Net neutrality simmers at VON

In moderating a panel at Spring VON 2007 last week, Blair Levin's goal was to get panelists to bring something new to the Net neutrality debate. That may not be possible at this stage, but the managing director of Stifel, Nicolaus and Co. did push all the right buttons as panelists on both sides did their best to maintain composure and stay below the boiling point.

Mike McCurry, partner with Public Strategies Washington and co-chair of Hands off the Internet, joined Link Hoewing, assistant vice president of Internet and technology issues for Verizon; Christopher Libertelli, senior director of government and regulatory affairs for Skype; and Rick Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel for Google as panelists. McCurry was more than just a physical buffer between the factions, offering general advice as well. “It would be nuts [for carriers] to engage in that kind of content discrimination,” he said. “And [they] have said they wouldn't do it … but [companies that are concerned] need to define exactly what [discrimination] means and engage the broadband bureau so engineers can model things around what they can and can't do.”

In an effort to get panelists thinking of a common future, Levin asked them to envision the perfect network for the next century, saying that AT&T's network may well have been perfect for the last century — implying, perhaps, that the one it is building today is not it.

Although all panelists agreed there was no such thing as the perfect network, Libertelli highlighted Skype's history as a company started in a London basement bar that addressed millions of broadband users on its first day in business through a peer-to-peer architecture. The ideal network, he said, is one where “new network capacity grows in lock step with demand.”

Of course, Skype didn't build a network; it built a service. Hoewing said there never will be a perfect network because the applications will always change, causing networks to evolve. Much of the evolution today is around providing more capacity, but that is only part of the solution, he said. It's not possible to gold-plate a service anymore just by adding capacity, Hoewing added. “That's why Net neutrality arguments concern us.”

Whitt said he would like to see enough network intelligence to provide flexibility to put all its applications and content on as many platforms as possible. He agreed there is no perfect company and instead envisions an ecosystem of different providers.

“We rely as much on broadband providers as they rely on us,” Whitt said. “It's unfortunate that policy debates overlook that we do all exist in this one huge market.”

This mutual reliance doesn't end the need for Net neutrality, however. “Competition will take care of it over time, but we are not there yet, so Net neutrality has to be the solution,” he said.

The concern over quality of content is getting lost in the argument over tiered access and ideal networks, McCurry said. The perfect network from the consumer point of view will feature converged services that are simpler to use and don't suffer congestion from delivering video gaming and on-demand services.

“But what does that do to important public information? We should focus on taking that information that is held by the government and making it available. But in business, people are not interested in creating a better informed [public,]” he said.

Libertelli said news that major carriers have openly blocked traffic from conference call providers in Iowa refutes claims that Net neutrality backers seek a solution before the problem has occurred, calling that the phone version of Net neutrality.

As with any really good Net neutrality debate, this was just the beginning.