Ger­ard Best

A re­cent move by two ma­jor Caribbean mo­bile providers to block ac­cess to In­ter­net-based tele­pho­ny ser­vices–in­clud­ing sev­er­al pop­u­lar Voice over In­ter­net Pro­to­col (VoIP) ap­pli­ca­tions–has brought the is­sue of net neu­tral­i­ty to the at­ten­tion of Caribbean mo­bile phone users.

The core prin­ci­ple of net neu­tral­i­ty is that In­ter­net ser­vice providers should treat all da­ta pass­ing across their net­works equal­ly, not dis­crim­i­nat­ing by user, gen­er­a­tor, con­tent, site, plat­form, ap­pli­ca­tion or equip­ment.

A joint state­ment from the T&T chap­ters of the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC-TT) and the In­sti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics En­gi­neers (IEEE-TT), along with the T&T Com­put­er So­ci­ety, de­scribed the move to block cer­tain ser­vices as "a vi­o­la­tion of the con­cept of net­work neu­tral­i­ty".

"The ac­tion of these ISPs sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent and could have a dele­te­ri­ous im­pact on ef­forts to lever­age ICTs for both eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment across the re­gion," said Bevil Wood­ing, an In­ter­net Strate­gist and Caribbean Out­reach Man­ag­er at the re­search non-prof­it Pack­et Clear­ing House.

"His­tor­i­cal­ly, ISPs have act­ed as gate­ways to the In­ter­net and the many ap­pli­ca­tions, ser­vices and con­tent that live on the com­put­er servers con­nect­ed to it. But their role was nev­er in­tend­ed to be as gate­keep­ers, de­ter­min­ing which da­ta bits and Web ser­vices should load bet­ter or worse," Wood­ing stat­ed in a strong­ly word­ed piece on the sub­ject.

His view was shared by a num­ber of oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers, in­clud­ing the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Net­work In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre (Lac­nic), one of five Re­gion­al In­ter­net Reg­istries in the world which pro­vide num­ber re­source al­lo­ca­tion and reg­is­tra­tion ser­vices for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the glob­al In­ter­net.

Dig­i­cel's vi­o­la­tion of this cen­tral prin­ci­ple "sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent", said Car­los Mar­tinez, Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer at Lac­nic, speak­ing to the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Mar­tinez said, "The In­ter­net as we know it is a plat­form to de­liv­er pack­ets from one end to an­oth­er end. It's def­i­nite­ly not the role of the ISP to de­cide where pack­ets can go and where they can­not go. It would be the equiv­a­lent of the mail de­cid­ing which let­ters it wants to de­liv­er or not...Why should an ISP de­cide which ap­pli­ca­tions they want to sup­port or not?

If there are ap­pli­ca­tions that the user finds use­ful, they should be able to use them. They are pay­ing for the ser­vice."

That no­tion is a pil­lar of net neu­tral­i­ty, Mar­tinez ex­plained.

"The end-to-end prin­ci­ple says that every de­vice on the In­ter­net should be able to send a pack­et to any oth­er de­vice on the In­ter­net with­out ask­ing per­mis­sion from in­ter­me­di­ate net­works and with­out be­ing trans­lat­ed in tran­sit. This ba­sic prin­ci­ple is re­spect­ed across the In­ter­net."

Evolv­ing busi­ness mod­els

The sce­nario now play­ing out with Dig­i­cel and Lime in the Caribbean is noth­ing new. Pro­po­nents of net neu­tral­i­ty have long warned against tel­cos seek­ing to dis­crim­i­nate against cer­tain kinds of da­ta in or­der to re­move com­pe­ti­tion, cre­ate ar­ti­fi­cial scarci­ty, and oblige sub­scribers to sub­scribe to their oth­er­wise un­com­pet­i­tive ser­vices.

As Wood­ing put it, "They are in fact dis­crim­i­nat­ing against a cer­tain type of da­ta traf­fic that chal­lenges their busi­ness mod­el. And in­stead of in­no­vat­ing and evolv­ing, their re­sponse is to sti­fle com­pe­ti­tion, and fright­en the re­gion's gov­ern­ments with threats of di­min­ished rev­enues."

Ac­cord­ing to Mar­tinez, al­though VoIP ser­vices do not con­sume as much band­width as ser­vices like on­line video stream­ing, they hurt the very prof­itable tra­di­tion­al voice traf­fic and mes­sag­ing ser­vices that op­er­a­tors pro­vide. This is why in more de­vel­oped mar­kets, ser­vice providers are re­struc­tur­ing their busi­ness mod­els to treat with the rise of da­ta ser­vices, and the de­cline of voice ser­vices.

Mar­tinez said, "The is­sue is that their busi­ness mod­el is threat­ened. The busi­ness mod­el that is be­ing di­rect­ly threat­ened by these new ap­pli­ca­tions is the tra­di­tion­al way that we pro­vide the voice ser­vice. If oth­er mech­a­nisms prove more ef­fi­cient and cheap­er for the user, who are you pro­tect­ing if you fil­ter those ser­vices out? Are you pro­tect­ing the user? You're pro­tect­ing the prof­it mar­gins of an­oth­er ser­vice! And that's def­i­nite­ly not in the best in­ter­est of the user."

Com­pe­ti­tion push­es providers to op­ti­mise their net­works. By sti­fling com­pe­ti­tion, providers are es­sen­tial­ly re­veal­ing an un­der­ly­ing un­will­ing­ness to up­grade their ser­vices and evolve their old busi­ness mod­els, Mar­tinez said.

Michele Mar­ius ed­i­tor of the pop­u­lar Caribbean tech­nol­o­gy blog, ICT Pulse points out: "Tel­cos' bat­tle against VoIP is not new–it is at least 10 years old. Dur­ing that time, tech­nol­o­gy evolved, mak­ing VoIP eas­i­er and even more ac­ces­si­ble, and it is like­ly that new­er and eas­i­er al­ter­na­tives will con­tin­ue to emerge. How­ev­er, what has not been as ev­i­dent is the will­ing­ness of the tel­cos to be more proac­tive in ex­plor­ing new­er busi­ness mod­els, based on changes that have been oc­cur­ring in the in­dus­try."

En­abling in­no­va­tion

In a state­ment is­sued short­ly af­ter news of Dig­i­cel block­ing VoIP broke in T&T, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the largest provider of whole­sale broad­band in the re­gion, said, "...From what we un­der­stand, no oth­er ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al provider en­gages in the prac­tice of block­ing le­git­i­mate VOIP and sim­i­lar apps...This prac­tice can be con­sid­ered puni­tive to cus­tomers, re­strict­ing their choic­es and cer­tain­ly putting them at a dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts. Cus­tomers' ex­pec­ta­tion to­day is that they can ac­cess da­ta and voice 'on the go', at their con­ve­nience, on their de­vice of choice.

Colum­bus main­tains its po­si­tion that broad­band en­ables all cur­rent and fu­ture in­no­va­tions."

"If you think of Face­book and Twit­ter and all the so­cial me­dia that we have now, they have been per­mit­ted to grow with­out re­quir­ing per­mis­sion from a provider...And this is some­thing that we need to pre­serve; this is what has al­lowed the In­ter­net to be­come such a rapid­ly grow­ing ex­am­ple of tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion...If we give the in­ter­me­di­ate net­works the right to de­cide what kinds of traf­fic they can de­liv­er, we are cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that is ad­verse to in­no­va­tion."

"Right now the on­ly coun­try that I know that fil­ters Voice over IP is Cu­ba. Not even Venezuela dur­ing the ri­ot­ing ear­li­er this year messed with Voice over IP," Mar­tinez said. "In coun­tries where the reg­u­la­tor is strong enough, we're go­ing to see things play out dif­fer­ent­ly. What wor­ries me is what hap­pens in coun­tries where the reg­u­la­tor is not strong enough."

Ex­perts agree that by fail­ing to cre­ate and en­force rules that ac­tu­al­ly re­quire In­ter­net ser­vice providers to of­fer equal qual­i­ty of ser­vice to all da­ta, Caribbean reg­u­la­tors are ul­ti­mate­ly hurt­ing con­sumers, harm­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and hin­der­ing in­no­va­tion.