Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Shifting bargaining power in the NN debate

In the net neutrality debate, this is how bargaining power is shifting:
  1. OTTs are afraid ISPs will extort money from them, hence claim strong NN regulation is needed.
  2. Netflix turned this upside down and hinted at being able to charge ISPs - but added that it won't.
  3. Now, Time Warner Cable appears to be afraid of being charged by OTTs.
  4. Comcast came out as a defender of NN regulation.
And so:
  • Everybody is in favour of weak NN.
  • ISPs and OTTs both have bargaining power.
Conclusion: all regulators need to do is:
  • Keep an eye on weak NN not being violated.
  • Make sure peering is made free (in Google's words: it's a win-win-win not to charge for peering), as long as OTTs and ISPs do their utmost to interconnect in such a way that traffic is not hindered, i.e. OTTs deliver traffic at the ISP and ISPs add capacity when needed.

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