The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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> CHRIS MARSDEN: Good morning, to everyone. Welcome to the third annual meeting of the Dynamic Coalition of Net Neutrality. It is very interesting to see that after three years of work, there is a lot of people still interested in the topic and following the decision.
We will have today a very interesting panel, split in two sections. The first one will be on new tendency in the Net Neutrality debate and the second one, current tendency but more from a pom see perspective. So, 2015 has been a very intense year for debate. So, we have been assisting the collaboration and also the compilation of the rules and the Net Neutrality. We had near Brazil and Latin America, intense discussion on Net Neutrality due to the consultations under democracy but also consultation in Net Neutrality.
We had some intense debate also in Europe with the recent approval of the new open Internet provision within the single market revolution. So, these are all elements that we will discuss today. We also will discuss the input document on Net Neutrality that will present on Thursday as an outcome of the Dynamic Coalition on Net Neutrality and we will discuss all these things with my distinguished panelists which are also the authors of the Annual Report of the Dynamic Coalition, that has been included as a third section of the Net Neutrality Compendium.
So, you have on your desk this pamphlet that has an introduction and an explanation of the compendium and a summary and also you have the QR Code and the URL to have free access to the third part of the compendium.
So I said, free. So, let me introduce you my distinguished panelists. I will start with Vint, who doesn't need introduction. He is known as the feather of the Internet and Vice President and Chief of the Internet, Evangelist at Google. Then, we have Elise Lindberg, who works for the Norwegian Communications Authority where she is senior legal advisor. Primavera De Filippi is a researcher in Paris. Then, we have René Arnold that is head of research at WIK Consult. Then, we have Konstantinos Stylianou who is lecturer on Internet regulation at Leads University. We have Nathalia Foditsch who is a Brazilian lawyer and Ph.D. researcher at American University and who is in Net Neutrality discussion as a recognized. Lastly, there is Chris Marsden who is Professor at Sussex and one of the most renowned scorers on Net Neutrality.
>> LUCA BELLI: There are plenty of seats in the front. You're committing a crime against the audience to stand. There are plenty of seats there if you want to have a seat, have a seat there.
So, without further introduction, I would like to ask Mr. Vint Cerf to enlighten us with his Keynote. Thank you.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you very much and good morning. I will take just a few minutes to try to say something I hope useful about this whole Net Neutrality question.
The first thing I think is very important to understand is that we are using that word probably to mean different things. Depending on which part of the world we are in and what the situation is in that part of the world.
So, to give you an example, in the United States, there was really not too much competition between the cable companies and the Telecos for any individual. So, it was common that for any individual household you had a choice of maybe a cable company to get broadband service or a telephone company, maybe with fiber service. But, you often didn't have a choice of more than one. Some people did have a choice of two. Some people had a choice of none because they were in the rural part of the U.S. and they were not served with broadband service.
The irony of all of this is that in the mid 1990s, there were 8,000 Internet service providers in the United States, so they were all reached by dial‑up telephone calls and modems. So, the competition was intense and you could switch from one service provider to another by simply dialing a different telephone number. So, the cost of switching is very low.
When we introduced broadband services, you needed equipment at home to connect you to the infrastructure of the broadband provider. The number of competitors from the point of view of any one subscriber, reduced dramatically to 0, 1 or 2.
Our problem arose because if there was only one provider, then the question arose; will that provider abuse the sole access that is provided to the Internet? Will that provider interfere with competing services coming from the other parts of the Internet? Although, there weren't too many instances of abuse, it was always a concern that this might be a risk driven by business motivations to inhibit competition on that sole provider access channel.
So, that is what triggered the Net Neutrality debate in the United States. In the end, I think the most important thing to remember is that we want the users of the Internet to have free choice about where they go and what they do on the network, which the access providers should not interfere with that. It is the case that there is an infinite amount of capacity available on all of those access channels and we accept that there isn't infinite capacity. But what one wants, is fair access to that capacity.
There are concepts like bandwidth caps, actually it's mislabeled.
The caps have how much data you're allowed to transmit as opposed to the rate at which you can transmit it. The real capacity limitation in the broadband world is the rate at which you can transmit data. If you were to transmit data at a terabyte per second, let me put it this way, if you were to send a terabyte of traffic over the course of a month, no one would notice your use of the capacity because it would be so spread out over time. If on the other hand, you wanted to send a terabyte in two or three minutes or seconds or something, everyone would notice because you would be consuming a great deal of capacity in a short amount of time.
So, the resource, which is in contention here, is the rate at which you are able to transmit the data, not simply the total amount of data that you're sending. So, we need to have not only open choice about where to go and what to do on the net, but fair access to the capacity that is available. When the system becomes congested and if it does become congested, then we want, again, the notion that the subscribers have fair access to the share of the capacity that they have paid for.
So, these are some of the components that enter into the neutrality debate. I guess the only thing that I would add to this very brief introduction is that wherever possible, competition helps to solve much of the problem because the users could choose to move to another supplier if they don't like the terms and conditions or quality of service that they get from some other supplier of access. So, competition is a good solution but it doesn't always work. It's not always the case that multiple suppliers will move in and compete for customers in a given territory.
So, in the absence of competition, one often has to turn to some regulatory framework in order to protect the interests of the consumer. So, I will stop there and I'm really looking forward to hearing from my colleagues on the panel about their perspective on Net Neutrality as it emerges in various other parts of the world.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you for this enlightening and also for highlighting some discrepancy in the notion of adoption of shared notion and this is also one of the points we will deal with the policy statement that we will present at the end of the session.
So, I will like to now go through Elise Lindberg. So her husband -- there has been a lot of discussion in Europe about Net Neutrality and I know that the Norwegian Communications Authority ‑‑ sorry, Communications Authority, has been extremely active.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: There are seats at the front for people who just came in.
>> LUCA BELLI: There are seats here.
So, the Norwegian model has been extremely efficient and has been praised as one of the most efficient in the world. Norwegian authority has been promoting Net Neutrality since 2009 with the adoption of this framework. So, my question is; what are your impressions from a Norwegian perspective of the current debate on Net Neutrality at European level? Then, if you can, then expand a little bit on the issue of Zero-Rating that has been very much discussed, and very much discussed in Norway. Thank you.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: Thank you very much. We are quite a crowd here today. Net Neutrality is getting more and more relevant and more and more at stake and catching more and more and relevant parties to discuss and this is also has been on the Norwegian Agenda for a long time. I think that ‑‑ well, what we had done in Norway from 2009 is we had made principles, not regulation, but principles that we agreed to with our market ‑‑ our big companies in Norway on this and they all accepted it and respect it and our perspective then has been to bring these principles into the discussion in Europe because in Europe now, we are up for regulation, as you said. So, they have already decided on regulation on this.
Of course, we have had the co‑Chair for the work on this on a long way ‑‑
(Indiscernible)
Who is really active in this discussion has been in it for a long time. Net Neutrality means different things in different regions. In Europe, from a Norwegian perspective, we have competition. So, the competition issue is Net Neutrality is much about what you do with your role as one of the big players and how you must avoid to get locked in to one of the providers.
So, what we see now is that Europe has decided on regulation. I think it is two days ago since they –on the 27 of October, they decided on regulation. The big discussion now, I think, will be Zero-Rating is one of the central discussions. The Zero-Rating as we have seen it from the Norwegian perspective in 2009, we said this publicly, we think the Zero-Rating is against the Norwegian principles of Net Neutrality.
Now, the discussion is whether or not you can interpret this into the new regulation; if it is in fact against this regulation or not. That debate is not finished. It is going to take place in Europe now when you make the guidelines on how to implement this legal act from European Parliament.
I don't think the last word is said on that one. I think we have someone in the crowd also from the Norwegian side who has spoken about what they think about this. You are free to dive in afterwards and tell your perspective on this. I ask to you join afterwards.
We have said that we think that it is not Net Neutrality have Zero-Rating. I think I will stop there for the time being. Thank you.
>> LUCA BELLI: Many thanks for this perspective and indeed, one of the very interesting elements that was highlighted by your colleague, Sorenson and his contribution to the compendium, is the concept of application and that this should not only concern traffic management. But, I think that Norwegian perspective is to try to use it also to as a prism to assess the compatibility to business model to non‑discriminatory principle that is debate of Net Neutrality.
So, I would go now to Chris to ask you: what do you think of your perspective on Zero-Rating? You have drafted a very interesting paper on mobile neutrality. So, I would like to start by asking you, if after your analysis you can suggest some specific model that could be used. Is there any national framework that can be seen as a best practice and then maybe to discuss Zero-Rating? Let's start with this: What is your most efficient model.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Sort of doing things the best model and then what the models are. So okay, let's take it that way around. I have taken off my tie because I'm sitting in the dark so no one will notice.
By the way, there are a couple of more seats for people who have just come in. In the middle somewhere I'm sure. Please feel free to sit down. So thank you again, Luca.
Before I start, I think we all have to wish Luca a happy birthday today. Happy birthday Luca!
(Applause)
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: I saw on the Dynamic Coalition e‑mail chain this morning about six messages from people wishing Luca a coded happy birthday. I think voting was a term that meant happy birthday which is nice.
>> LUCA BELLI: I used really that way.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Exactly. So, I should say it's a tremendous effort Luca put together to have the Dynamic Coalition for three years and put together a book in each of the three years.
That's fantastic. Thank you for that.
As we go on to Zero-Rating, it is true to say that Zero-Rating has been down around since the dawn of the consumer Internet and those who remember AOL and British TeleCom, used to have a content provision company which gave you Zero-Rated content. It was known as open world but I think it was known to the rest of the world as open world. They closed it down pretty quickly.
We heard Zero-Rating for a very long time. One of the issues I think the Zero-Rating and Net Neutrality is, that even if it is pretty clearly established, Net Neutrality as a principle actually is something which would apply to all ISPs when it comes to Zero-Rating. It does become more interesting to look at the role of dominant and less dominant companies and newcomers to the market that offer Zero-Rating is very often being considered and bearing in mind at a early stage talking about regulation, as a company that perhaps would have less fierce Zero-Rating applied to it. Case‑in‑point, the VideoTron case which is open in Canada, ongoing at the moment, or for those in the United States, the T‑Mobile streaming of music which appears to be a rousing less suspicion than it would do if it was a larger company.
So, having established and agreeing with Vint, there are different ways in which Net Neutrality is applied in different places. I think I have a solution which I think works across‑the‑board and I share this with Primavera and others and I think it also solves the question people ask, why Chris, are you always so critical of Telecom companies but you aren't really a Net Neutrality guy? It's this, which is that I think there should be two associated rules and the two associate the rules are taking us back to the origins of common carriage. The two would be no exclusivity.
So, not possible for a company together way content provide tore sign up to an exclusive deal that couldn't be offered to other content providers or other companies. So, you wouldn't have pre‑basics only being offered on an exclusive basis by one mobile operator for instance, in Brazil.
The second is fair reasonable and nondiscriminatory pricing. If I wanted, as a mobile carrier, for instance, to carry Wikimedia‑Zero, that's not a great example. FACEBOOK‑Zero, then I ‑‑ or free basics, I would be offered that as anybody else would be. The same would apply in reverse. If it was a content provider that wanted access to a platform, it would be at a same price. The reason why Beth is frowning at me is, it is not Net Neutrality. It's a fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory way of carrying content or the ISP to get access to that content but it isn't Net Neutrality.
However, it would, I think, solve most of the problems, particularly with Zero-Rating. I think also, very specifically to do with specialized services, which we haven't discussed yet and may discuss later. But, I do accept it is not Net Neutrality as classically foreseen.
I just make one final point on that, though, which is that we do, it has been said, many definitions. I think one of the fun things is when you look around the world, particularly the European Union and the United States, we don't use the term Net Neutrality in our laws anyway. We talk about open Internet. Who could be opposed to the open Internet? Send up the one person opposed, there are two people standing up anyway, but it's not their fault, who are opposed to the open Internet. But, the European regulation very, very specifically voiced the term, Net Neutrality. Neutrality is used I believe, once in the regulation and of course it is the old source, which is even more of a cliché in Internet regulation than the open Internet, which is just technical Neutrality or technological Neutrality is used. But, Net Neutrality is not used in the regulation.
So, I may not be a Net Neutrality guy. But, it turns out the laws that are supposed to establish Net Neutrality, are also not Net Neutrality laws.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you very much Chris for this. So, one of the key points that has been raised over the past couple of years to justify to support Zero-Rating schemes, has been the Zero-Rating capability to foster Internet access to promote Internet access in rural area or to undeveloped communities. But, what has been neglected at least in this specific debate is also to existence of alternatives to Zero-Rating, obviously, and that may be more sustainable to foster Internet access and interconnectivity.
I would like to ask who made a contribution to the compendium on community networks. So, how can community networks provide an alternative and decentralized alternative to the phenomenon of centralization that we are currently assisting? What kind of role could this community network play in order to foster connectivity as established nation?
>> PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI: So thank you, Luca. Currently, since the sense of concentration and power that the ISP to have on the Internet, there is this growing discussion and movement actually that is trying to develop alternative model of open Internet. Regardless, it kind of goes beyond the discussion of Net Neutrality, it's the idea to create an alternative way of connecting people together which does not depend on the network.
So, I'm going to talk about the concept of mesh networking so the idea is as opposed to the traditional ‑‑ in which people connect on a centralized ISP to take care of the traffic, in a meshed apology, it is every single point is at the same time transmitting traffic but it permits other people to move traffic for them. In the sense, there is no single point of control. There is also no single point of failure because the network is actually dynamically deployed. So, whenever there are new people coming into the network, it also means that the bandwidth of the capacity of the network grows because those people connecting to the network are also providing their own analysis to the network.
So, the scarcity of band worth which is problem in the sense when we have one operator that is in charge of dealing with all the infrastructure investment then is providing this to user which helps to simply connecting to that infrastructure. In the case of mesh networking, because the network is provided directly by the users, there is a kind of elasticity. If there are a few users connected, there needs to be less bandwidth and people can just use providers provided. When more are connected to the network, it adds to the capacity of the network host.
So, that is one important distinction as opposed to the traditional model.
This is also the idea of the fact that those networks are created often by necessity and by ideology. By necessity, it is essentially in the case of there has been ‑‑ for instance there is the one of the biggest mesh network is ‑‑ net in Spain which is acquired the size it is recognized as a former Telecom operator in Spain.
The idea was they started to deploy themselves in the beginning in the area where the Telecom companies simply did not have any Internet, any economic infrastructure to apply broadband connection because it was not for them. So, they created a system of mesh net, which connect the contraries that could not access the Internet and then through gateways to the real Internet then it is possible to move the traffic through that.
For instance, in New York, after the Sandy hurricane, they had an initiative providing immediately deployed and provided network connectivity where the traditional infrastructure had been destroyed.
Then, to have the mesh networks which are actually developed in addition to the existing infrastructure because of ideological values. So, perhaps one of the main ones is in Germany. The idea here is simply that people didn't want to be subject to the condition of the ISP of the monitoring and the censorship and et cetera and decided that we now have, we are all connected and we have more bandwidth we need so let's use this bandwidth in order to get people to connect with each other on the alternative network. Then all the time there is obviously the question of the up links.
So, the mesh network is a network between itself so people connected to each other can interact and connect but cannot access the Internet unless there are people that provide a gateway to the Internet. So, the more people that are connecting to the Internet and to the mesh network at the same time, then the more gateways.
So, the other whole idea is really just to instead of there are many ways to address this problem of Net Neutrality. Either, we can try and fight the current model either and get from the inside and try to reform or implement new laws and the idea with mesh networking is actually to provide just as a beyond to the design another system and then hopefully as more and more people get devices and like cell phone that become more and more powerful.
For instance, now there is the FireChat, which actually uses some features that are included automatically in the iPhone. So, anyone that has an iPhone can become a mesh network holder. So, now it is obviously a niche and the technology is not so friendly or easy for people to develop this. But, as time goes, there are more user‑friendly applications being developed and ideally it could be a way in which we can provide access to underserved area and create alternative network where ‑‑
(Indiscernible)
>> LUCA BELLI: What do you think would be the regulatory challenges that may hinder the sustainable deployment of community network in general? Could you share with the audience some key points on this briefly?
>> PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI: I think there is one technical problem which is quite important, which is the problem of – so, in fact centralized network Agenda highly more efficient. It is much easier and less costly to connect one centralized network and have this dispatch the traffic. In context of networking, there is the landscape that is much lower and ‑‑ there needs to be a back channel of communication in order to know who is connected to whom at which moment. But, this is a thing which is being worked out and ideally the technical problem can be resolved.
I think in terms of regulatory issues, there are two important questions. One is the question of the spectrum. So mesh network do not rely on ‑‑ most do not implement technical physical infrastructure but they rely on Wi‑Fi and basically the Wi‑Fi spectrum. If we want to have connectivity between mesh network and if we have longer range connectivity and being able to affectionately deploy a real network, a real mesh on top of the Internet so it is not just local to one area but it can connect with everyone, then those people that are implementing mesh network, they need access to the spectrum location.
At the moment there are different approaches on how the spectrum can be located so most importantly the white spectrum, the one that has been freed with the passage to the analogue television. So, there is the command and control approach, which is that the development will decide and assign licenses, and those licenses are often based on the auction model which means that they have a lot of money will win the auctions and it's difficult for community mesh network that doesn't have much process to actually win the bid.
Alternative, there is a concept of spectrum comments and the idea that those are actually free sources that do not belong to everyone and everyone should be allowed to use them and then comes the question of management. How can we manage the spectrum in a way that there is no dysfunctionality and no incompatibility by such a rating?
The second regulatory problem, is the issues of the law that oblige people to secure the Internet connection and that creates or not to allow people to connect to your own Wi‑Fi. So, this kind of regulation will actually design on the name of protection of copyright law but in fact they have a collateral affect which is that anyone running a mesh network in France is liable because unless it is a closed mesh network which doesn't really solve the purpose.
So, to have different regulation which are not related to Net Neutrality which I'm not regulated to communication but from different bodies of law that have important impact on the possible sustainable development of mesh networks.
>> LUCA BELLI: So, before passing to the second segment of the session, it will be more policy oriented. I would like to open the floor for some quick questions so we already have a lot of ideas that we can discuss. I would like to add opinions from the audience, the participants. So, I would like to open the floor for let's say three questions and so anyone have a question?
>> BOB: Just to invite people to the Friday 2 p.m. panel. We'll discuss that in more detail.
>> LUCA BELLI: Of course we will have discussion on community networks as our revolutionary paradigm on Friday at 4:00. So, thank you Bob, for reminding me. Is it 4:00 or 2:00? 2:00. Sorry.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Everyone is going by 4:00. Can I answer that? There is a section in my paper which ‑‑
>> LUCA BELLI: Can we just take three questions and then go back to you?
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Sure.
>> LUCA BELLI: Can we have a roaming mic, please?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The question is really about mesh networking proposal because this is something that engineers ‑‑ it's an exciting idea and something that has a lot of potential but it's something we have been trying to make work for 20 years. The ad‑hoc networking and routing has proven really challenging.
My questions are; do you have a particular change in mind that has unlocked problems we had before? The other problem is we are seeing in the incentive auction, the U.S. as we repackage broadcast licenses; there is a question about what is going to happen to the white spaces which were sold as a secondary use only because they didn't enter fear? Should we create a policy to make sure we protect nose? Or should we regard them as a secondary use?
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: I'm conscious there is a spectrum panel going on as well ‑‑ we shouldn't get too deep into it but take that question off line.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Matthews from COI, India. I like to get some nuance to input into regimes that obviously are heavily regimented licensed and regulated environment where spectrum is not given for free. The courts have ruled that all spectrums, if it is to be used for commercial purposes, must be auctioned. So, in that type of an environment, how do these types of nice nuanced points work in terms of the outcomes of Net Neutrality, Zero-Rating, where even the government is very keen to ensure there is Zero-Rated access for government services?
>> LUCA BELLI: We will take one more question.
No? We can just reply to these questions. Chris, you had a reply?
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: On the final point, Vint might want to say something about the spectrum auction in the U.S. where they did impose a Net Neutrality conditions on the auction and they were pretty successful, I think, although pretty controversial.
I just want to say something about the fact that when we talk about mobile and the threats to SMS messaging, revenues from What's App and other services, actually it's not clear with if What’s App will remain legal in the U.K. if our current legislative proposal goes through, it is really interesting when you look at the history of public Wi‑Fi and the development in 2002‑2003 and going forward. The kind of regulatory problems that did emerge which we just talked about, which to some extent encouraged by the treating Wi‑Fi very much as an equivalent to TeleComs. I think that was a real danger then and it remains a danger now.
In the U.K. we were worried about media piracy and that brought the need for everyone to register. In Brazil it's about anonymity and the Constitution and all of these things are limiting the amount of connectivity. One of the big issues that will remain for Wi‑Fi, less so with real mesh networks, is the cost of back call. I understand that's a more fundamental problem in the U.S. than the rest of the world because that’s not regulated. Actually, everyone says Title II means the world is going to end and the sky is going to fall. But, that will always be a fundamental issue. But piracy and back holocausts are an important element to that. On the auction point I'm sure Vint can say something to the fact that Net Neutrality was in the auctions in the U.S.
>> VINT CERF: I don't know I can add much more than you pointed out. The question is whether or not you would insist on open connectivity and the like. There were a series of four different requirements put into the one of the auctions, two of which survived the discussion over the rules for the auction. I thought that that was an interesting attempt to impose policy or to incorporate policy into a fundraising mechanism and the interesting thing is that people accepted the idea.
>> LUCA BELLI: And also, before getting another question, I forgot that one may question if the allocation of 100% of the spectrum for commercial purposes is from the very beginning a good policy choice or not. So, that is an excellent question that one should ask to legislators government. I think we have a last question for this segment.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is to Primavera. Just a quick curiosity: In France, it is illegal or can be liable for having mesh network. How does law enforce that? Is that as hard as other networks? Or they have to locate and sue every member of the network? Or they have another mechanism? And, doesn't that kind of infringe privacy rights if they use another mean?
>> PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI: It is interesting. This is not a law against mesh networking at all. This is a collateral affect of different laws which are on copyright and the idea is that if I find ‑‑ if someone finds my idea has to be ‑‑ supposedly copyright because I don't know something ‑‑ downloaded something, normally you need to be able to prove it was indeed me who allotted this copyright. But, they added this specific indication that is if you can or did not secure your Internet connection, then you're automatically judged guilty of any copyright infraction that comes from your IP address. But in addition to these, so the act of not securing your Internet connection then becomes automatically judging you.
So, it is interesting because it was not at all to ‑‑ legislators didn't think there was collateral affect but this is the dangerous thing. There are many laws regulating many things and mesh networking ‑‑ it's not something positively understood in some way. So, it is just like a victim of like all the regulation that comes around it. So, special regulation rights don't think about mesh networking but it is affecting it. There is opportunity of like having alternative models of connectivity but there are a lot of regulatory laws that needs to be cycled with to ensure they can prosper.
>> LUCA BELLI: I think we will have just a very fast last comment and then we will pass to the second segment of the session.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm from the electronic fund in Finland. I have a question how the mesh network actually becomes a carrier for all the data in that network. Since its weakness is accessing the Internet gateways, doesn't that really damage the Net Neutrality principle where you could provide content within mesh network but then everything that you do over the Internet would be a lot easier?
>> PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI: The main mesh networking is you need an uplink. I mean, you can use your Internet to communicate on the local mesh network. There are a few mesh networks that connected between each other. But, of course if you want to connect with like that, you need uplinks. But, the nice thing about the mesh network is you can have as many uplinks as people are providing if there is just one single uplink then there is a bottleneck.
Whatever these gateways are providing us is going to be the restriction for the world mesh network. But, anyone from that mesh network can also open a second gateway and they can be routed in that one as well. So, it is just a matter of like how many uplinks to the Internet we can affectionately get. But, then of course at the same time, when we get to the Internet, then there is also the issue of like what the ISP that we are providing the uplink with introducing in terms of restrictions.
So, the idea is like, is it possible? That is why we need the kind of long‑range spectrum to connect mesh network together to some extent you can communicate with as much as possible through by connecting the different mesh networks that exist in different cities and then the uplink becomes at some point you have like those merging, this mesh of networks between Internet and the mesh network.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you. And again, these are extremely interesting topic and we will further analyze this on Friday. So, I invite you all to join the panel.
And now, the second section of this Panel Discussion. So, now we are trying to analyze the latest policy tendency on Net Neutrality and particularly.
I would like to start with René Arnold who, as also with his colleagues, a very contribution on how European consumers evaluate Net Neutrality. So, I think what is very important is that the stress that although policymakers may have quite open consultation, they sometimes fail to consider the various nuances of this and in the interest of consumer.
So René, how do European consumers evaluate Net Neutrality?
>> RENÉ ARNOLD: Thank you Luca, and thank you also for the opportunity to speak here and to present our results that the forum.
Now, coming to your first question: how do consumers in Europe evaluate Net Neutrality? I think it's maybe ‑‑ sort of the wrong question, because Net Neutrality is such as extremely difficult for consumers to grasp and that is I think, one of the key insights we have learn in our research that we have conducted all across Europe and actually in six European countries plus the U.S
The point is that consumers, they do care about the affects of Net Neutrality and I think that is also really the reason why we should not ‑‑ or just omit them in the whole debate and don't look at what they actually want and what they actually think and what their actual attitudes towards those affects are.
Now, the research we have conducted is a rather large research project that was commissioned by baric and also the colleague who was just mentioned before, Freud Sorenson. He also played a pivotal role in that because he was sitting on the Working Group on the committee at baric who co‑commissioned us to do that work.
So, what we did was we were looking into four European countries in a deep dive where we conducted qualitative and quantitative work, as I already said in the qualitative work, it turned out to the whole technical issue behind Net Neutrality is not something that registers very well with consumers at all.
When you then however start educating them about what is at stake and what sort of affects they might expect or what sort of affects they might have already witnessed in their own net access experience, they become quite alert and they do care a lot about Net Neutrality and that is what was our sort of main finding in the qualitative work.
We then went on to the quantitative work where we also had the issue whether consumers would be willing to pay, consumers would be able to purchase any prioritized or on the other hand, also limited services in terms of access to the Internet.
It was interesting to see that in fact, we did find in each and every market, specific consumer segments and quite substantial segments, who would be interested in paying a little bit more but also getting a little bit more, at least a little bit more quality, a little bit more stable Internet connection et cetera.
Now, I should mention that this, to some extent, correlated with the environment, the market environment that these consumers were living in. For instance, in the Czech Republic where we were confronted with ‑‑ not necessarily bad but sometimes insufficient Internet connection, their willingness to pay and the willingness to purchase such services was much greater than looking at Sweden, where people essentially told us in the focus groups that anything below 100 megabit isn't really Internet at all anyway.
So, they did not quite understand why there should be any need to purchase anything above that because everything works well anyway for them.
And, I think that is the main take away as opposed to the usual picture that, especially policymakers and regulators may have of consumers, who are protesting in the street for very strict Net Neutrality rules, et cetera, et cetera. That there is actually in other markets, a substantial segment of consumers who would be interested in purchasing such services.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: In markets where consumers had ration slow access to the Internet, they would pay for specialized services? But, where they already had fast access to the Internet, they wouldn't? Is that more or less the take away?
>> RENÉ ARNOLD: I think it would be a bit too short to use that as a summary because we had also in Sweden, we had about 25% of consumers who would also be willing to purchase prioritized services, however; I think that would be in a slightly different direction and more probably more specific to a specific streaming service or something like that. Whereas, in the Czech Republic, this group, the same group was 41%. So, essentially we find the same affect but the group size varies.
>> LUCA BELLI: And so René, what would be, according to your study, the main teaching that policymakers can learn from this study?
>> RENÉ ARNOLD: And, I think the point that we were also making in the paper to this Dynamic Coalition forum here, is that we took our results from the representative consumer research and we compared them to the citizenry responses in the public consultation that the European Commission conducted on Net Neutrality back in 2012.
And, when you look at the citizenry responses there -- because they also had a full questionnaire with closed questions for respondent from the consumer side. And what you find, is that they are also, the consumers seem to be very, very much pro‑super strict Net Neutrality rules and against anything that might, in any way, deviate from that. And it is quite interesting when you also read our paper that we mirrored many of the questions more or less in our research and we found very different results when you do this as a representative consumer research.
What I would like to make as the main take away from that here is that in fact, when you as a policymaker, are regulated, you simply go out and post something online and you wait for the responses to come in and you see this as your true consumer response. I think you're very much misled because quite naturally, what you will find is a huge self selection buyers in those people who actually go through the trouble of answering that questionnaire just on their own.
So, as a policymaker or regulator, if you want to introduce the opinion of consumers, the opinion of the market or an idea of what is actually going on and what would actually be the wish of those that you regulate, then I would very much like to argue to conduct proper representative consumer research, because we do know how that works and we do have the methods to do that. It's just that it is so far not really integrated into the policy making process.
>> LUCA BELLI: And I would recommend to have some good effort to explain to consumers what is the issue at stake, which is why this forum are very important because it may actually allow to also to regular consumers that are not used to deal with Net Neutrality understand what is debate about and how to form their own opinion independently. So, speaking of ‑‑
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Can I just answer.
>> LUCA BELLI: Sure.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: This is very interesting research. In the U.K. when we researched this area, the research company had to explain to the consumers what Net Neutrality is. So, that an initial set of result, people don't care about Net Neutrality, it turned out essentially they didn't know what it was. Once they found out what it meant and what violations would be ‑‑ he knows the research. Consumers freaked out and started saying unpleasant things about Telecoms company. Did you find that also in the qualitative research there was a need to explain what it is to people before the penny dropped and they understood the impact?
>> RENÉ ARNOLD: We found quite the same affect actually. And I think it is also quite logical in a way to expect that from consumers. Now what we did in the qualitative research in particular, we had a sort of three‑step process.
First, we just confronted them with the word Net Neutrality, and we let them freely associate with that. Then, we gave them a very short explanation of what it was and what it meant. Had another round of associations and then we really engaged in a discussion on the effects on different alterations, et cetera, and discussed that with them.
But I also wanted to add that what we also did in the quantitative work is we had half of our consumers did receive an information package on the affects of Net Neutrality, whereas the other half of our respondents did not. And what was quite interesting to see, was that because we and baric ‑‑ it was very, very important for us as well as for baric to frame this information as neutrally as possible, so we were presenting both positive and negative effects of traffic mapping and what we managed to do was, we did find or we did get an educational affect of that information package.
So, we had also questions to test whether people actually understood more or less after the information or whether those with the information understood better what Net Neutrality was, than those without, and we could significantly prove that that was the case. However, interestingly, it did not alter their attitudes so much towards traffic management, nor did it alter their purchase intentions significantly.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you very much. I think there was a very quick reaction from Elise and then we can go on with the presentation.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: Thank you. I wanted to underline, it is very interesting what you mentioned about the consumer and that is of course really important that we try to make it clear for the consumer what it really means, what Net Neutrality really means and be clear on what kind of business can grow if we compromise on that Net Neutrality and this needs to be framed in a neutral way and at the same time we need to go to the core of the business models and have a debate on that. And fully‑developed markets who have a lot of competition.
So, because we have seen today there are so many angles to the Net Neutrality discussion and also to the term Net Neutrality. We have the technical perspective, the development, and also in the fully‑developed markets, like Norwegian and other European ones. Maybe we should try to frame it in more understandable packages to deliver this out to the consumer to be able to discuss it and to see what it actually means for them. Thank you.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you. So, now we have introduced this debate of the value of consumers and what lessons can policymakers take from this debate, I would like to go to Konstantinos Stylianou, he drafted a very interesting paper on what rules are still lacking.
So, Konstantinos, we are aware of the recent development of the European Union level and of the introduction of open Internet provisions in the recently‑adopted regulation on these parks, do you think that the European Union back down or are consumers rights?
>> KONSTANTINOS STYLIANOU: So, thank you for your question, Luca. Thank you for coming everyone. And, it is really the question is spot on because that's the point I wanted to start from; whether the European Parliament has failed its constituency and the people that believed in it. I just had a very brief comment on the survey you conducted in prioritized services and I'll use that as a bleach to make a couple of points for the new open Internet regulation.
The comment is that it is true that consumers cannot seem to endorse the value of priority side’s services as much as TeleComs would like them to. But I think the problem why we see that is because at the moment, prioritized services are hypothetical product for consumers. They don't really know the value, because they are not out there, at least not designated as such. So, it is hard for them to understand a product they haven't tried and don't really know what it would be like, and they have to count on whatever County that the Telecoms give them.
So, that sense, the question then becomes, why would anyone care about whether specialized services and prioritized services are actually important to allow Internet Neutrality regime or regulation? And, I think that the answer to that is because the niche in the market. This is one of the big problems of the new open Internet regulation in the European Union. It is a departure from the previous position of the Parliament.
Now, this regulation has a long history. It's been debated since 2010 and up until recently, the idea was that the council of minister of the pushing for a more flexible approach, let's say more Teleco‑friendly, whereas the European Parliament was the voice of the people. And, they were in favor of Net Neutrality. So, the regulation went on the first reading and there were many comments by the European Union and on second reading, the European Parliament didn't make any amendments. So, regulation went through. And, a lot of people were let down by the European Parliament because they felt by allowing specialized services to go through, they are betraying their own people because that's a backdoor to Net Neutrality.
And, my take on this is that essentially we are now at the dawn of FIG and new generation of wireless networks, even though many people don't know what this means because it isn't standardized. We are still deploying 4G. But, the whole idea, the whole market push behind 5G is essentially differentiation. It's various different types of networks in different frequencies that address different needs and different demands and they operate based on different principles. Because most of them are connected as this very narrow way, the IP, and many of them can talk to each other. But, they don't serve the same needs and don't serve the same audience. And, in that sense, they should also not be constructed the same way from an engineering perspective.
So, for me, the big take away from allowing prioritized services, is they are a backdoor buffet good one because they allow Europe to for the first time, compete at the 5G level compete with other global economies, including the U.S. and many southern Asian economies that are pushing to get 5G out to the market.
And, it is really a prerequisite. It's a regulatory prerequisite to allow experimentation if Europe can claim that it wants to compete at that level. Now, unfortunately, I also think the new regulation has very negative component to it, which is that European Union much like the U.S. did about a year and a half ago, they missed a very good opportunity to actually adopt for the first time different Net Neutrality rules.
Now, what we had for the past 10‑15 years we have been debating Net Neutrality, is black and white rules. So, they pretty much say we don't have regulations so we don't know what the status is with Net Neutrality. Or, we have regulation and that regulation is black and white meaning no blocking, no discrimination and then some reasonable network management.
But, the problem with that is that the law essentially predetermines that blocking and discrimination are always bad and that is why they have to be uniformly banned from the market. And, the thing is that we know from industrial organization theory and antitrust and all of those cases that pretty much resemble the structure of the Net Neutrality debate in terms of what issues they raise for the organization and efficiency of the market, that not every discrimination and blocking is bad.
And, what would be nice to see is a piece of legislation that actually allows some flexibility for regulators to say yes to certain types of blocking and discrimination if it is proven that they are not harmful or more so efficient and beneficial for the market and then say no, to other forms of blocking and discrimination that do have the potential to harm the Internet.
So, the example of – so, it doesn't actually have to be good blocking but my idea is that a small regional ISN has to do intensive traffic management because they want to serve their little niche there as best as possible because they understand that their niche has certain priorities or for example they play a lot of games sore they stream video but they are not so fond of VOIP. They could have a place that prioritizes certain services over others and in that case, I wouldn't necessarily say that they would be wrong to be explicit in the name of consumer protection about their practices, and then consumers can have a choice.
Now, the problem is that ISPs cannot even consider that business model because they know they would face a battle. So, it is not actually put thing into the market and experimenting and seeing how it performance and if it does well, sure, that is a good example. It is that they sort of sensor themselves because they know that they are going to face a problem when they try to push it out in the market.
So, these kind of black and white rules are very restrictive, especially considering that the Internet is not a new market anymore. We see niche audiences and see different needs and different demands from the people, and it would be nice to give them an opportunity to actually experiment in the market.
Let me just conclude by giving a concrete example of how this rule could look like, which is, in 2014, the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. came out with a request for comments and they proposed the rule which said that they would prohibit as commercially unreasonable ‑‑ I quote, prohibit as commercially unreasonable those providers practices that based on the totality of circumstances threaten harm the Internet and all that it protects. But, at the same time, they would permit broadband providers to serve consumers and traffic on an individualized negotiated basis without having to hold themselves out to hold discriminately at the same or standardized terms so long as such content is commercially reasonable.
I think the value of this Net Neutrality rule, is that it does require a positive showing of harm, otherwise you want to block it if you don't see the danger in it. But, at the same time, it doesn't ‑‑ it's not a pure computational antitrust rule, which would look like something, any restraint of trade, for example, unreasonable restraint of trade should be should be blocked. But, it is adaptive to the special needs of the industry by incorporating the standard of harm to the open Internet and whatever it protects. So, it draws inspiration from antitrust laws, the flexibility of antitrust laws and all the case law and theory we have behind it, but at the same time it allows for adaptation for particular needs of the industry. Sore unfortunately both the U.S. and Europe missed the opportunity and we are still stuck with black and white.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you Konstantinos for providing your comments. There will be a lot of comments on this I'm sure and my personal comment would be that the conceptualization of specialized service that you were providing would be very ‑‑ match a sort of synonymous of prioritized service but specialized service may also be separated from the open Internet. And, I think Norwegian example is quite instructive on this and I'm sure we can also explore this opportunity in the debate. So now, speaking about ‑‑
Now, starting to heat up the room, we are now going to Nathalia who has co‑chaired with me the last paper of the Net Neutrality Compendium and how Network Neutrality could be seen from a legal interoperability primp, meaning how could we learn from existing Net Neutrality rules, practices, to distill some principles that could maybe produce some interoperable, sort of not technical standards that makes various technical systems interoperable but a policy starred that makes the system interoperable and having compatible norms.
I’d like to start by asking first of all ‑‑ I would like ‑‑ if Net Neutrality, do you see it as a local issue? And, how could this interoperable policy suggestion be useful?
>> NATHALIA FODITSCH: Thank you very much, Luca for the invitation. It brings me really distinct pleasure being here. So, I heard about Net Neutrality first in 2008 when I was working for the council for economic defense, which is the antitrust Chairman in Brazil. And, I remember it was a case related at the time we still had ‑‑ it was mandatory whenever you had access to the Internet, you needed to have a content provider and an access provider and that was a regulation that was in place at the time. And, it is interesting to see that after many years, Net Neutrality is still an issue and has different nuances now.
Now Zero-Rating is an issue, so it is really interesting to see that. And, it is still important and goes beyond the local meaning because of the global reach of the Internet. So, this work is really important because as you said, if you look forward to have a shared sense of Net Neutrality, and also the flexibility Konstantinos mentioned.
What is flexibility? How Professor Marsden talked about non exclusively or non‑discriminatory pricing, is that sufficient or not on a global scale? Yes or no? That is the work you have been doing, which is really coming to some agreement on what this main principles are. It is really important.
So, generally we think about interoperability as being a purely technical concept but there is also legal aspect to it. Legal interoperability can be seen as a way of reducing fragmentation. And, why is this important? It also relates to how much it is going to cost. So, how much the service is going to cost for the end consumer.
And, we talked about spectrum. So, in spectrum policy, there is harmonization. There is one type of ‑‑ one sort of way to actually promote this interoperability in the legal sense. So, you have general rules. They are established from increments then they are applied by countries with some level of flexibility within the countries. So, I guess we already have several examples of how this could be undertaken too. And, that is why your work is really important.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you. So, now I think we can maybe, Nathalia, would you like to just show us your perspective on why ‑‑ legal interoperability concept, per se, if it is something new? A new concept or something that we already have and we can already exploit?
>>NATHALIA FODITSCH: As I said, we are framing legal interoperability but it is not something new. Like you already have some types of ways in which that is already being ‑‑ let's say harmonization of spectrum is generally transnational and is done by Governments, generally in the ITU. So, you have sometimes the imposition, which is another way of having this interoperability. When you have a single actor, let's say the digital rights management, which is also a way you have this interoperability in a legal sense, or transnational diffusion. At the end of the day, what are you doing here? It is also somehow trying to have this transnational diffusion with this work. NGOs play a big role in that and also International organizations. So, I guess we are framing this legal interoperability but you also have several ways in which this has been done in other areas.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you very much. So, now we can pass to concrete examples of how this legal interoperability may work. So, we, over the past three years, we did Dynamic Coalition in Net Neutrality and we have worked a lot, not only on academic production, but also on policy suggestions. So, as you may know, since 2013, a model framework on Net Neutrality was produced and defining precise, a model of precise rules that could be used by national regulators, by legislators, as an inspiration. And, some institutions have used them, for instance the Council of Europe has used them in a material to draft a recommendation that has not been finalized yet, unfortunately.
And, also the European Parliament took some inspiration when it amended the original proposal of the connected contented regulation. And, but, the problem is that we cannot consider cannot consider this as an official IGF outcome, an official IGF recommendation for one simple reason. There is no official process within the IGF that allows us to do this. So, it is what emerged from the 2014 Chair report on the IGF saying that the value of the Dynamic Coalition work was recognized but it needed, and I quote, a validation mechanism, to be considered as an IGF outcome.
So, the reason why we decided in early March, to propose a consultation period to allow every IGF community member to chip in and comment what we had already done, is because we decided to propose this validation process, to propose this, we took inspiration actually from the IGF process. So, actually we considered that ‑‑ we used the ITF Working Group to originate the model framework through mailing list, through direct participation. That could have been considered as an ITF Internet draft but it still missed what ITF calls the last call. So, the moment in which everyone in the community can chip in, provide comment, and provide feedback.
So, the result of these six months of consultations, as we had several phases, is to input document on Net Neutrality, which you have on your desk. So, there is in the document, the process is briefly described, and then there is a policy statement on Net Neutrality, which you can ‑‑ sorry. They should be on your desk. But, you can also find it on the IGF website among the Dynamic Coalition proposed outcomes. So, to contextualize the process, this input document along with other Dynamic Coalition outcomes will be divided into idea rating sheets that are a little piece of paper that you ‑‑ on which you can express your opinion if you like it or not, if you agree with it or not.
For the first time in 10 years, IGF will allow the opportunity to allow participants to deliberate if they agree with something or not.
No one knows how it will go because the purpose is the purpose of all this exercise was to have this process. The IGF lacks desperately concrete outcomes and we have the opportunity to have some. So, we, one of the outcomes is this policy, the input document containing policy statement. So, I would like to walk you through the policy statement briefly.
It has been elaborated. It has been include the in the paper I co‑authored with Nathalia because many of the elements do not really need to be defined by consultation. You all simply need to analyze the evolution of the Net Neutrality rules and regulation over the past 10 years. So, this is non-discrimination principles that are something that the Norwegian principles define since 2009. It has been endorsed by also by Marco de Civil in Brazil, the traffic management.
It has been detailed by the recent FCC rules that detail nondiscrimination as non-blocking, nonthreatening. But this also en companies some kind of ‑‑ encompasses, some reasonable traffic manage. One of the comments I have on Konstantinos point is that I don't think that all Net Neutrality regulations are black and white. And, if you introduce some exceptions and you define that exception, it becomes much more easier to have a sustainable approach. So, in the statement, we start with a preamble that sets the basic elements of Net Neutrality and those are the basic considerations. So, the Internet should be open, secure and accessible to all people. Then, the instrument role of Net Neutrality to preserve openness, fostering Human Rights, promoting competition and opportunity and also safeguarding the generic peer-to-peer nature; meaning, Net Neutrality is instrumental to allow a system to progress through the unfiltered contributions of the users. So, nondiscrimination is instrumental to allow the Internet to evolve.
If you just turn the page on the back, you have some elements. So, managing traffic in non‑discriminatory ways serves interest of the public. This is the basic assumption that nondiscrimination allows everyone to be a participant of the Internet. Not only a recipient of information and the consumer, competition is also extremely important. This is not the silver bullet. It's not the only solution, but it is a extremely important and essential and clearly said by the statement. And, also the last point of the preamble is that all individuals should contribute in a participatory way to deliberation of any kind of Net Neutrality framework.
And then we have ‑‑ I will briefly walk you through the basic safeguards that we elaborated. So, first of all, we find what is Net Neutrality? We already had a quite strict definition on Net Neutrality in the modern framework. And we so ‑‑ so Net Neutrality we went through this consultation that had also to accommodate the participation of private sector participant in particular, Telecom operators that have been quite vocal in the consultation.
We will define Net Neutrality as the principle according to Internet traffic is treated without unreasonable discrimination, restriction or interference regardless of send or receiving and content. So, although I personally do not really like the term, reasonable, because it is very vague, and I know that some people, that participated in this consultation do not really like the introduction of this term, it is ‑‑
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Look at; it's worth a fortune to lawyers. Don't remove that.
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes, but I would say the process we use is to define what is reasonable traffic management? Which is in the point two. So, there are some deviations that are explicitly allow to the nondiscrimination rules and those deviations are common in any legal framework or almost any legal framework.
So, the first one is, the treatment is allowed to preserve network integrity or security. This is something that any stakeholder would agree on.
The second one is, the use of discriminatory traffic management to mitigate the affect of temporary and exceptional congestion, but, only when non‑discriminatory measures are not efficient.
So, we decided to use the term of protocol agnostic and measures to highlight that this discriminatory practices that could be used are those practices that can for instance, prioritize a certain type of protocol but not a specific application on with which the ISP as a commercial agreement. So, the user protocol‑specific applications are allowed when protocol agnostic applications ‑‑ agnostic measures are not efficient.
>> VINT CERF: An example of that latter case being for example, voice‑over IP where it is understood that low latency is an element of that.
>> LUCA BELLI: Exactly. This is a direct reply to your very useful comment on the consultation and the point is that, this kind of discriminatory treatment it is maybe beneficial and may be necessary when other nondiscriminatory of meters are not efficient. So, to reply also to Konstantinos, it's not always black and white. I think that some kind of discrimination as you were saying, is needed and healthy but not when it compromises the rights of the Internet users.
>> KONSTANTINOS STYLIANOU: You made several components my presentation and I want to very quickly say that there are two problems with just allowing a narrow exception with reasonable network management, which is ‑‑
>> LUCA BELLI: Can you keep it short because we have a ‑‑
>> KONSTANTINOS STYLIANOU: Yes, very quickly. The general understanding with reasonable network management is it is all about engineering. Engineers thinking there is congestion and then they want to manage the network so it doesn't collapse. All right? It is all about business decisions. So, by allowing this very narrow exception for engineering‑driven network management, you're not actually introducing any flexibility in the market. That is the first thing.
The second one is that by having a rule that first bands blocking and discrimination and then allows an exception, you're shifting the balance of the burden of proof to whoever want to experiment.
So, either way ‑‑ in a way, you're asking someone to introduce whatever product or policy in the market and then you have to make them explain how this would fit in a narrow exception rather than the other way around which would be, we by default, allow experimentation and we will catch it under our rules if we deem it to be unreasonably discriminatory.
So, just these two little points:
>> LUCA BELLI: Just a quick reply. The question would not be to shift the burden of proof on who wants to innovate but to allow regulators to monitor and define what is reasonable discrimination ‑‑ to check is what is reasonable discrimination according to this definition and so, a wide variety of practices could be engineered techniques could be used and the reasonability of the practices will be defined by regulators, which actually according to the 6th point, implementation of Net Neutrality. Regulators should promote independent testing of traffic management in order to exactly, if they are reasonable or not. And by the way, it's the compatibility.
So, there will be an active role of independent regulators and this is why this is a core element of Net Neutrality and we decided to include it because monitoring of practices is essential and dependent testing is essential and we further add a point, last point, that all individual as well as have the possibility of contribution to the detection, reporting and correction of violations. So, it is actually what is suggested here is that all individuals could have the possibility to participate in this effort.
And so to further to go back to the last exception of traffic that would be considered reasonable traffic management, is the prioritization of emergency services and the gentleman suggested here, and it actually is an exception that is not immediate to be understood when you come from a developed country. But, in you're in a Developing Country, you know that infrastructure may be unreliable and prioritization of emergency services may be extremely useful.
And then we separated law enforcement because although various, almost all Net Neutrality regulations recognize the use of discriminatory techniques or to give force to court orders and legislation as a reasonable traffic management, we wanted to make a difference because we think this is for sure discriminatory practice if it is allowed but it is not ‑‑ no consensus on the consideration if this is reasonable traffic mapping but it may lead to other blocking. It may be very inefficient so it may be ‑‑ ISPs should be allowed to do this because they should be allowed. They have to implement the law. But, it is excessive to consider this as reasonable traffic management.
Transparent traffic management, transparency obligations are quite widespread in almost every legal framework and this means that basically ISPs, the operators should provide meaningful information on the traffic management practices and also on the technical parameters of the various networks to access the level of bandwidth and also to be able to assess what are the reasons or not congestion that requires this discriminatory traffic management
And last but not least, privacy. It is something that is not also immediate. People may think what is privacy? Why is privacy here in Net Neutrality statement? For one simple reason; in order to implement traffic management techniques, operators usually have to rely on content inspection, on deep pocket inspection and the like. So, it is ‑‑ I will not say that all traffic management techniques require inspection, but a wide range of traffic management practices require use of monitoring techniques.
So what has been clearly highlighted for instance by the supervisors is in our opinion that the traffic management techniques may be perfectly reasonable and legal as long as they do not jeopardize the right to privacy and the protection of users. So, sorry for talking a lot.
I would like to open the floor for a couple of remarks. We are running out of time but I think that this debate needs 10 minutes, 10 extra minutes of your attention. So, I think we have one, two and 3. I will take ‑‑ you already made your ‑‑ I will just take these three or four. Please.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Very quickly, what policies can you implement if you assume you have encrypted packs out of context?
>> LUCA BELLI: Can you repeat?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The package is encrypt and then you see it without knowing the ability to know what is in the package or not?
>> LUCA BELLI: The next speaker, get the mic. I just provide a reply that actually something, the point you raised yesterday in a panel on privacy and surveillance, which is yes, we can encrypt ‑‑ a lot of traffic can be encrypted. But, what if an operator decides to slow down all encrypted traffic?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: What if all traffic is encrypted.
>> LUCA BELLI: A good reply. Excellent, but, I perfectly agree with that. But, I think we are very far from having all encrypted traffic.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Is there a roaming mic? Can we bring it out?
>> LUCA BELLI: We have one question here and then another there.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. My name is Shadda (sp). I am a graduate student researching Net Neutrality and Net Neutrality in India. First, I have a question, a learning question to René.
Given you emphasized the importance of consumer education and the concept of Net Neutrality while conducting survey to make sure the representativeness of the demography is actually their prisons. I was wondering how this would function in which a large demography had no express to the Internet in the path? Is there any methodology you developed in terms of that specific demography given that in Europe the percentage of such demography is likely to be very low?
The second question that I have is on like 5G and differentiation. Given there is already an understanding that when we have a 5G network we have different devices which have different latency requirements, consuming lots of different kind of bands, how do we make sure that this can happen in continents given that current regulatory environments more often than not, often spectrum in very small packeted in order to maximize revenue? This seems to be a problem especially in the countries like mine.
And the third ‑‑
>> LUCA BELLI: Sorry. Could you limit it because we have really 5 minutes.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm sorry.
>> LUCA BELLI: So, I ask Primavera to answer to the very quick questions so we have a final round of replies and we will ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is partly a question and partly a comment. I'm from India. I think we need to notice that in case of Net Neutrality for years, there has been this argument that one competition and user choice will make sure that people will choose what they want, and second, that in any case, if prioritization is made available, everybody that is okay. Now we have more or less agreed that this is not going to work and therefore Net Neutrality requires legislation and regulation. But, the same two arguments are being used for Zero-Rating. I'm trying to go to the history and say it will happen here as well. Zero-Rating we see the same arguments. As long as Zero-Rating is provided on the same terms to everybody, it is okay. So, it's not going to work as it doesn't work in Net Neutrality.
Second, it is often said and indicated by the previous speakers that in poorer countries it's required. But, Zero-Rating is more reformative in countries where people are very price sensitive because they have bigger incentive to stay on zero part of the Internet and the distortion in those countries is much higher than in countries where the price sensitivity is less.
The last thing, I think we shouldn't use the word Zero-Rating for emergency services and those kinds of essential public services. We should use another word, a productive discrimination or something which is a different kind of thing that Zero-Rating. Zero-Rating is only when commercial providers provide Zero-Rated channel and these others emphasis should be the control of the regulator to define that these sets, emergency services, essentially public services, which can be zero ‑‑ can be provided free of charge but not to use the word Zero-Rating because that causes confusion.
>> LUCA BELLI: We can also get another question and then a round of replies.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would like to ask if you made an interview with users, what was the appeal about Zero-Rating? Were they opposed to Zero-Rating? Were they in favor of it? Were they neutral? What is your view on Zero-Rating?
>> LUCA BELLI: So, who wants to ‑‑ I think we really have ‑‑ we are already out of time and have three minutes. So, do you mind? I'm sorry but why will have.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a minute. I like if you explain to me ‑‑
>> LUCA BELLI: Please introduce yourself.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Jovana, Professor Constitutional Law at the University of Naples. My question is, if I understood, this delegation to Net Neutrality just a source, which is this source? The law is the source of this derogative power or an agreement between private? It's completely different.
>> LUCA BELLI: Just a quick reply to these. What we are ‑‑ we have defined here as we were explaining before is to have some shared policy principles. This is not a treaty. This is not ‑‑ what we are trying to define here is some policy principles that as ITF standards, that are inspired technical interpreting and voluntarily adopted by private sector, this could be policy principles that could be adopted by any legislator, regulator, by any private sector actor willing to self‑regulate itself using this principle. So, this is not ‑‑ this is a policy suggestion.
I will just ask my panelists to provide very short and sharp.
>> MODERATOR: I was told a question came from the virtual world maybe we should take that too?
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes, if it is a question and not a comment.
>> MODERATOR: All right. So, if Zero-Rating violates Net Neutrality, is it the ISP Teleco or courier who violates the law as does the government that promotes it instead of or as part of public policy? That came from Alejandro.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks Alejandro for being virtually with us. I think if anyone of the panelists want to reply, otherwise I defer.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: Why not? So, Net Neutrality is typically ISPs specifically aimed at ISP because it is performed by Telecom regulators and licensed by the Telecom regulators.
This isn't any effective regulation of Net Neutrality as ‑‑ with the exception of Chile but most will be regulating ISPs and I think that's how the regulation system works in Norway. On the Zero-Rating point I want to say two things in answer to the last point on that. One, is that we have to be very careful how we define what public service might be in the case of Zero-Rating. Wikipedia thinks it is public service. It may or may not be but I think we should have awe discussion about that probably in the dark.
And, I think that is important particularly because most countries in the world including Brazil, including the United States as well, have public service media in terms of broadcasting and they will be very keen to be part of this Zero-Rated package which could change the equation on how attractive Zero-Rating is given that things like non-exclusivity and fair and reasonable terms are very, very well relied upon by public service broadcasters.
I think the final point to make is that changing terms is really awkward. So Governments are in favor of the open Internet but not Net Neutrality. A lot of actors that Luca has been trying to pull the pin from the hand grenade to make the IGF to do something, dangerous man, Luca, are bad‑faith actors.
So, myself, Konstantinos, in particular a lot of corporate actors, do not favor Net Neutrality. They started saying so two years ago when it became inevitable there will be a law in this case. Konstantinos are honest enough to say we don't favor Net Neutrality as you classically term it and therefore we will not agree with everything you say. That doesn't mean you can't go forward to have a declaration or a model law. And, I think others who are not in favor might want to follow the example if they want to be honest with themselves.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you. I would like to ask the panelists if they have some concluding remarks to do them in a tweet.
>>ELISE LINDENBERG: I wanted to tease you because you're saying you're not in favor of the felt neutrality still you're putting out some principles that are helping or not being Net Neutrality but at the same time we see these as tools to provide Net Neutrality. Are you playing with words? Or are you serious when you are saying you are against it.
>> CHRIS MARSDEN: These are tools that provide an openness to competition on the Internet and provide the opportunity for content providers. And of course as an academic, I study Net Neutrality. I can't be seen to be a proponent.
>> LUCA BELLI: Sorry, thanks for reminding me that we are out of time. So, thank you to all the participants has been incredible debate. You have the possibility ‑‑ is there ‑‑ anybody forgotten anybody? Yes, I'm really sorry. I sincerely apologize for this. And -- sorry?
>> (Off Mic)
>> LUCA BELLI: Not to make ‑‑ as I really love Gonzales (sp), I would defer the discussion on Zero-Rating for lunch ‑‑
>> (Off Mic)
>> LUCA BELLI: I think you are referring to a different report.
(Off mic)
>> LUCA BELLI: As it is, it is going to become personal so René ‑‑ please, answer quickly so we can go to eat.
>> RENÉ ARNOLD: I'm happy to answer the questions on the report, of course. So, the first one was on, how can you actually approach people that have not yet used the Internet and tell them about Net Neutrality et cetera? And, my very short answer to that is the first step is to find out what it is that they want from the Internet, what they expect from the Internet. Why do they want it in the first place? And, then from that, start to explain it from the affects of Net Neutrality of Zero-Rating and start to explain that to consumers within the scope of their imagination.
And to the second question, yes, we looked at Zero-Rating in our report and but the point is we looked at it because the report was completely concentrating on the at‑home use situation so it is mostly fixed connections usually. And, Zero-Rating and data caps don't play a bigger role there, yet in Europe. Having said that, we did find a very interesting affect in the terms of preferences of consumers when we reduced the volume of data they were getting.
At the 50 gigabyte data cap with or without Zero-Rating there was not much differences in preferences whether with or without Zero-Rating. But, for the 10 gigabyte data cap, there was a quite substantial difference. So, consumers actually have at least some inkling about how much data they are using in a month and whether the Zero-Rating would affect them or not.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you to everyone for a very interesting debate and I apologize for having kept you here after the time expired. Thank you.
(Applause)