WORKSHOP 340 NETWORK NEUTRALITY: FROM ARCHITECTURE TO NORMS

FINAL TRANSCRIPT

EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM

BALI

BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2013

2:30 P.M. ‑ 4:00 P.M.

WORKSHOP 340

NETWORK NEUTRALITY: FROM ARCHITECTURE TO NORMS

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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. I think we can get started. Good morning and welcome to this Workshop 340, Network Neutrality: From Architecture to Norms. I'm Luca Belli, I work CERSA, Sorbonne University in Paris, and I'm also serving as a council of Europe expert of network neutrality.

This workshop today is aimed at highlighting several of the facets of the network neutrality debate. As the title suggests, network neutrality is from ‑‑ the Internet architecture ‑‑ links the network neutrality architecture to normative concepts. And today to explore the various facets of the network neutrality debate, we have a group of distinguished panelists. So I will start from my left we have Jeremy Malcolm from Consumers International, Frederic Donck from the Internet society, Michele Bellavite from Telecom Italia and ETNO, then Ellen Broad from the International Federation of Library Associations, Roxana Radu from the Graduate Institute of Geneva, Borami Kim from Net Neutrality User Forum of Korea, and then Parminder Jeet Singh from ICT for Change.

We will start with a brief keynote by Borami Kim and then we will continue with an interactive, hopefully, discussion with our panelists and with the audience. So if at any moment you want to provide your inputs, your standpoint, please raise your hand and you will be able to participate in the discussion. Then when we ‑‑ the final stage of this workshop will be an open discussion when you will be able to post questions directly to the panelists.

So please, Borami Kim, you can start.

>> BORAMI KIM: Yes, thank you, Luca. Hello everyone, my name is Borami Kim from Net Neutrality User Forum, South Korea.

First, I would like to introduce myself and my Net Neutrality Forum. I have been a lawyer for nine years in the field of ICT. One of my expertise is consumer collective action. I also advise many civil societies regarding consumer rights.

When we Koreans first face issues of blocking and VoIP, mobile VoIP, we just thought it could be solved very easily because we have very strong regulations about telecommunication. We have collectification about common carriers. So we ‑‑ authorities to take appropriate measures, require the mobile IFP to comply with their duties of their common carriers. But we couldn't get impacted on it. We couldn't get replies from the authorities. So, moreover, the author denied our request to have access to the information regarding the neutrality polices and this is a making process. They claimed that it is in the scope of their discretion. So users don't have any right to have access to the information and decision‑making process.

In this situation, we have to respond collectively to accomplish our goal for coalition and net neutrality. It had become clear that net neutrality problem should only by our own hand users action. Last year, for at least one year, we had made through educational public lectures and ten times open vendors, and four times legal actions against governments and telecommunication companies. 12 times ‑‑ religious to educate, promote and ensure the end users right in public.

And finally, in this October, the government released the draft management guidelines that we have argued and insisted upon. We think this is a civil victory along the way.

However, we forum just think that the interesting telecommunication laws cannot completely guarantee the net neutrality principle. There might be already another possibility for relating violations by applying the existing law arbitrarily. So we have to focus that our daily experience in the Internet all over the world and, first ‑‑ and find out the common principles that facilitate it. Every day we can experience free and other ways of communications and users can choose the ways of communications. We can point out the enabling ‑‑ appeal us to enabling this experience, the Internet protocol or Internet architecture.

But who knows, Internet architecture or protocol may change or evolve in quite different ways from current forms. However, if we have to see the future Internet development in a more Democratic way, we should ensure end users right as a fundamental right. Net neutrality can be relevant to some of the human rights, such as right to privacy, freedom of speech, access to information, access to the Internet. But we thought ‑‑ we don't think it is sufficient.

Last year, the current human rights coalition public society said the net neutrality issue part of access to the Internet. Net neutrality can be a civil right as fundamental ways, but we have to develop a little more detailed concept of end user right. Actually, we prefer that concept of human right relating net neutrality. So in Korea, the forum of net neutrality working for this ‑‑ together with congress people and we could make some framework regarding modern law for net neutrality by end of this year. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks, Borami, for highlighting the South Korean perspective. As we were mentioning, network neutrality is intimately intertwined with the Internet architecture. So I would like to start with Frederic, that works for Internet Society, ISOC, we know it is the institutional framework IGF, it is the home of Internet architects. So, Frederic, would you be so kind to tell us a little bit ‑‑ what are we speaking about when we are speaking of network neutrality?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you, Luca.

How long do I have to do that?

>> LUCA BELLI: A couple of minutes. Maybe two minutes and half. Be concise.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: So if I succeed, I will establish new world record.

Thank you. So the origin of the debate, so we sure we talking about the same stuff, that is increasing demands for Internet connection with greater bandwidth. We have growing data showing the annual growth rate for global Internet bandwidth is 40 percent to 50 percent. So that means more pressure on network capacity and agree to the implement and use of congestion management tools and that was at the core of the debate. It struck at management a threat to the open architecture of the Internet.

Interestingly, network neutrality didn't mean the same thing for different persons in the room at the very beginning. We heard people talking about price, discrimination traffic management, expression, freedom of expression, users ‑‑ so that would be interesting to focus on, I guess, traffic management is what we would be talking about. And more usefully, to try to define what it is you're trying to achieve. And that would be what our user expectation, and that is an Internet where traffic is conveyed in a matter that is ‑‑ to source, content and destination. So that means access shows and transparency.

We might need to pay attention to some terminology here. We see that there are a great move for many services to IP converge platform; video, VoIP, data, et cetera. So we might need to pay attention how we label this. That would not be the Internet, voice over broadband or IPTV, those are not Internet. So we might also need to come back to definition what Internet is and what it's not.

So key challenge, traffic management asset. Traffic management is a normal part of an everyday network operation or management. So it's not bad in itself, it's needed because congestion is a feature of the Internet itself.

Now, of course, it's the way traffic management is done, in which environment, whether it's transparent or not. IETF you mentioned developed standards and protocols which are flexible and transparent. Also for my tele‑conference, traffic management is not a panacea. I mean, adding capacity to the network is the best way to alleviate congestion issues. So let's keep that in mind.

So, from there I can expand if you want me to do so.

>> LUCA BELLI: I will ask you to maybe focus a little bit on the European dimension of these issues, because you were mentioning IP based network that maybe should be considered different from the open end‑to‑end network. And we know that recently that European Commission has proposed a regulation that explicitly encourages specialized services. So maybe if you can give ‑‑ provide us an overview of the main issues, the main tensions regarding this current proposal, the European Commission proposal and what ‑‑ how does it relate with network neutrality?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Thank you.

Yes, it's interesting in deed. As you know, the commission released a draft regulation, regulation on these issues, many issues but those include network neutrality. So to say it in a nutshell, there weren't very good principles in there, especially when you see the user's rights are being recognized and that would be free to access and distribute information and content, et cetera. So it's close to our heart.

Yes, there are exceptions, and one of those is traffic management. So again, that is closing the loop.

You mentioned specialized services. Nothing to impede telecom operators to engage Internet services in Europe so far, no one is being recognized formally in the draft regulation. And, yes, there are tensions, or I would say concerns in Europe, especially about how would specialized services co‑exist with the global Internet as we know it provided both are being delivered on the same physical network.

So my personal concern is that we all ‑‑ we'll always see the Internet deliver in the best effort mode, we should pay attention that it doesn't become least effort Internet. So it's just about how we will see specialized services co‑exist with the best for Internet. So that's certainly the key issue that we would like to discuss today.

>> LUCA BELLI: I agree. There is nothing negative with regard to specialized services, as long as they are precisely defined. And as long as they are cast separate from end‑to‑end open Internet and as long as they do not hinder the open Internet. So maybe it could be interesting to have a perspective of ETNA, some of the European ISPs on how this norms, these provisions pertaining to specialized services, and maybe also to assure the service quality connectivity problems that have been introduced in this proposal. And so how do you ‑‑ how do you consider this provision? Could they be helpful for ISPs or what is your opinion?

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: Okay. I try to be as brief as possible. I had some notes that I used in the European Parliament a few months ago before the commission tabled the proposal. Things have changed a bit from that moment. But we already have a first cluster of issue around net neutrality that have been so ‑‑ level. So I think we have very good level of policy framework in already new directives and member states will provide a high level consumer protection. Consumers are free to access and use content and applications and services of their choice. That's acquired.

On the other hand, we have a good number of obligations designed at ‑‑ level and member states level for ISPs. So we need to be transparent in contract terms, in terms of communication to customers. So I think the two sides of the market, ISP and consumers, have a good policy framework in the U. There is not much to do about that. There is not much more to do about that.

The third point I would like to raise is that we do have a competitive marketplace in the European Union, which is also something not directly related to the net neutrality debate, but once you have a competitive marketplace, if you have a problem with any ISP, you're free to terminate your contract and go to another one, which is a further level of ‑‑ which is a further level of protection in terms of consumers ‑‑ in terms of consumer's rights not by low market development, which is also good.

Now, if we come to the commission's proposal, we're happy. We're happy with it. The problem we have now is that, as you know, when the commission tables a proposal, that it needs to go through the legislature in the European Union. So we have no idea how we can come out at the end of the process. We will work on it and we will try to get as best an outcome as possible. What we like, specifically, is that the new proposal put forward by the commission tries to really move the net neutrality debate from a speculative and idealogical level to a more complete one where consumers are totally protected, their rights are recognized and enforced, obligations and ISPs are even clearer than they were in the previous framework. But we have further ‑‑ basically the provision says providers of content applications and services, and provider of communication services. So the two supply sides of the market should be free to enter into agreements to deliver specialized services with a defined quality of service or dedicated capacity.

That's basically what the new proposal says. We like it because for the first time we see it recognized by the institutions that we can further ‑‑ that develop a relationship on the supply side, taking into account that within this framework there is no place for blocking, slowing down, berating, discriminating, and all those practices that we're not allowed to do. So that's basically my contribution. We can get deeper into any point.

>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks, Michele. Maybe it is worth to also highlight that there is some room for discrimination with a short service quality for prioritization notably. It is something that is allowed by the proposed regulation, and it is not clearly defined distinction between assure service quality ‑‑ and specialty abroad and specialized services. So that is something the coordinator should work on. So maybe it could be interesting also now to understand as we are speaking a lot about net neutrality, what could be the benefit of net neutrality, especially for marginalized people, for poor people.

So I'll go on my right, Parminder, could you explain to us what could be the benefits of net neutrality policies.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: Yes. I think, first of all, before I speak about what could be the benefits to people in poverty and the marginalized people, we should recognize that it is at that edge where net neutrality is being most violated today because they are politically weak and not organized. And it is in the developing countries in the low end mobile market where packages are being sold which are non‑net neutral. You can get few of those Internet applications either for free or very small cost. That's where the model is being build up from. The two benefits of doing that, one, they are not politically organized so they would not know what the big issue is and would not respond in the same manner people here would.

Secondly, you can always pass off a cheaper Internet. You know if somebody is getting free or very cheap, what's your problem, because they don't have money. So if companies are subsidizing money, there's connection, so what's the problem?

It depends on how see what Internet was supposed to be. It was supposed to be a great vehicle to democratize power and egalitarian new technostructure, new complicated sphere. If you guys remember, this is declaration of principle which talks about an Information Society where everyone can access, create, share information.

Then to ask, do poor people even create content that they should be very worried about uploaded and given same kind of preference, then you have lost it somewhere idealogically. Again, back to the idealogical level.

I think we need to go beyond end user right and consumer choices. There are social choices involved here. If you just talk about end‑user and consumer choices, those guys really don't have the time. They need inexpensive network. Let's face it, the point is we want Internet which is inclusive of those people, then we need to make a social choice, a social choice which is captured in public policy. For ‑‑ whether it means economic efficiency or not. That debate has never shifted towards those directions. We need to stop talking about end users and end consumers and the collective requirements of inclusive society. And for that, net neutrality is very important.

Do I have a minute more?

>> LUCA BELLI: 30 seconds. Maybe 20.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: Maybe I'll come back to it again. There is also issue of we have struggled a lot about how technical issues ‑‑ what we talk in IGF are perceived by social justice movements and rights movements. I think net neutrality is always a very good translation issue. That's the key issue from the technical realm we can talk to people fighting for media rights, culture diversity, economic decentralization, et cetera, and that should be spoken of. But spoken of in social terms and not in terms of technology. But other than the best effort Internet, which like what is it? We are talking about public Internet. The public Internet as we see from specialized services one. Use those terminologies which can, you know, mean things to the people we are talking about to connect with. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: It's true also that what you are saying also sometime choice is not really consumer choice, it's not really the only option. Also, because if you have to choose before very ‑‑ or blocked, it's hard choice.

So I would like to also know by Ellen, what is important in the context ‑‑ why net neutrality is important in the context of public access to the Internet.

>> ELLEN BROAD: Hello, everyone. Before I start, I just wanted to clarify that I'm not an expert on net neutrality. I'm stepping in for my colleague Stuart Hamilton. So I'm going to try my best to articulate this as it applies to public access to information. And by that I mean, through libraries through educators, but please do not ask me any technical questions. My expertise is copyright, so we can have a conversation about that afterwards.

So libraries have always been interested to access to information and intellectual freedom. So the net neutrality debate is very essential to the perspective of libraries and educators that access to information should be equal regardless of who is delivering the information and who is receiving the information.

So, the concern for libraries and for educators when we refer to specialized services is that the access of our users, or the access of the public information could be prioritized according to what is of greatest economic benefit to our telecom operators. And I understand that it's a competitive market and that specialized services are something that's under discussion. But when I think about it in terms of, for example, education, libraries, academic libraries, community colleges are increasingly looking at online delivery of courses, either recording, streaming, solely online courses. In the online courses environment, particularly when we are seeing mixed massive open online courses, we're seeing the emergence of both for profit and non‑profit education options. So both Udacity and Corsera are for profit companies, and Google has just partnered with EDEX who are a nonprofit but are going to be able to increase their outreach. Whether our students, for example, it would of preference to them to go for full profit, like Corsera or Udacity because the type of service or access they get through the local university or through a nonprofit option may be ‑‑ they may not be able to afford the specialized services that we refer to.

So that's kind of in a nutshell in relation to the online environment. I'm happy to refer to it in other senses, but I thought that might be enough.

>> LUCA BELLI: It is true that by allowing paid for priority one has also to wonder how can those entities, those public entities that cannot afford to pay for priority, how can they provide an efficient quality of service?

So I would like to pass to Jeremy to have some input, some ‑‑ his perspective on how neutral access, free access to third‑party platforms over mobile Internet can affect consumers' experience and consumers' rights. So as you are at the consumers international, maybe you could be extremely helpful with this.

>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Well, I'll actually follow on from what Parminder had to say about, particularly, in the region that we both live in where mobile packages are often bundled with free or subsidized services or applications. It's actually a mixed blessing for consumers. As he sort of indicated, consumers are loathe to turn away free product at any time.

But the consumer movement is not for low cost at any cost. If it's going to result in a less‑equal network, then we have to look very carefully at it. For example, what I'm talking about is you have free access to Twitter, or free access Facebook, but maybe not free access to Google Plus. That's just an example. So there are various providers who sort of compete against each other based on what free offering they have with their mobiles. By free, I mean there's no data charge, whereas normally you would have data charges for accessing other content on the Internet. Likewise, with chat applications, one of them offers What's That for free, another one offers Line and Talk for free. A lot of times this is the only experience of the Internet on a mobile that many consumers have. They won't go outside of that little free sandbox. It's not to say they're prevented from loading other websites. They can load other websites, it's just that then they will then start to use up their data quota.

So I think that it's a difficult question. It's not uniformly good or bad. It is certainly a infringement of net neutrality. I think it matters whether it's achieved in anticompetitive way or not. But I'd like your feedback on this.

So, is the provider ‑‑ is the network provider simply zero rating the traffic? And a very well-known example of that ‑‑ perhaps not well enough known, is Wikipedia Zero. Wikipedia Zero is an arrangement that they have with network providers to give zero rated access to the Wikipedia website. We all love Wikipedia, but what if you were the ‑‑ if you had a website that also offered information similar to Wikipedia and consumers were staying away from your we been site because it wasn't free. Everybody knows there's no commercial arrangement. Wikipedia is not paying for preferential access. It's still prioritizing them over the competitors. So I think where I personally would draw the line is on the basis that there's no payment. Because if money is being shifted from the content provider to the network operator, then clearly that's too far. That's a step too far. But where there is no money flowing and it's just a zero rating of traffic, well, it's questionable. Is that a ‑‑ it's a strict breach of net neutrality, but does it harm consumers more than having them pay for the traffic?

So let's ‑‑ maybe we can discuss that.

>> LUCA BELLI: And, Jeremy, do you think that further research into this phenomenon can provide some evidence from policy change? In case you think so, how could it help to have some evidence‑based policies?

>> JEREMY MALCOLM: Absolutely. A lot of these arrangements are very opaque. There is no transparency. You don't know on what terms the provider is giving you this free access. Is there some quid pro quo along the way? Is there an advertising deal? They're co‑locating the equipment in the network providers data center. How does it work? I think that would throw a lot of light on the question of is this anticompetitive? Because where there is an anticompetitive element there, then I think regulators have a warrant to step in. But in other cases it's not such a clear case.

So we need, we do need to have some research and transparency around these practices and find out what are the terms on which this is happening.

>> LUCA BELLI: I think Frederick wanted to reply to one of your comments. Afterward we will have remote intervention from Narine Khachatryan ‑‑ I'm sorry, my Armenian pronunciation is not the best.

Are we ready with the remote intervention?

Okay. So a couple of replies and maybe also in the room if someone wants to add something.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: No. I was interested by the description made by mobile offers. And well, our understanding is indeed we are talking about mobile Internet, which means that there are constraints, spectrum, scarcity, et cetera. But net neutrality applies on mobile services. So services when you need to pay $1 to access your Facebook or your favorite website and free for some other stuff is ‑‑ to the Internet. It's not access to the Internet. Those are data services. We need to be extremely clear about that.

>> LUCA BELLI: And on top of this, let me also add that traffic management on mobile Internet is even more frequent and on fixed Internet that last year I bought by Barrick highlighted that in Europe it is indeed a highly competitive market, around 50 percent of mobile operators apply, throttling or blocking measures. So it's still something that's extremely torn.

Michele, do you want to add something?

No, no. You're right. I mean, talk through Skype, for example, in certain European countries and you will see that they are Skype is being throttled and blocked. Again, when you by your ‑‑ you should have access to the entire Internet or it remains data services and we're not speaking about the same stuff.

>> LUCA BELLI: Michele, did you want to add something?

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: No. Just wanted to take up on your point on the mobile segment of the market. It's totally as you say, market is really very competitive. We're moving towards pricing structures where you can go flat or choose your data plan. And takeup again on the point that Frederick said, that the services are not ‑‑ are different from the Internet; two different things. One is data services, the other one is accessing the Internet. So two different levels.

Again, the point that I raised before is when you do have a competitive marketplace, free to get another provider, you're not happy with one, go and get another one.

>> LUCA BELLI: It's also true that if both block some specific content, you can go to another one but the content will be always blocked.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: I said, not only the competition, even five of them that do the same thing, that still doesn't offer any great social choice. I think we should go beyond just the competition thing because there are many things in which you can have five bad media players, all of them being bad and therefore there's a media regulation which still says that you don't like my content, go to the other guy. You still need something which is a higher principle so the social choices are higher than just the competition choices.

>> LUCA BELLI: You are absolutely right. One can tackle net neutrality from various perspective, especially in the U.S. They tackled it from the competition perspective. But human rights perspective is extremely important. By the way, the record of dynamic coalition on net neutrality is dedicated to human rights issues pertaining to net neutrality and we will discuss it on Friday morning. If you're interested, you will also have paper copies.

We, after the commercial we can have the remote intervention.

Okay. Alejandro, unfortunately he was not able to join us, but he's online. So wonderful. Alejandro Pisanty from Mexico.

Could we have his contribution?

Please, Alejandro, could you provide us your contribution?

Pardon? You need a microphone?

Okay. We don't have ‑‑ we have some type of problem, so he will provide us his contribution in some minutes if we manage to solve this technical problem.

Yeah, it has been throttled.

So yeah, Alejandro is having some problem. So I suggest to pass directly to Roxana's intervention. So we know that in order to build some efficient, scalable net neutrality policy, regulation, legislation, whatever, we need to respect some basic principles from transparency and accountability in order to define the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders, end users, ISPs. So can you tell us something about the roles that the stakeholders should have and what about ‑‑ how could be implemented this principle transparency and accountability?

>> ROXANA RADU: Thank you. I think we can talk about transparency and accountability on two different levels. One is design implementation of traffic management itself, and the other one is policy making process. For the latter, we usually talk about reaching the common framework by involving a multitude of stakeholders, not necessarily all of them. When we think about what Parminder just said about social choices and neutralization of communities, I think this is a hot point that should be taken into account in future policies.

For the design implementation part, I think here the obscurity comes from the marketplace experimentation with imposing limitations. That either not communicated at all to the users or are communicated in non‑comprehensive ways, or partially communicated. Transparency refers to public disclosure which we understand quite broadly which should be applied in the negotiation of the policies and in the implementation itself, thus enabling the users and over side bodies if we consider those necessary, to monetize the practices based on a set of indicators that allow for minimum standards to be achieved, this would include some social standards as well.

When taking into account differentiated usages of information packages and differentiated needs. So maybe what we're missing right now is exactly this fine grain approach to net neutrality regulation.

Accountability, on the other hand, is the expectation that providers and decision makers can be called upon to justify their actions. However, with net neutrality we are always talking about very different reference frames and different understandings of which traffic management techniques are acceptable and which ones are not. So in thinking about an international framework or internationalizing this debate, I think we need to find a way to balance this out somehow and maybe the discussion should also touch upon that.

>> LUCA BELLI: This is extremely interesting input through discussion the fact that some framework, a policy framework could be elaborated according to this principle, both in his elaboration process and in order to implement accountability and transparency.

If I can ‑‑ if you allow me a second moment of commercial, during the last three months, we did a ‑‑ net neutrality we tried to transpose the IETF process of standard elaboration into policy making to build a model framework on net neutrality that will be discussed on Friday morning at 9, after the dynamic coalition meeting. So you're all invited to participate if you are interested.

And at this stage I think it could be ‑‑ do we have the remote intervention of Alejandro or Narine?

(Off microphone.)

>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. Do we want to use a microphone to amplify?

No. Okay.

(Off microphone.)

>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. Perfect. Do we have some questions from participants? No.

Okay. So I would like to take some questions in the room. I'm sure there are some questions. Please, could you raise your hand?

I think ‑‑ okay. Thank you. The gentleman there.

>> EDUARDO BARTONI: My name is Eduardo Bartoni. I'm a law professor at Buenos Aires University, Palermo University. I have a technical question. So it's a technical question for Ellen.

I'm kidding. (Laughter).

It's a technical question. Assuming that we agree on the net neutrality as the sound principle, assuming that we agree that some traffic management is necessary, and assuming that there are a lot of issues related to public interest and social choices in this area, when we translate all of that to a complete implementation it happens that it could ‑‑ that we need somebody to control. We just talk about accountability and transparency, at least somebody, could be the market or could be the State. I'm not sure if the market will work on controlling a traffic management that is not abused and discriminating. So let's say that we need some sort of governmental office that will control that. But for me, or in my experience, controlling traffic management under some specific standards is something real complicated. I'm not sure if all the offices in development countries are able to do that in a serious way.

So my question, which is technical, is what are the best model that you think it's possible to implement the neutrality, the signed principle by regulations and to have a good control of this principle if we don't have good or ‑‑ yes, capacity in governmental offices to do so?

>> LUCA BELLI: My first reaction would be, well, let's have ‑‑ let's create some good authority, instead of substandard.

>> EDUARDO BARTONI: It's not create. I don't think there's a lot of technical expertise. This is my question.

>> LUCA BELLI: That would be my immediate question. But I think that there are a lot of answer could ‑‑ Frederick, do you want to start ‑‑ or Michele.

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: My first reaction would be, please, let's not create, I guess, not too many authorities. I guess we have far too many by now

>> EDUARDO BARTONI: We could empower more with ‑‑

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: That could be a way out. Yes. Or I think it's, again, in a comparative marketplace where we have also competition on the content provision side, let's imagine a situation, like Eduardo's story of competition, for example, if anyone feels his or her right is infringed you go to competent authority, you file a complaint, there will be an investigation and there will be some sort of remedy.

I don't ‑‑ I don't think we really need, as we already have in the telecom sector for market regulation on hosting input, any sort of assigned control on traffic management, that would be a nightmare. And I don't even know how technically you could do it.

(Off microphone.)

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: Well, I don't know. I mean you have a point. To understand your question, I'm just on my side taking ‑‑ trying to suggest not to create a model where you have assigned control in a competitive marketplace on the natural corporator provide. On the content provision side, I was thinking like of a model that might look like that of competition low where the market is free to go if anything is wrong because there is an abuser dominant position that anyone who feels the right is infringed, you go, you file a complaint and then there will be a control.

>> LUCA BELLI: It's also true, that as I was mentioning before, also in highly competitive market as the European one, Barrick has clearly highlighted a lot of infringements. So I don't know if competition alone can be used as the remedy. But I think Frederic wanted to add something on this.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: I would entirely agree with this, I'm afraid. You're raising a lot of excellent points. I'm speaking now with European perspective. And I believe that those authorities exist and they are supposedly independent, and those would be the ‑‑ who are gaining much more knowledge on those issues more and more. And Barrick plays an extremely good role. And there are leaders in Europe, among ‑‑ with a good approach, I'm thinking of the French author who really understands how it works.

But this is not just the regulators' market has a role and users have a role and we want them to be better informed. And that would make users asking questions through the ISP saying what it is that you're doing with my bits and my Internet connection. Are you using TPI? What is it that you're doing with this? Much more transparency is needed for consumers to be truly well‑informed and then if they're not happy, competition should tell them to change providers. This is why choice and competition is need.

Then let's expand a little bit to your question, not only the who, but how we would do that. I would like to refer to some FCC very recent work that you might maybe have heard of. There is an open Internet advisory committee to the FCC who just released in July an excellent paper on managed services and quality of services and what it is that we should do. Obviously, we all reluctant at this stage in the technical community to see rules being applied of us to measuring quality of services with parameters because it might freeze a bit what it is that we hear by quality of services and innovation in the future. So we advise that we start with a perceived quality of service by consumers to see how things might evolve in the future. So that's another story. This is also the reason why I'm personally reluctant to see a legislation at national level that will freeze the definition of net neutrality and how to implement it. I know you didn't ask, but I felt it was part of the broader question. Thank you.

>> LUCA BELLI: It is true, there are already some really good regulators that understand what is net neutrality as are set. It is also true when net neutrality becomes not only a competition issue, but also human rights issue, national regulators do not have ‑‑ they are not competent to analyze human rights issues. So Barrick has explicitly highlighted that national regulators are not competent to analyze human rights. They can analyze the market competition, but that is why we're suggesting it is not necessary to create new authorities, but to extend the range of powers and remedies that can be adopted by the national regulators. I think there are lot of other questions. The madam, the lady there with the red scarf.

Someone has stolen the microphone.

Sorry, is there someone else? Okay, sorry, who is the first one?

>> CHRIS: My name is Chris ‑‑ I teach at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the big changes in the debate is Netflix Open Connect where a content provider is essentially walking into ISPs and asking them, well, you'll either take all my traffic for free, or you will take a box and host all my traffic for free. And in many conversations I've been in, this has been a very different economic dynamic. And I'd be curious from the people on the panel if the development of strong bargaining positions by content providers against the network providers has changed the way you would analyze these issues?

>> LUCA BELLI: Michele, do you want to answer?

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: Yes. I would be very frank. I don't think we have experienced that kind of situation in Europe yet. I know Orange had a difficult case on terminating traffic, but I don't want to speak of any other company because I'm not representing that company.

So I don't think we've had that kind of situation yet in Europe. So I think we definitely have to look. It's super interesting to see how bargaining powers on the supply side can really have an effect on the downside side of the market.

Yes, an interesting point to look at. I'm sorry I'm not in a position to answer to you now.

>> LUCA BELLI: I think Parminder wanted to reply also.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: Yes. I don't have an answer how to do it. It create net neutrality is very complex and fast moving area. And therefore, I don't understand how can net neutrality be applied without a ‑‑ net neutrality. Because you have to first have a very exhaustive legislation. But this is so fast changing an area that it has to be constantly ‑‑ in that particular situation like the one you have mentioned. Actually see that the market operates in the terms of the larger principles which are determined in the legislature and it cannot be enough that you just have a legislation and you have a reactive kind of finding which would not be any good to many situation. So there is ‑‑ which only regulator and politic can use. On this issue there's a problem because a lot of countries, a lot of groups don't want to give this power to the teleco ‑‑ teleco regulators. They have all this telecom and Internet issues that was also played out. We said net neutrality is a bigger issue. Who is going to deal with that even at nominative level?

It is fine and that the happens even in national regulation systems. But then if the telecom regulators are not doing it, then who does it? And I think that becomes an issue. I think some regulator authority is needed, without that net neutrality doesn't mean anything.

>> LUCA BELLI: Absolutely. I think there was a question ‑‑ the gentleman there.

>> AUDIENCE: I just the gentleman said we've seen that same phenomenon in Australia. Sorry, Norelle Clark, I'm President of the Internet Society in Australia and I also work for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. But I'm an engineer, so I'm standing. We've also seen that situation where you have a large content service provider come to large tel‑code, ISP inside of them, host our box for free or else copy our traffic come across your transit links. And that's not a great thing, because the situation ‑‑ it costs money to host stuff. You know, it costs money to pay for those links. And that cost is going to be borne by the consumer ultimately. So there needs to be some way of bringing that through.

The original point I wanted to ‑‑ question I wanted to pose was that years ago we thought services on the Internet clearly define themselves by TCP port numbers. And as an engineer, it was easy for me to identify what was e‑mail, what was a service on some big fat computer somewhere, and what was DNS and all the rest of it. Then it all moved across into port 80 and masqueraded at web traffic. And so the only one way we could figure out one type of traffic from another was truly to do DPI, and that was the only way you could do it.

Now, things have moved across to this little app world where everything comes as a little app and sits on people's devices and the consumer hasn't got a hope in hell of seeing what it is. The operators haven't got much of a hope of knowing what it is, unless they deliver the thing completely from within their networks. So unless we all go back to a nice time in the past where things clearly identified themselves as particular things that we could then properly categorize and prioritize across the traffic in a fair way, this is going to keep on going.

>> LUCA BELLI: Do you want to ‑‑ does anyone want to reply?

The gentleman there and the gentleman there, and then Chris, I think you want ‑‑ there.

>> AUDIENCE: The argument against enabling ‑‑ allowing for Voice over IP on the network is that ‑‑ they are paid billions of dollars for spectrum and at the point when the government licensed them the spectrum, there was this guarantee that they would have some amount of assured business in terms of domestic and international calls. How did that play out in the rest of the world? Did the telcos not pay huge amounts for spectrum? Were they just willing to accept that overnight things have changed completely? Because this is the fight that is currently going on, at least in India.

>> LUCA BELLI: Anyone want to reply?

>> AUDIENCE: Repeat your question. I couldn't hear your question very well.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: He said that the India claim since they paid a lot of spectrum, they should allow the network to carry voice traffic and if it goes over IP, we were assured some kind of business and only as it played out in other markets.

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: Well, I ‑‑ how it works, we also have options for spectrum and they cost a lot of money and they're based member state level. Now there's a huge debate whether to do European options, but by now we have member states doing options assigned frequencies and what happens normally is the amount of money that operators give to ministries for options is very, very high. So we do have argument say that go we have to recoup that investment. And so now we have never used the argument to say that we want to block Voice over IP services, even because in Europe since the very, very first appearances of Voice over IP services, I think the European commission has been very clear and very precise from the very beginning, we could not do it. We have had some cases of operators blocking Voice over IP services based on anti‑trust and regulator control. I think we have really never used the argument of, yes, we want to block mobile or Voice over IP services because we pay for options. We use an argument let us be freer in terms of pricing structures, because one of our big costs, one of our big costs for us is cost of options.

>> LUCA BELLI: And I would agree with Michele.

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: Really?

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Yeah, I do. I do agree with you. I mean Internet is a disruptive technology indeed. So, yes, there were crazy years where operators in Europe paid billions for 3G licenses. This is disruptable also in a favorable way for operators who continue, or at certain moments move Voice to IP without specifically telling users that would continue to pay a low price of ‑‑ so you know he what, IP is a wonderful technology. There is a move to ‑‑ so many services to IP and sometimes it's profitable, sometimes it's not. So, but that's the rule of the game.

>> LUCA BELLI: I think there's a question there.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is ‑‑ I am from Open Net Korea. I have simple, practical question. I appreciate that one should tread very cautiously in this area. But, assuming that some sort of regulatory intervention is needed, I want to hear the panelists' view which of the possible two alternatives you think would be preferable: One, to teach technology to fair trade commission officials who haven't, you know, had a high degree of technical expertise; or, to teach law to the telco oversight or telco regulators?

In Korea we have Korea Telecommunications Division who has great deal of technological expertise over seeing telco companies, but have very little trade law, fair trade competition expertise. We have fair trade commission who has very little technological expertise. So which alternative, in your view, would be preferable?

>> LUCA BELLI: Sort of allowing Internet authorities, it is a mandate to analyze the market from a competition perspective or from a technical perspective, it could be not efficient and something more heterogenous is needed. But I think you have a lot of replies, so, please.

>> FREDERIC DONCK: Just some commercial from the Internet Society. We have start inviting guests through fellowship to the IETF to make sure policy makers, regulators, better understand how it works and how standards and process making standardization works. You know what, it makes a difference and we will continue. So be there, the next one is in London in March. Thank you.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: I think the difference, apart from the learning levels and possibilities is also the nature of the action these two regulator authorities do. The trade regulators are more reactive and ‑‑ regulation. And telecom one are more moving and interpretation, if you say intrusive ones. I think Internet net neutrality needs a little more interpretive keeping pace with proactive regulation but, otherwise they are not comfortable with putting it to the telecom regulatory people and you have to find some other place.

But I think competition is useful but that's not enough for regulation because the media aspect, the human rights aspect something bigger is needed.

>> LUCA BELLI: Put several departments in the same authority, they consider the same issue from different perspective could be used.

I think we have the remote moderator ‑‑ the remote participation intervention right now. Can we broadcast it?

Alejandro, can you hear us?

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Can you hear me now?

>> LUCA BELLI: Yes, not really well.

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I can hear you very well. Can you hear me?

>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. Very briefly,

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thanks for considering me for this participation. I'll make very brief notes. One, the regulatory landscape net neutrality is varied over the world. In some places it is thought little obligation kind of ways, in other countries it can be seen as customary ‑‑

>> LUCA BELLI: I'm sorry, Alejandro, we can read your interpretation.

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Economic ‑‑ that means market ‑‑ and the others is seen as telecommunication regulation. In many places there is no (audio difficulties.)

>> LUCA BELLI: I don't think we can have remote intervention anymore. Okay. It's not working. Sorry.

So I think we can ‑‑

(Off microphone.)

>> LUCA BELLI: Don't worry. I think we can keep on having an amusing, open debate. So, please, if you have any other ‑‑ I think there are other questions. So, please, Chris, you have a question?

>> CHRIS MORRISON: Thanks. Chris Morrison, University of Sussex. I'll keep it brief because I'm speaking first on Friday morning, so I don't want to hog two sessions. I want to share a remote question.

Actually, maybe ‑‑ Rojan, are you in here?

Yeah? So why don't you ask the question about the advocates?

>> ROJAN: Oh, he's referring to a tweet. You see, we were involved in a bit of a fight with ETNO last year when they were trying to enforce a very obsolete and misguided charging scheme for two‑sided markets where they would turn around and levy charges with ITU support from corporate providers. And my question was, where were the net neutrality advocates in that fight?

Chris's response was that the European regulators had done the job so well that the net neutrality advocates decided to go to sleep. But there were a few of us on the war front and we actually won that one. I'm not a unqualified advocate of net neutrality, but I think we did do some good.

>> CHRIS MORRISON: So if I could follow up with what Rojan was saying. So, in December ‑‑ and obviously I accept that Michele is the charming face of ETNO when it comes to these things, but in December we did have a discussion about this. My question is really developing from that. As we have said ‑‑ sorry.

Can we shut down the remote participation, otherwise this will be chaos.

How about now? Is it better?

>> LUCA BELLI: Yes.

>> CHRIS MORRISON: So given that attempted alliance between European incumbents and developing country governance, I wonder if we're giving an unfortunate impression today, which is that net neutrality regulation is so unbelievably difficult to the point of almost impossibility that actually a better idea would be to abandon that in favor of something else that would preserve developing country revenues and maintain a kind of balance, a telco balance when, in fact, we have to be much more modest about what net neutrality regulation can possibly achieve, and maybe be a little bit more honest about the fact that I think Parminder mentioned, this is a consumer intervention. This is not a competition intervention by antitrust regulators. It's a consumer intervention in favor of consumer rights. Accepting the competition doesn't effectively help. I don't just mean in Europe and in other places, I mean also in the United States, as well. It's a consumer intervention. It's not an intervention with the competition at the heart of it. It's intervention because they decided that there were certain minimum standards of service that consumers should be allowed to have.

So I'm wondering if we're making life very complicated in the same way it was made complicated last December in that it leads to strange alliances that might be very unfortunate in the median term.

>> LUCA BELLI: Do you have a reply?

>> ELLEN BROAD: So as I said, I'm new to net neutrality, but I've been learning a lot on this panel. The question that I've been thinking about as I'm listening to what you're saying, Chris, and what Parminder is saying, I've been attending alongside other panels, the local content panels, and how to facilitate the development of local content, particularly in developing countries, how to facilitate the upload of content for advocacy, political issues, et cetera, and how, say, tiers of service would impact on the development on the local content which we are trying to facilitate in other forums here and also on kind of political advocacy whether you're, say, a modulized community in one jurisdiction trying to reach out to another through your own video channel or your own radio channel, how tiers of service would affect that. This is like, I don't know, because I'm fairly knew to this.

>> LUCA BELLI: It is true that ‑‑ discriminate certain type of content access services also can have consequences on freedom of expression of media provision and can also describe a sort of editorial control to ISPs as I think Professor Chris wrote in one of his paper.

I think we have a question from a remote moderator.

>> NICOLAS SEIDLER: First of all, question from ‑‑ University in Lithuania. She's asking self‑regulation is a powerful tool to implement net neutrality. What do panelists think about it?

And then technical powers tell me that actually it might work for Alejandro to speak now. So if you want to try? As you want.

>> LUCA BELLI: Let's try to let Alejandro speak.

>> Alejandro, if you can hear us, please talk.

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Yes.

>> LUCA BELLI: Can you hear?

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Yes. I was saying approaches to different ‑‑

>> LUCA BELLI: Yes, I can hear.

>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: So I was trying to say, the situation we find, for example, in Mexico is that telcos and ISPs are not ‑‑

(Audio difficulties.)

>> LUCA BELLI: Sorry, Alejandro, we are not able to hear you. Sorry.

Coming back to the question from the remote participation, remote participants. Self‑regulation could be a mean to ‑‑ an efficient means to safeguard net neutrality. Does anyone in the panel want to provide an answer?

Jeremy, you wanted to provide an answer, no.

Parminder, sorry.

>> PARMINDER SINGH: I mean, I would comment on self‑regulation if somebody can make me understand what self‑regulation really is, because I generally don't understand that why would somebody self‑regulate after we mention the word ‑‑ having not self‑regulated before we mention that word. I know it's a lot of groups trying to do it, but I think it's such big social issue, can't be said that industry does it ‑‑ self‑regulation has failed even in media in many countries and this is much more complicated than media and I don't think self‑regulation should be okay. But, yes, we should have very close contact with industry groups trying to evolve regulation in a participative manner.

>> LUCA BELLI: Also it is quite difficult to imagine a commercial entity that self regulates to protect human rights against his commercial interests.

So, to you, sir?

>> MICHELE BELLAVITE: I've been working in my company for a long years, like 12 years. And I've heard the word self‑regulation like hundreds of times and hundreds of policy. I never understand what it means either. It's normally something that we tend ‑‑ in argument that we tend to use when we fear we will be very badly regulated in a very badly non‑efficient way, then we come up and say we want to self‑regulate ourselves, which is a way to say, please wait, because you're doing it bad. So we do it ourselves.

So I would tend to say that rather than self‑regulation, maybe more cooperation during the legislative processes, or during control processes, or doing enforcement processes, better cooperation can probably produce better outcomes than either strict enforcement or just self‑regulation, which probably certain cases probably doesn't mean anything.

>> LUCA BELLI: I agree on that point. It is true regulation control is not the solution. Good regulation could be a solution and good regulation during his development process includes a lot of different stakeholders with different perspective. So instead, maybe instead of speaking about multistakeholderism, we should speak about hetero‑stakeholderism, which is different stakeholder. Not a lot, but different, a really different point of view, different level.