine wouldn't be able to function properly without priority treatment, regardless if ISPs need to charge more for their higher speeds". 

Ms. Merkel spoke at the "digitising Europe" conference, hosted by Vodafone. See the full speech (in German) - "Rede von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel zum Digitising Europe Summit am 4. Dezember 2014" - here.

 

See "German Chancellor voices support for fast lane internet, opposing net neutrality" - here.

What's Next for Net Neutrality?

FCC Chairman
Tom Wheeler

It is a mess. While the DPI market waits for the Net Neutrality rules, whatever they would be, (see "Allot: US Sales Waits for Net Neutrality" - here) it seems that the FCC decision will be delayed.

The 2nd generation of the FCC Net Neutrality rules should have provided the clearness for "Fast Lanes" (see "FCC: The New Net Neutrality is 'Hybrid'" - here), making the DPI vendors happy (or not - see "Sandvine to the FCC: Internet Fast Lanes are not Needed" - here).

However, a recent statement by President Obama tries to change all that bringing back the ideas of free and open internet with no limitation or traffic blocking (see "Obama Asks F.C.C. to Adopt Tough Net Neutrality Rules" - here). At least the president is consistent, as he said the same things almost 5 years ago (see "Network Neutrality – A Presidential Introduction" - here)

So what's next ? for sure - a delay in the FCC, and slowdown in networks investments by the major carries (see "AT&T to pause fiber spending on net neutrality uncertainty" -here). Will the FCC go with the president's position? the following headlines will probably confuse you:

• Dana Liebelson and Ryan Grim report to Huffingtonpost - "FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Tells Silicon Valley He's Open To Obama Net Neutrality Plan" (here): " Chairman Tom Wheeler told a gathering of business representatives and public interest groups that he was taking the president's comments under advisement and that he would need the groups' support in the coming fight over net neutrality, according to multiple sources in the meeting"

• Steve Dent reports to Engadget - "FCC Chairman says he may ignore Obama on net neutrality" (here): "FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has told web giants Google, Yahoo and others that he won't cave to pressure from the White House, declaring "I am an independent agency."".

I welcome comments from people understanding US politics. 

Sandvine to the FCC: Internet Fast Lanes are not Needed

Rick Wadsworth [pictured], Director Corporate Communications, Sandvine summarizes on the vendor's blog Sandvine's submission (here) to the FCC's latest Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the Open Internet (See  "FCC: New Net Neutrality? Just be 'Commercially Reasonable'" - here and "People Care about Net Neutrality" - here).

"Sandvine has over 250 customers around the world. Despite the large customer base, we have not deployed any Pay for Priority plans, nor have our operator customers expressed significant interest in them. To the best of our knowledge, none of the innovative service plans that Sandvine has helped implement across our customer base have involved payments between operators and edge providers for traffic priority, nor (again to the best of our knowledge) have any negotiations or direct arrangements between the operator and an edge provider occurred in connection with such service plans.

Also, technically speaking, we don’t believe that Pay for Priority would work. At a moment in time, there is a fixed amount of bandwidth available to all applications, content, etc. on a given network. If one application has paid for more of that bandwidth (and this is how the priority is achieved) then there is less “best efforts” bandwidth remaining for all other applications and content. It’s a zero-sum game. Other applications and content providers will start paying for priority as well. It is not hard to imagine the best efforts bandwidth shrinking quickly and those who paid for priority not receiving it because the prioritized section of the pie has been sliced too many times. If everybody has priority, nobody has priority.

The FCC’s rules should be focused on protecting and encouraging the full breadth of “commercially reasonable” service plans, including those that are becoming very popular globally today. Sandvine has seen firsthand how innovative service plans have increased adoption of the Internet around the world, enhanced competition, and given consumers more (and more affordable) choice.

See "Dear FCC, deprioritize Pay for Priority" - here.

Google - "we invite content providers to hook up their networks directly to ours"

A post to Google's Fiber blog by Jeffrey Burgan, Director of Network Engineering, describes what Google does to eliminate "buffering" without paid Fast Lanes - "We also partner with content providers (like YouTube, Netflix, and Akamai) to make the rest of your video’s journey shorter and faster. (This doesn't involve any deals to prioritize their video ‘packets’ over others or otherwise discriminate among Internet traffic — we don't do that)"

One question remains - what about all other content providers? how would startups compete with the giants?

"So that your video doesn’t get caught up in this possible congestion, we invite content providers to hook up their networks directly to ours. This is called ‘peering,’ and it gives you a more direct connection to the content that you want .. We have also worked with services like Netflix so that they can ‘colocate’ their equipment in our Fiber facilities .. We give companies like Netflix and Akamai free access to space and power in our facilities and they provide their own content servers .. we also don’t charge because it’s really a win-win-win situation. It’s good for content providers because they can deliver really high-quality streaming video to their customers .. most importantly, we do this because it gives Fiber users the fastest, most direct route to their content"

See "Behind the scenes with Google Fiber: Working with content providers to minimize buffering" - here.