With the majority of Internet traffic expected to shift to congestion-prone mobile networks, there is growing debate on both sides of the Atlantic about whether operators of the networks should be allowed to treat Web users differently, based on the users consumption.
Proponents of the current system called network neutrality see that principle as a kind of civil rights declaration of the digital age, one that requires the gatekeepers of the global Internet to treat all users equally, regardless of application, source or download limit.
While operators have never been required to maintain neutrality, the industry has created that expectation largely by charging users a flat rate for unlimited Internet access.
But there is a big flaw in the concept, according to the operators: Networks have never been neutral. They have always been actively managed to some extent since their inception in the 1980s to ensure that all customers get a basic best effort level of service.
If an operator could not restrain bandwidth hogs, who typically make up 15 percent of customers but who generate 80 percent of the traffic, most Internet users would experience poor service.
The Internet has never been a neutral environment left to develop freely on a first-come, first-serve basis, said Stuart Orr, the head of the telecommunications group in Europe, Africa and Latin America for Accenture, a U.S. software services consultant.
The arcane issue of network management, and the free speech and competition issues it raises, has taken on broader political importance as operators have increasingly micromanaged the flow of data, favoring some users over others as they have sought to handle exploding levels of traffic or deliver premium broadband service at guaranteed speeds to heavy users and businesses.
In the United States, users of the BitTorrent file-sharing service, a large generator of broadband traffic, last year challenged a cable operator, Comcast, that had blocked the service by identifying and disabling a common protocol used by BitTorrent users.
The Federal Communications Commission ordered Comcast to stop the blocking. Comcast challenged the ruling. On April 6, an appeals court in Washington sided with the operator, saying the F.C.C. could not tell Comcast how to manage its network.
In Brussels, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, plans to hold a public consultation on net neutrality this summer, which could lead to a push for new laws or regulations for operators.
Earlier this year, Ms. Kroes warned mobile operators not to block or hinder Internet voice services like Skype from their networks.
Operators are worried that any rigid legal mandate that forced them to observe net neutrality standards would be unworkable and make the economics of high-speed wireless broadband less attractive, which could limit future investment and improvement to the networks.
We have no interest as an industry in policing individual surfing habits or acting as the gatekeeper for information, said Frederic Gastaldo, the head of strategy and innovation at Swisscom.
Historically, our industry has resisted attempts to force operators to act as the personal gatekeepers of information. That would be a very negative marketing approach. However, customers who do excessively use our data network are a big challenge for us.
Congestion is more problematic for mobile than landline broadband operators because wireless broadband capacity is limited by the ability of individual base stations to process the Web activities of hundreds of users simultaneously. The more users per station, the less performance for each user.
Proponents of the current system called network neutrality see that principle as a kind of civil rights declaration of the digital age, one that requires the gatekeepers of the global Internet to treat all users equally, regardless of application, source or download limit.
While operators have never been required to maintain neutrality, the industry has created that expectation largely by charging users a flat rate for unlimited Internet access.
But there is a big flaw in the concept, according to the operators: Networks have never been neutral. They have always been actively managed to some extent since their inception in the 1980s to ensure that all customers get a basic best effort level of service.
If an operator could not restrain bandwidth hogs, who typically make up 15 percent of customers but who generate 80 percent of the traffic, most Internet users would experience poor service.
The Internet has never been a neutral environment left to develop freely on a first-come, first-serve basis, said Stuart Orr, the head of the telecommunications group in Europe, Africa and Latin America for Accenture, a U.S. software services consultant.
The arcane issue of network management, and the free speech and competition issues it raises, has taken on broader political importance as operators have increasingly micromanaged the flow of data, favoring some users over others as they have sought to handle exploding levels of traffic or deliver premium broadband service at guaranteed speeds to heavy users and businesses.
In the United States, users of the BitTorrent file-sharing service, a large generator of broadband traffic, last year challenged a cable operator, Comcast, that had blocked the service by identifying and disabling a common protocol used by BitTorrent users.
The Federal Communications Commission ordered Comcast to stop the blocking. Comcast challenged the ruling. On April 6, an appeals court in Washington sided with the operator, saying the F.C.C. could not tell Comcast how to manage its network.
In Brussels, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, plans to hold a public consultation on net neutrality this summer, which could lead to a push for new laws or regulations for operators.
Earlier this year, Ms. Kroes warned mobile operators not to block or hinder Internet voice services like Skype from their networks.
Operators are worried that any rigid legal mandate that forced them to observe net neutrality standards would be unworkable and make the economics of high-speed wireless broadband less attractive, which could limit future investment and improvement to the networks.
We have no interest as an industry in policing individual surfing habits or acting as the gatekeeper for information, said Frederic Gastaldo, the head of strategy and innovation at Swisscom.
Historically, our industry has resisted attempts to force operators to act as the personal gatekeepers of information. That would be a very negative marketing approach. However, customers who do excessively use our data network are a big challenge for us.
Congestion is more problematic for mobile than landline broadband operators because wireless broadband capacity is limited by the ability of individual base stations to process the Web activities of hundreds of users simultaneously. The more users per station, the less performance for each user.
