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Tim Lee

Norwegian ISP Discriminates, Backs Down after Customer Outcry

Via EFF, a Norwegian company, NextGenTel, apparently decided to limit the bandwidth of sites that didn’t pay NextGenTel extra for the privilege of offering high-speed content to their customers. After a consumer backlash, however, the ISP backed down:

It seems like the customers won this battle (link, to Norwegian article). Due to bad publicity and reactions from customers NextGenTel have removed the limit and NRK is now back on full speed in their network. What should I say? Thanks to the people contacting NextGenTel and to the blogs and media that understand how this was a serious violation to network neutrality.

A lot of pro-regulatory folks assume that “network neutrality is good” necessarily implies “network neutrality ought to be mandated by the government. But the latter doesn’t automatically follow from the former. Government regulation is a cumbersome process fraught with potentials for unintended consequences. If violations of network neutrality can be dealt with in the marketplace, that strikes me as a far better solution.


Now, it’s quite possible that Norway has a more competitive broadband market. If so, advocates of regulation could certainly argue that the results wouldn’t be so rosy if an American company tried the same stunt. But even if that’s true, I think this incident demonstrates that ISP discrimination will generate a customer backlash. Hopefully, that will be enough to force AT&T or Comcast to reverse a bone-headed decision to discriminate simply to keep their customers happy. But if a major American ISP is not responsive to customer outrage, the backlash is likely to generate considerable momentum for Congress to enact neutrality regulations.

The bottom line is that it’s premature to pass regulations based purely on speculative threats. The current competition among two or three ISPs in any given area may be sufficient to make ISPs behave without Congress getting involved at all. I think it will. But even if I’m wrong, we’ll get much better legislation if we wait until we have a concrete example of discrimination to examine, so that we can craft a rule that minimizes the impact of the rule on parts of the Internet where no regulation is needed.

October 14, 2006 | Comments |

  • However, I have on nearly every post Tim Lee has made on this subject, provided evidence of harm that was done, for example a Telcom in a labor dispute that blocked access to pro-striker web sites, and this type of non-content-neutral filtering is exactly the stuff that the very few large conglomerates that own the market for broadband would like to be able to do.


    FOR EXAMPLE:


    In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.


    In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a labor dispute.


    Shaw, a big Canadian cable TV company, is charging an extra $10 a month to subscribers in order to "enhance" competing Internet telephone services.


    In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com - an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.


    This type of censorship will become the norm unless we act now. Given the chance, these gatekeepers will consistently put their own interests before the public good.


    Tim, how would you prevet this type of stuff from happening, without regulation???

  • Tim
    Engima, those examples are greatly exaggerated, as I've pointed out before. Not only that, but I've already pointed you to that page, not just once, but twice. Why do you keep pointing to the same examples, while ignoring my posts explaining why they're bogus?
  • Isn't it plausible that the ISP backed down in part because in Norway, there is a very credible threat to regulate that isn't credible here?
  • Tim
    Sure, it's possible, but I don't see why the threat's not credible here. Voters here aren't excited about the issue largely because it's entirely theoretical. If several million people woke up on Monday morning to find that YouTube didn't work any more, I think you'd suddenly see a lot more voters taking an interest in the issue.
  • Consumatopia
    I would think that at the very least you would have to regulate some kind of transparency. That's what your "YouTube didn't work any more" example has wrong--it's not a matter of YouTube not working anymore, it's a matter of your ISP introducing a new service that somehow mysteriously works way better than YouTube does.

    What needs to pointed out is that this is not a victory for "the marketplace", this is a victory for the particular people who inhabited this particular market. Only because customers stood up and categorically rejected all ISP discrimination was ISP discrimination stopped. In another marketplace, customers may have allowed some innoculous discrimintion in exchange for lower rates or video/voice services or something, and then customers would be choosing "which discrimination?" rather than "discrimination, yes or no?"

    In other words, the marketplace only "worked" this time because customers were able to anticipate that a future marketplace without network neutrality would be vastly less efficient than the current one--web services are way closer to being a market of perfect competition than ISP duopolies.

    I fail to see why customer rejection of something is an argument for keeping it legal. Especially in a marketplace like ISPs, in which the costs of switching to a new provider are somewhat high.
  • Tim
    Consumpatopia,

    The argument for "keeping it legal" is that discrimination is hard to define precisely and regulating it would open the door to a lot of regulatory mischief. If the marketplace can prevent discrimination, it's foolish to enact unnecessary regulations.
  • Consumatopia
    It's that "hard to define precisely" aspect that makes this such a poor candidate for a marketplace solution to the problem. You can't boycott what you don't know is happening. And ISPs are capable of mischief too--I don't sign up for an ISP because I trust it, if I don't trust it I just encrypt my data.

    At the very least, even if the government can't define all discrimination, they should ban some of the most blatantly ridiculous kinds of discrimination like degrading VoIP.
  • "Engima, those examples are greatly exaggerated, as I've pointed out before. Not only that, but I've already pointed you to that page, not just once, but twice. Why do you keep pointing to the same examples, while ignoring my posts explaining why they're bogus?"




    Well, I was unaware of your earlier post on this subject, as it wasn't clear in your response who you were replying to, and a working link was not provided. But thanks for providing it.

    I strongly disagree that the Telus case was not a significant abuse of corporate power. As one of the largest providers, it is certain that many were effectively blocked from accessing the labor union site. Also, you have offered no information on the content of the site, why it is illegal.

    Do we have to wait for AOL to buy Diebold and start to block Tim Lee's and Ed Felten's articles about their flaws?

    The alarm bell for me has gone off very loudly, and corporations have made their anti-freedom agenda clear, and it must be opposed by all who value freedom of speech.

    "A threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- MLK
  • Oh and Tim, you have not answered my question which is: "Absent regulation, how would you prevent the behavior (described above) from occurring?"
  • Tim
    Enigma, I don't know if you were paying attention, but AOL's "censorship" of the Dear AOL emails generated more publicity about AOL's email policies. EFF jumped on it (somewhat unfairly in my opinion) and rode it for all the publicity it was worth.

    Given the structure and diversity of the web, it's simply not possible for an ISP to suppress unpopular views. The typical result of attempted censorship in the United States is that the censored content gets more attention than it would have had the censor simply ignored it.

    As for the Telus case, again, a Canadian court subsequently ordered the site taken down. If the content didn't deserve to be removed, the fault lies with the law that allowed the judge to order the site shut down for everyone, not Telus's ability to block the site for a few million Internet users.
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