Do you remember when people used to have heated arguments about net neutrality, as if democracies would collapse without it? In 2017, a British comedian could crash the website of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just by telling millions of free-thinkers exactly what to think about net neutrality. Those were heady days, but not for Commsrisk, because this website’s readers never much cared about net neutrality, judging from the traffic generated by articles discussing the topic. I always suspected most risk professionals working in the communications sector do not understand what net neutrality is or what it is supposed to be, so they have no real opinion about it. This contrasts with people who do not work in the comms sector, who definitely have no idea what net neutrality is supposed to be, which makes it easy for them to sincerely believe all life depends on rules that establish the order in which a packet-switched network processes packets.
We currently have farmers complaining that they cannot afford to grow food, whilst the country with more nuclear weapons than any other is engaged in an interminable war with its neighbor, but just 7 years ago it was possible for comedians to create panic by warning that the cost of visiting some specific websites might theoretically go up. This mass hysteria occurred across the USA and in some other countries too, although the cost of visiting specific websites never did go up in the way they warned, even when net neutrality was in abeyance. Whenever and wherever net neutrality is enforced, the most common consequence is to prohibit the gift of data for people visiting a specific website because that would supposedly be unfair to other websites where users would still have to pay for their data. I struggle to imagine another time when so many people were so afraid of being charged more for something that they outlawed businesses giving away something for free.
Brexit is a lot like net neutrality, in the sense that it inflames the passions of an extraordinary number of people despite the subject being essentially dull. Most honest interlocutors would admit they know as little about negotiating international trade tariffs as they know about reducing jitter in live video streams. But any conversation involving three or more middle-class college-educated people can now be set aflame with a single mention of Brexit (capital B, because it is the name of a particular thing) or net neutrality (small n’s, because it is not a particular thing, no matter how many lawyers, activists and comedians pretended otherwise whilst each applying different definitions to those words). Just be sure to immediately step back from the discussion so you can enjoy the emotional fireworks from a safe distance.
These observations about human behavior have encouraged me to run an experiment where I see if the contrarian readers of Commsrisk are as disinterested in Brexit as they are in net neutrality. The experiment involves writing an inflammatory article that involves both topics at the same, to see if anyone reads it. Commsrisk has to maintain some standards, so unlike most articles about net neutrality and Brexit, this article will be about things that actually occurred, as opposed to describing the kinds of dystopian fantasies written by comedy writers to keep television audiences returning for more amusing disinformation next week. If you want to experience more of this experiment, then keep reading. I get statistics on the length of time people view each page, so every second before you click away is valuable data for me.
Any argument which seeks to generate an emotional response is great for persuading lazy voters to make the short journey to the polling booth, which is why there has never ever been an election where democracy itself was more at risk than it will be at the next election, even though democracy was on the brink of extinction in the prior election, and the election before that, and the election before that. To put this into perspective, the decision to repeal net neutrality in the USA only resulted in the imagined suspension of democracy, until some other people won the subsequent election and brought democracy back again, whilst Brexit is supposedly an existential threat to civilization. Most of Europe’s leaders profess to be keen on civilization, which is why the European Union took the über-civilized approach of avoiding lots of upset by pretending to support net neutrality, but without really meaning it. They did this by doing the same thing that lawyers, activists and comedians had done before: they applied a new definition to the words. This ploy worked brilliantly. Because the European Union’s rulers said they supported net neutrality, neither the television comedians nor the online activists could generate any enthusiasm for a campaign to save net neutrality in Europe. And because those rulers did not mean what they said about supporting net neutrality, the European Parliament later passed a resolution which included the following oxymorons.
[The European Parliament] is of the opinion that the economic sustainability of telecom networks is essential to achieving the 2030 Digital Compass connectivity targets and high-performance connectivity for all citizens within the EU without jeopardising competition rules; urges the commission to address and mitigate persistent asymmetries in bargaining power as set out by the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade; calls for the establishment of a policy framework where large traffic generators contribute fairly to the adequate funding of telecom networks without prejudice to net neutrality.
The words “without prejudice to net neutrality” were added as an amendment, presumably by the kinds of politicians who claim they can increase taxes without anyone paying more and send soldiers to fight wars without anyone getting killed. Per their definition, ‘fairness’ meant the European Union should prevent big businesses offering free gifts to ordinary people, but ‘fairness’ also requires some big businesses to gift a lot of money to other big businesses. I suspect most of the public has a different definition of fairness which is more like mine: if giving gifts is fair then everybody should be allowed to receive those gifts, and if gifts are banned in general then it would be especially peculiar to then insist upon very big gifts for some of the biggest businesses in Europe.
Europe’s lack of strategic vision is exemplified by the changing political attitudes towards capital investment in networks. Within 20 years, European governments have switched from massively increasing the cost of any investment in networks through spectrum auctions and other counterproductive taxes, to pretending that big American tech companies should pay for new network infrastructure because the average European chooses to use the services of firms like Google and Amazon. And the European telcos that spent a lot of money on 3G without really knowing how to make money from it are now determined to spend heavily on 5G whilst having even less idea of how to make money from it. But instead of devising new services that customers might gladly pay for, European telcos spend money on lobbying politicians to create new subsidies. The opportunity to escape this cycle of shambolic shenanigans was not on the minds of anyone who voted for Brexit in 2016, not least because British telcos will remain as bad as their peers across the continental mainland. However, decoupling its regulations from the rest of Europe meant the UK had the freedom to redefine net neutrality yet again.
The concluding statement of last year’s review of net neutrality by Ofcom, the UK comms regulator, gained very little attention, probably because the people who worried about net neutrality in 2017 have since discovered there are some more important things to worry about. It deserved further scrutiny because it pushed the limits of net neutrality oxymorons further than they had ever been pushed before.
Our review has found that, in general, [net neutrality] has worked well and supported consumer choice as well as enabling content providers to deliver their content and services to consumers. However, there are specific areas where we provide more clarity in our guidance to enable ISPs to innovate and manage their networks more efficiently, to improve consumer outcome.
So the principle of net neutrality is sound, per the first sentence. Then followed a list of exceptions to the principle of net neutrality which were so extensive that almost nothing remained. Those exceptions were:
- ISPs can offer premium quality retail offers. In other words, customers who pay more can get priority treatment for their packets.
- ISPs can develop new ‘specialised services’. In other words, telcos can create new services which rely on the packets involved in providing that service receiving priority treatment over other packets.
- ISPs can use traffic management measures to manage their networks. In other words, packets can be blocked or delayed as the telco considers necessary for running their network.
- Most zero-rating offers will be allowed. In other words, it is fine to gift free data to access some websites after all.
These so-called clarifications of Britain’s version of net neutrality are analogous to the holes in Swiss cheese. What appears to be solid from the outside is revealed to be largely empty when you cut it open. Net neutrality still fills up space in the public consciousness, and the same rules remain on the statute books as when the UK belonged to the EU. No comedian was given an excuse to create a fuss about the repeal of those net neutrality rules because those rules have not been repealed. The rules have instead been hollowed out by a regulator that used its right to issue guidance to create so many exceptions that the principle of net neutrality hardly applies to anything at all. Net neutrality has been interpreted to the verge of non-existence. And this was made possible because Brexit meant Ofcom’s guidance no longer needed to align with that offered elsewhere in Europe.
There is only one aspect of net neutrality that Ofcom cannot neuter through its guidance. Ironically, there would need to be a change of law to allow telcos to charge big tech platforms for their side of the traffic that passes between them and consumers.
The Divine Comedy by Dante is commonly regarded as one of the great works of European civilization. It is labelled a comedy because the narrator’s descent into Hell is succeeded by a more uplifting journey. Keep this in mind next time you start to feel inflamed by the horrors predicted by comedians. You may be temporarily whipped into a frenzy by their doom-mongering, but if you do not remain attentive to the subsequent details, the joke can end up on you.
