Net neutrality getting dis-connected

[Commentary] While Google has gone quiet on network neutrality it’s making plenty of waves on other aspects of network management. I don’t think the shift in tactics is mere coincidence. Rather, I think Google, Facebook and other large bandwidth users have decided, like Netflix, that their real fight is not over the treatment of their content over the last mile but over how it gets to the last mile.

For all the sturm und drang over fast lanes and slow lanes, from the point of view of Netflix, YouTube and other video streaming services, it’s a bit of a red herring, as is much of the rest of the substantive debate over net neutrality as it has been defined by the FCC. Nobody’s going to pay for a fast lane on the last mile if they also have to pay a toll just to get their bits onto the last mile. So long as ISPs are able to erect those toll booths and manipulate the traffic around them, fast lanes and slow lanes are irrelevant in terms of their potential impact on a video provider’s business.

There’s another, longer-term consideration, however, that I suspect is also behind the shift in emphasis from net neutrality to peering. Charging for peering doesn’t actually make a lot of short-term economic sense for ISPs, since peering reduces costs for everyone.

By establishing the precedent now that major bandwidth hogs, which for the most part just happen to be major video streaming services, should pay for access to their networks they’re hoping to forestall the day when Netflix can demand payment for its content.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies]