Anyone reading the arguments to repeal net neutrality is lead to believe it is a left/right issue – open markets or burdensome regulation stifling investment. It is not. I am fairly right leaning. I believe in free, fair and open markets. I believe that all arms were “military style” when the second amendment was written and “shall not be infringed” actually means what is says. I believe that if I work hard and produce a good product then my company should have a decent shot to make it in the market, but even that is far from a guarantee. Every election I make sure to vote and pretty much vote “R” the whole way down – not simply because they are Republicans but because they generally use good common sense and don’t try to govern by emotions with their logical head buried in the sand removing reality from consideration. I can’t always vote “R” though. Here in California we are taken over by very liberal Democrats and it’s not uncommon to have two “D’s” on the same ticket running against each other. So you often have to vote for the lesser of two evils. However, in the case of repealing net neutrality, I have no hesitation in admitting the right has this one very wrong. I believe it’s being repealed out of spite – because a Democrat president (who I absolutely did not support) and Democrat FCC commissioner installed it. The Open Internet Order (OIO) was a good start, but even it fell short of creating a truly neutral Internet. I’m not sure they fully understood the problem and so their solution left plenty of room for ISP’s to behave badly. Despite my best effort at exposing the bad behavior through an informal FCC complaint, it unfortunately continues to this day. This is why we need to strengthen net neutrality, not repeal it.

The broadband Internet business is far from an open market. It’s not at all like an edge provider such as Netflix or Hulu, where broadband internet access service (BIAS) consumers actually have a choice. There is no choice with BIAS because consumers need broadband access to utilize the modern Internet, and let’s face it, DSL is not what anyone should consider “broadband” by the modern sense of the word. Where I live, there is one and only one real choice. That was formerly Time Warner Cable, recently sold and renamed Charter Spectrum. They are in fact monopolies who began as community access antennas for reception of off-air television signals. Their cables were buried under public streets, often crossing through private property for the common public benefit. There is virtually no chance they ever would have received permission to bury their cables across private property if it was not for the common public benefit either. This is of course similar to other monopolies, like water who bury their pipes and sometimes also cross private property for the benefit of the public. The same can be said of electric and telephone service.

Proponents of repeal argue that no specific cases of abuse have existed and so the OIO is a solution for a problem that never existed. They have forgotten the throttling of Netflix traffic to paying BIAS consumers - unless Netflix paid a ransom to get past the gatekeepers - that largely triggered all of this in the first place. That was really only the final straw. Back in 2005, a North Carolina ISP blocked the VoIP service Vonage. In the same year, Comcast began secretly blocking peer to peer technologies and a Canadian ISP also blocked access to a server that was hosting a web site supporting a labor strike against the company. From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing. All of these abuses and more are listed in a freepress.net article.

My favorite abuse is not listed. It involves a peering dispute between my company, Commercial Network Services (CNS) and Time Warner Cable (TWC). Peering, also known as interconnection, is when two networks connect together in order to exchange traffic. This abuse exposes a back door paid fast lane and highlights how BIAS providers will tend to behave badly when given any opportunity. I call it a back door because the OIO did not cover peering, and so it left paid interconnection as an opportunity to create a fast lane because the only alternative route to these consumers is through congested transit.

In this case, CNS built out their network from the most south west tip of the continental USA, moving east to New Jersey and New York, then extending further into Europe. Along the way, CNS connected to multiple public internet traffic exchanges (IX). An IX is a facility where networks connect at their own expense in order to exchange traffic with each other. Once your network is connected, it’s merely a matter of policy to exchange traffic or not – a software configuration, which literally can be done in minutes. It is often done automatically through the use of route servers on the IX. CNS peers with over 1200 networks all over the world settlement free through these IX’s.

There existed two traffic exchanges where CNS and TWC maintained a common presence, and they happened to be on opposite ends of the USA – an ideal configuration. They were Any2 in Los Angeles and Equinix in New York. CNS was interested in peering with TWC because TWC consumers were watching the San Diego Web Cam at www.SunDiegoLive.com . The webcam is a popular (and free) site with multiple live HD cameras along San Diego Bay. It has a heavy military following with families watching their sons, daughters, mothers and fathers leave San Diego on Naval deployments and return from sea homecomings. Peering would give these viewers – paying TWC BIAS consumers – a high definition picture.

As this would be a very easy peering configuration, CNS sent a request to TWC. TWC responded with a demand for purchase of TWC “transit” service before peering would be established. Without peering, TWC consumers were reduced to a degraded quality picture because traffic would route around the obvious best path through congested and unnecessary transit.

Through this unreasonable demand for payment, TWC was acting as gatekeeper, preventing their paying BIAS consumers from reaching the San Diego Web Cam in full HD unless CNS purchased “transit” service from TWC. CNS, at its own expense, had already brought the network to TWC’s front door - and the front door of over 1200 other networks. There was no reasonable need for “transit” service from TWC. TWC was in fact double dipping.

I filed an informal complaint against TWC with the FCC. TWC immediately deleted their peeringdb.com public IX record, which made it seem as if they were not on these mutual exchanges and so peering was not possible. San Diego Web Cam viewers ran multiple traceroutes from their TWC connections all over the country to prove that they were not only on these IX’s, but using them to also reach International and educational networks – networks which they have no opportunity to demand payment to peer. These networks would probably laugh in their faces if presented a bill to peer with TWC.

The FCC closed the dispute without any action, presumably because the OIO did not extend to peering. This back door paid fast lane continues to this day with most every BIAS provider. A search of peeringdb.com records will reveal most BIAS providers have pulled away from public IX’s completely, arguably because it would facilitate free peering with other networks and that is not something they want. They want to double dip – charge networks for access to consumers who are already paying them to access these very same networks. Most of the few BIAS providers that continue publishing their public IX peering points maintain peering policies which still make them a gatekeeper to BIAS consumers.

This is a significant violation of the public trust given to them when they were granted access to public and private property to bury their cables or utilize limited radio spectrum for the public benefit. Instead, they have evolved into taking advantage of these resources and are now committing a great fraud on their consumers by way of double dipping at the expense of the very connectivity the same consumers are paying them for. This can be exceptionally dangerous when it comes to VoIP telephone service, 911 connectivity, emergency home monitoring and such because it comes at the unnecessary cost of redundancy. I won’t even get started on what it does to quality of service. This was detailed in the informal FCC complaint CNS vs TWC.

They argue the OIO harms innovation. There is not a single service on the Internet who isn’t a kid in a garage with a great idea away from being out of business, except of course unless a gatekeeper prevents that kid from gaining access to consumers without an unnecessary and prohibiting payoff. The biggest threat to innovation is a gatekeeper demanding payment in order to connect their paying Internet access consumers to the next great online service. Also, the OIO does not prevent a BIAS provider from prioritizing their own service, so they can’t claim it hinders their own innovation either.

They further argue that the OIO killed investment in the BIAS networks. This was proven to be false by the comments to AT&T investors by their very own CEO. He essentially said they were done building out their LTE network and so expenditures would obviously decrease going forward. Another reason is copper lines are being abandoned in favor of fiber and so there is less to maintain, which of course costs less.

They say “hysterical” critics opposing repeal of net neutrality have a hard time answering exactly how the Internet was able to become the engine of innovation that it is today without expansive FCC controls only granted through the OIO in 2015 [reason.com]. This is a loaded question and framed in a way to make the OIO seem absurd. I find that, itself, to be absurd and to me it either demonstrates that these people really have no clue what they are talking about or are blatantly leveraging their knowledge of this highly technical issue against those who are not as familiar in order to further the ongoing fraud.

Back in the late 1990’s when Cable modems were the new fast thing, cable Internet providers were falling all over themselves to get connected to the “core”. They were in fact considered the “edge” and the “core” were sites like Alta Vista, Yahoo and America Online. Cable companies were selling connectivity to the Internet and in order to sell it, they had to have it. To do that, they were peering like crazy.

Over the past 20 years or so, our lifestyle has evolved into a very well connected one. We now have smartphones and broadband Internet access services keeping us connected. We pay our bills online, bank online, watch movies online, order food online, etc.. And because of this, broadband Internet providers have benefitted from strong growth. It has resulted in a complete reversal of circumstances. No longer does the edge want to peer with the core. The core now wants to peer with the edge in order to have access to millions of consumers who want to utilize their services. In fact, the “edge” is no longer even considered “the edge”. The edge is now providers like Commercial Network Services, Google, Netflix, Hulu, etc..

And so looking to make money off this reversal of circumstances, some broadband internet service providers are double dipping. And that is what they are trying to enhance by repealing the OIO.

As if this back-door paid fast lane is not enough for greedy BIAS providers behaving badly, it is interesting to also note that the current OIO is actually version two. The first version was overturned by a court when Verizon successfully sued the FCC claiming the order was illegal because they were not title II carriers. And so now that the FCC corrected that mistake by making them all title II carriers, Ajit Pai, the current FCC Commissioner and a former Verizon lawyer, wants to repeal the title II designation and trust BIAS providers will behave this time around through voluntary compliance. Certainly Mr. Pai is well aware of the history and how absurd his proposal is.

In order provide a truly open Internet for American consumers, Republican leadership needs to build on the foundation created by the OIO and extend it to include interconnection. Interconnection is the backdoor paid fast lane where abuse continues. It is the one loophole in the OIO that is to this day preventing the Internet from being truly open in the United States.

If BIAS providers would responsibly open their networks, quality of service to their consumers would increase immediately, speed would improve dramatically and they would finally be honoring their obligation to consumers, which they renew every day their cables remain buried under our public streets and private property.

Update: A reader has suggested the following additional information is provided:

For the first 20 years of the Internet's phenomenal, explosive growth,

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IT WAS UNDER TITLE II COMMON CARRIER CLASSIFICATION

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It was not until 2002 that the FCC reclassified Cable as a Title I "Information Service".

In 2005 it did the same with DSL and Wireless broadband.

In 2015 the FCC RETURNED them to a Title II classification. Because they had to, in order to legally stop the industry from behaving badly. They'd been considering doing so since 2010.

More details regarding the classification history can be found here.