The most popular technology article in today's New York Times is Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic. The article reports on the news that several ISPs, including Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and AT&T, are considering a move to a "metered Internet" pricing model for consumers. That is, the more bits you download (or upload), the more you pay.

I suspect it's no coincidence that the move to metered pricing comes at the same time as more strident calls for network neutrality regulations. The current net neutrality legislation is so broadly worded that it would prevent ISPs from managing traffic on their networks. This will ultimately stand in the way of media convergence and force companies like Comcast to maintain separate networks for their Internet service and, e.g. television. This inefficient duplication of infrastructure is bad for everyone: consumers, ISPs, and content providers.

I'm certainly opposed to some forms of network discrimination, like charging content providers extra for Internet access, as Ed Whitacre of BellSouth famously proposed back in 2006. But the current, broadly-worded legislation creates a real danger of market fragmentation and inefficiency.

Convergence

The promise of telecommunications convergence is having a single pipe to the home, which provides all of our communication needs: telephone, television, internet access, and more, all rolled into one convenient (and hopefully cheaper) package. This type of convergence is entirely possible using modern IP networks.

While we have "bundling" here already, we don't have true convergence. When you purchase a bundle from AT&T or Comcast, you get different physical connections into your home. Your cable TV plugs into one box, your cable Internet into another, and your cable VoIP phone into a third. The three services don't share bandwidth.

In a converged world, all three services would come through the same network, sharing the same bandwidth. Deutsche Telecom is already doing this in Germany, providing customers with a single 25 Mbps pipe to the home. If the consumer is watching HDTV, 8 Mbps is consumed, leaving 17 Mbps for other uses (telephone calls, web browsing, file downloading). As soon as the consumer turns off the TV, the full 25 Mbps is available for any other purpose.

Convergence is working in Germany because DT actively manages its network. Jitter-sensitive applications like television get a block of low-jitter bandwidth so that the TV viewing experience is what the consumer expects. Jitter-insensitive applications get the raw bytes they need, but are served over a high-jitter block of bandwidth. The proposed legislation in the United States would ban such management.

Current Legislation

Current Net Neutrality legislation would make it illegal for ISPs to discriminate between different types of network traffic.1 The theory behind anti-discrimination provisions is that Comcast, for example, shouldn't be allowed to favor its own (e.g. video) service over that of competitors on the Internet (like vuze).

Anti-discrimination sounds good in theory. I certainly don't want Comcast controlling what content comes through my Internet connection, nor do most Internet users. The problem is that the language of the legislation is over-broad, and would effectively prohibit ISPs from implementing any meaningful network optimization. This will inevitably lead to fragmentation and inefficiency, postponing true telecommunications convergence -- and the many benefits it would confer -- for many years to come.

1. 1. See, e.g., Internet Freedom Preservation Act, S. 215, 110th Congress (2007) ("each broadband provider shall . . . not block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use a broadband service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service made available via the Internet").