[massnetcomms] Randall Boes of AOL on Net Neutrality

I’m at the Massachusetts Network Communications Council’s annual meeting. MassNetComms is an industry association with members rom the full chain of network companies, from chip makers to “content providers” to security companies to telcos. (I was invited at the last minute to be the only non-telco on a panel talking about Net neutrality.)

Randall Boe, general council of AOL, in his keynote wants to set the record straight about Net neutrality. [I’m taking notes and paraphrasing. Accuracy is not guaranteed, although I’m doing my best.]

He says that the NN folks were all in favor of regulation when it came to the Time/Warner AOL merger. He says Networks providers have to have the right to control their netowrks because it’s private property. That includes controlling the content that goes across the network. When there’s limited competition, “you have a little bit of a different shade on that network.” “But if you build the network, it’s yours.” The market will solve the problem for you quickly if you make the wrong choice.

The government almost never gets it right, he says. Everyone has an incentive to keep the government out.

The US is last in the top 15 countries for broadband penetration, he says. The problem is that there isn’t enough competition. The lack of competition results in higher prices, abusive pricing by providers, and inefficiencies.

He lists the four network freedoms [initially outlined by Michael Powell of the FCC]. Consumers are entitled to “lawful content of their choice,” “entitled to run apps and services of their choice,” to “connect devices that don’t harm the etwork” and to competition. [It’s not a mere nicety that we are not consumers.]

The NN debate has been spurred, he says, by the fact that providers aren’t getting enough return on their investment. They claim that this is because, in part, of “millionaire free riders.” The network providers say content providers are free riders. Randall isn’t sure that’s right, but, he says, anoother way of looking at it is that content providers provide the value that drives people to broadband. [Yeah!] “There’s synergy there. It’s not just parasitic.” The network providers, he says, could be considered free riders on YouTube’s, Google’s and eBay’s content.

Consumers want access to everything. If providers start charing Google for faster lanes, then maybe Google will go elsewhere. And we don’t want to be charging people for everything. [Yeah!]

He closes by pointing to the fact that users are creating content. How could you pick the winners so you could charge them more? Even if you could, why would you want to? What would the advantage be for consumers, providers or content providers? [A more balanced presentation than I’d expected.]

[Tags: massnetcomms net_neutrality digital_rights ]

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