Defining fairness: towards a sustainable model of net neutrality

Net neutrality continues to be an increasingly contentious issue, with a variety of high-profile industry players sitting on different sides of the fence. As mobile broadband usage continues to grow at an exponential rate, Steven van Zanen, SVP Marketing, Mobile Data Control, Acision, discusses how adding the principle of fairness to the net neutrality debate can drive operators’ revenue streams and enhance the end-user experience.

Over the past 12 months, mobile broadband traffic has experienced explosive growth, with consumers widely adopting unlimited data plans in return for the promise of always-on access to mobile data services. In reality, operator networks have begun to falter under the strain of this increased demand, causing Quality of Service issues and a subsequent media onslaught.

With this, the net neutrality debate has begun to heat up. Operators are blaming content providers for congesting their networks, while regulators fear operators will begin blocking services, infringing customers from their civil rights for access to information and communication.

The battle lines for net neutrality are also becoming increasingly marked. Earlier this year, Google (once a staunch advocate of net neutrality) collaborated with Verizon and announced a ‘joint policy proposal’ which ‘will preserve the open internet while allowing network operators the flexibility and freedom to manage their networks’ - suggesting that it is reneging on its once staunch advocacy of net neutrality. Similarly, Eric Huggers, the BBC’s Director of Future Media & Technology, recently published a post on the broadcaster’s Internet Blog stating that ‘traffic management may sometimes be necessary for technical reasons’ but that the trend of operators discriminating against certain traffic depending upon who provides it is a ‘worrying development’.  On the other side, Tim Berners-Lee, the ‘founding father of the world wide web’, used his keynote at Nokia World to underline his support for net neutrality, stating: “The moment you let net neutrality go, you lose the web as it is.”

Net neutrality: an idealistic notion?
The principle of net neutrality within a mobile context is even more contentious. Net neutrality asserts that operators should treat all subscribers equally in terms of internet use and access, preventing them from inspecting, shaping or controlling any traffic running over their networks.

However, bearing in mind the issue of mobile network congestion, is this realistic? The extent of the strain on mobile broadband capacity as a resource is such that demand will fundamentally outstrip supply for the foreseeable future. If no ‘checks’ are implemented, it is possible that congestion will become a permanent feature of mobile broadband, turning it into a service which ultimately denigrates the end-user experience and limits access to the majority in favour of a minority of heavy data users.

In the UK, mobile broadband laptop penetration is approximately 15% (Ofcom, October 2010), while smartphone penetration is 18% (Cisco VNI Mobile, Informa Media and Telecoms, In-Stat, Gartner, 2009, 2010). Meanwhile, US laptop penetration is estimated at less than 5% and smartphone penetration at 33% (Cisco VNI Mobile, Informa Media and Telecoms, In-Stat, Gartner, 2009, 2010). In spite of these relatively low levels of penetration, networks on both sides of the Atlantic are already experiencing congestion and QoS issues.

In our recent UK mobile broadband research conducted with YouGov, the results highlighted that 84% of consumers had experienced QoS issues, suffering slow speeds (67%), poor network coverage (49%), inability to get connected (45%) and connection loss (40%). The same research conducted among North American consumers this month revealed similar results: 74% experienced QoS issues, with slow speeds (60%), poor network coverage (35%), inability to get connected (29%) and connection loss (29%) once again cited as the most common problems.

From a consumer perspective, 75% of the respondents in the UK would accept intervention from the operator to improve QoS and even 48% are willing to pay an additional fee. For the US, we found similar support, with 64% accepting intervention and 45% willing to pay an additional fee.

With this in mind and while understanding that spectrum is a finite resource, LTE alone will not be able to deal with the subscriber uptake and related data explosion. Operator intervention is a requirement in order to secure QoS. Therefore, the discussion should be around how to come to a model of sustainable net neutrality, which cannot be solved just by the regulator and operator but will also need representation from the consumer as well.

Towards a model of sustainable net neutrality
Given that mobile broadband penetration is a long way from saturation point, these issues are serious and explain why operators in developed markets have taken the action to cap data usage, realign their fair usage policies and introduce tiered pricing models. These decisions have been met with mixed reaction, with consumers perhaps unsurprisingly the most perturbed.

Increasingly, rather than addressing the issues from a holistic cross-industry perspective, stakeholders are resorting to blaming one another. What is required to facilitate the establishment of a more viable mobile broadband service is collaboration and cooperation among all stakeholders, including operators, consumers, content providers and regulators.

Bearing this in mind, the time has come to move towards a model of distributing available bandwidth among as many users as possible in order to guarantee consumers’ civil rights for unrestrained access to information and communication. In order to achieve consensus on the issue while simultaneously maintaining a strong user experience, net neutrality should be considered from a much wider perspective, based on the principle of ‘defining fairness’, as underpinned by the following cornerstones:

• The consumer has the right to information, communication and content
• The content provider has the right to indiscriminate access to its content
• The operator has the right to run a sustainable business

For these to work in practice requires action on the part of both the operator and the consumer. From the operators’ side, they need to implement access control mechanisms which both allow them to better manage the network and provide notification capabilities which will give consumers the requisite level of transparency and accountability. On the other side, consumers need to be more realistic about the level of service they expect to receive at a given time, in a given place or according to the type of content that they are accessing. These should all be governed by defined ‘fair use’ standards.

Next steps
In order to improve the level of customer satisfaction in a financially viable way, operators need to do the following:

• Control cost by employing techniques such as data compression and defining rules and policies to help better manage peak traffic
• Optimise video traffic based on the availability of bandwidth and prioritise time-sensitive applications by providing the users with real-time notifications
• Introduce differentiated offerings in order to raise Average Revenue per User (ARPU)

As mobile broadband usage continues to surge, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the QoS issues. Operators need to take decisive action now by asserting control over the management of mobile data, as well as by working with the wider industry to help communicate proposed changes. In doing so, they will create for themselves a strong platform from which they can seek to raise customer satisfaction and loyalty levels, which will in turn help them to reduce customer churn and provide a better mobile broadband future for all.