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I hate the term Network Neutrality. It has to much emotional baggage and tries to make it a binary issue. I wish it were that simple because it personally stirs my emotions and I would love a simple switch to flip and make the problem go away. I bring the topic up again as the recent Freedom to Connect conference has spurred some great thought and got me thinking as well.

Prior to the conference, Brough Turner started the discussion with an summary of an excellent paper by Susan Crawford. The paper dissects the timelines for various pieces to the puzzle. Telco law and FCC policy changes significantly around every 15 years, so why mismatch it with Transport  or application technologies, which run on intervals of 5 years or less, where the current focus lies. Free markets need to dictate the technology and economic models that exist at the higher layers, however, such freedom could be hindered if the foundation is not set properly.

It is with the foundation that I disagree. First, I do not purport government control of telecom infrastructure, however, I will distinguish user owned (co-operative) as a viable, if not preferred, model. Such an ownership could deal with right-of-ways, physical meduim (copper, cable, fiber, or even spectrum), and some aspects of transport.

Transport is the contentious area here and I throw it into the mix because of the timeline argument earlier. Looking at transport technologies, the horizon has been on a 7-10 year cycle. X.25 networks followed by ISDN and then leading into the current mass deployment of ATM. Now we have Ethernet bubbling to the top as the prevailing means. Should this be “regulated”, i.e. stripped from the service provider? I would argue yes because relying on layer 0/1 is to restrictive. Lambda control is not granular enough to allow competitive access. Furthermore, technologies that the incumbents prefer at that level, BPON and GPON are still highly asymmetric.

Allowing municipalities, co-ops or other entities to implement the next level, GE-PON or PBT, allows for the rapid connections at economical rates. Plugging into the access medium would not be specialized, yet it would still allow for differentiation (read QoS) at higher layers. Not to mention that accounting for the depreciation would be on friendlier terms for the co-operative to have (7-10yr) versus the service providers who push the IT cycle envelope.

And this is just one solution for one dimension of the problem…..