EU Telecoms Package - preserving the present, holding up the future!

In one of its last acts the European Parliament sent the EU Telecoms package into a conciliation process. This conciliation process is about to begin. The precise remit is not clear, is it just 3 strikes or will we get a wider review of some ugly clauses? The package, a pan European set of laws harmonising how telecommunication services are defined and sold were rejected on grounds of amendment 38, which has been numerously called three strikes, graduated response, and the Carla Bruni clauses. We can now add the Mandelson meddling to the list. Enough parliamentarians (the Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, and Scottish Naionalists) and their groups rejected the notion that people could be cut off the internet without a judicial process and sent the whole package back into into conciliation between Parliament, the commission and the European civil service. However, it is hoped that alongside the three strikes clause another set of 'customer protection' clauses which are in breech of the spirit of the founding principles of the Internet can also be revised. The clauses can be interpreted to allow operators to inhibit certain traffic types as long as they identify these practices in the small print of their contracts.

Knobbling Skype, prioritising IPTV services, slowing peer to peer traffic and other measures that are beginning to be listed in the 'fair use' help pages of 'unlimited' broadband package. The amendments to the customer protection clauses followed lobbying from AT&T and some sloppy UK supported civil service activity in a cutting and pasting exercise direct from Wikipedia.

The clauses need removing, not just on the ill defined and emotive net neutrality grounds, but to permit the emergence of open and transparent data transport layers needed to support multiple critical services, the foundation of any plan for a universal high speed service. Access to the public internet can be one of these services, but the same data transport layer needs to be configured for things like remote care applications and teleworking applications. It is the property of neutrality which is critical in order that multiple services can be run on a single infrastructure and perform in a predictable manner. By understanding the capacity, throughput, loss and delay at various load levels, overloading can be avoided, performance assured and prioritisation applied from the edge of the network if needed. These are not 'customer protection' issues to be covered off in the small print, but go to describing the service itself. This is not an 'up to xxxMbps claim' but a description of what services can be supported predictably at busy periods. This is not a right to churn as a customer protection, but a description of what you and cannot do with the service you have purchased. In the UK you can churn between suppliers, without any of the suppliers having to explain what resources they have put in place to support your service, and what services will and will not work. It's affordable at at a price!

Why would a company like AT&T and indeed UK civil servants support something which is so sub-optimal? Incumbent operators cannot create the value they wish to create, or Governments solve the problems they wish to solve unless data transport services emerge which deliver multiple critical services in a predictable manner. Protecting legacy services and taxes, favouring the drive for their own branded IPTV services. By controlling the services end to end, we can improve the service! We have mis-sold unlimited and need to manage traffic volumes! These are reasons but pretty poor ones for misreading the need for open and transparent networking. They cannot unlock their investments in NGA, or indeed existing copper if in essence customers end up with just more best efforts service, specifically engineered to deny users the full potential (by not revealing the limits, or emergent properties) of the connectivity. It is no wonder that up to 50 Mbps services can only achieve a £3per month premium. The true properties of the service are hidden and so the utility of the asset is limited. Thus neutrality is not just an inherent property of the data transport we need to support multiple critical services, it is a fundamental attribute if incumbents are to create value for shareholders and gain a return on their NGA investments. It is by helping users to get the most from their connectivity to do all the odd things we need to do as we go through life that value can be created. This is very different to handcuffing customers to an IPTV service, or impeding real time multi-media communication services to protect legacy voice services.

The really good news is that even todays best effort services have to be built to a certain standard for them to be stable enough to function. This means that provided we do not breech the system design limits or planning rules, a plethora of services can run smoothly. The latter are neither documented nor explained but the many thousands who wrote to their MEPs have an intuitive understanding of what's possible and what's being denied us. It is the potential to do and achieve more with our connectivity, which demands that some of the 'customer protection' measures (amendment 22 of the USO)are replaced with a duty to fully inform customers as to the attributes of their connectivity and the natural limits of the system. This compares with the current posiiton of selling the full potential of the system when nobody else is using it and hiding the measures taken to stop you fully using the available resources. The latter is also being confused with measures to manage congestion. Congestion is a normal occurrence on any shared resource, and the customer can play a significant role in mitigating congestion if given the facts.

As users and indeed shareholders of these incumbents we need our MEPs to get these clauses removed or changed. Whether your a user of an existing service, a shareholder or an investor in NGA, the property of neutrality is an outcome from the design principles used to engineer a properly functioning data transport network, if it is to be called such. It is one ingredient if users are to get what we need and investors are to get the returns from their investments.

Matters have changed since the May 2009 vote for UK politicians. BT have changed their network plans, causing Ofcom a great deal of uncertainty. BT are no longer wedded to replace the POTS service with a mass migration to an emulated POTS service on an NGN. They are refocusing on providing higher speed connectivity options which we hope are supported by a more transparent data transport layer. UK Policy makers have also called for a Universal Broadband service. In both cases, 'customer protection' measures as per amendment 22 are less important that a duty of care to deliver services to a specification. It is unthinkable a Universal Broadband service could be called as such without the principle of neutrality being a fundamental attribute and emergent property of the underlying data transport.

I think the problem is that politicians are afraid that this might be categorised as a human right and when all that is being described is an emergent property of a well designed data network needed to support multiple services.

As it stands the EU Telecoms Package (USO) at best is confused on the matter, and this confusion needs to be removed. The consequences for operators persisting with this approach is a loss of long term ARPU and increased churn. For users it's frustration and poor service, that's before we get onto any so called rights!

I hope MEPs on the conciliation body see the error and correct it. Although being fought over like a principal, it is just an error. Networks are not bits of magic. To deliver services end to end the networks have to be engineered to deliver outcomes in an open and transparent manner. They must also interwork which means a common approach is needed to deliver services end to end. Creating services that work, demands these properties are published and kept simple. This is why AT&T's and UK policy makers behaviour is so short sighted. Discriminatory traffic management measures are inconsistent with the very essence of end to end networking, yet that is what their lobbyists are succeeded in getting past parliament.

The conciliation process is a chance to get the clauses reviewed. It should be straight forward and its seems odd having to protest for the change to be made, but having mis-sold and undersold Broadband in the first place it is easy for the error to continue. This will not change the overall notion of Telecoms Package which is seeking to eumulate UK competitive markets across Europe, the same market definitions and structures which are already dated given the need for converged high speed access (fixed and mobile) and the need to separate data transport from the services which will run on that transport. The changes will however be one less brick in the way of our progress towards better connectivity for all.