Overhyped study shows no net neutrality violation

[Commentary] On June 22, a number of media outlets ran stories purportedly about “net neutrality violations” by major US Internet service providers, notably AT&T. This would be important news if true. But the core of the story is about a completely different topic.

The story is not at all about how AT&T operates its network. Instead, it’s about the conditions under which AT&T connects its network to other networks, known as interconnection. The site being “slowed” by AT&T is a content distribution network named GTT. The reason GTT traffic is slow for AT&T customers is not that AT&T is slowing the traffic within the AT&T network. Rather, the problem is that there is only a limited and slow connection between GTT and AT&T, and AT&T expects GTT to pay to enhance it. That is, the performance problem is not that AT&T is slowing the Internet, it’s that GTT expects to have a fast connection to AT&T users, without paying for it. Every content provider would like to have free high-speed connections to their customers. But somebody has to pay. There is no legal or technical reason why content providers should get free connectivity, while the full costs fall on consumers. This is not “neutral.” This is corporate favoritism with a misleading slogan. Far from advocating for consumers or for an open internet, BattlefortheNet is implicitly asking the FCC to shift network costs around willy-nilly, based on which companies have the best public image. The FCC should decline the invitation.

[Ariel Rabkin is a professional software engineer who received his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkely in May 2012]