Verizon Calls Optimization Tests Reasonable Net Management

john.eggerton@futurenet.com (John Eggerton) — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 13:50:00 +0000

Verizon is dismissing a net-neutrality group's characterizations of what the telco said were common network management tests.

Public Knowledge had jumped on reports that the wireless ISP was "throttling" video streaming services as part of a video optimization test, and had done so without warning to customers.

"Current net-neutrality rules clearly state that providers may employ reasonable network management practices to ensure that their networks and services run efficiently and work well for their customers," a Verizon spokesman said. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network."

He said the company has let customers know about its various network practices, which are common in the industry, adding, "It's not in our interest to do anything to jeopardize the products or services that our customers rely each and every day.

Public Knowledge pointed out that the FCC staff, in the waning days of former chair Tom Wheeler's tenure, had set out guidelines for reasonable network management, including evaluating video optimization, but that new FCC chair Ajit Pai had rescinded that report.

"ISPs need to know that tests to improve their system or develop new products won’t be mistaken for by their customers for bad behavior that undermines confidence in the network," Public Knowledge senior vice president Harold Feld said. “The guidelines distinguishing ‘throttling’ from ‘reasonable network management’ developed as part of the FCC’s investigation into T-Mobile’s Binge On service provided precisely this certainty.... Before, Verizon could simply point to the FCC guidelines to reassure their customers. Today, we must look to chairman Pai to tell us whether subscribers have anything more to rely on than Verizon’s promises."

Feld said that was one reason Pai should not try to roll back the Open Internet order or its Title II underpinning.

Title II's Full-‘Throttle’ History

john.eggerton@futurenet.com (John Eggerton) — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 17:00:00 +0000

Level 3: No Net-Neutrality Complaints — Yet

On June 12, the Federal Communications Commission was empowered to start enforcing its new Title II-based network-neutrality rules after a federal court denied a last-minute stay request.

That raised the question of how “throttling” became the term of art for what was referred to as “unreasonable discrimination” in the FCC’s 2010 order, and what’s been referred to generally as “degrading” — as in “no blocking or degrading or paid prioritization” — in network-neutrality debate parlance.

The migration from “unreasonable discrimination” made sense because the court frowned on the language, but “degrading” didn’t appear to have been undercut as a catch-all.

The term “throttling” has always been around, said Tim Karr, senior director of strategy at Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Free Press and a veteran of the network-neutrality wars. “[W]e have used all of these terms throughout the history of this debate, using whichever is more appropriate in describing a particular circumstance,” Karr said.

But throttling’s stock has clearly risen since the first 2010 net-neutrality order.

No lesser a net-neutrality term-of-art aficionado than Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld — who, like Karr, has been a net-neutrality proponent for years — pronounced it a “good question.” That provided just the sort of positive reinforcement that has driven investigative journalists to pursue such semantic conundrums as why advertisers think they can hide their “sales” behind the pretentious cloak of “savings event.” But we digress.

Feld said he thinks it dates from the reaction to wireless carriers’ usage plans — wireless broadband is now regulated under the net-neutrality rules, so it would make sense for the catch-all phrase to have morphed as well.

“I think it came up when the wireless carriers started throttling unlimited plans when they went over some undefined ‘cap,’ ” Feld told Multichannel News. “The idea was that ‘throttling’ was different from degrading because [throttling] just reduced overall speed/capacity rather than actually disrupting the transmission, as Comcast did with BitTorrent.”

One cable veteran thought the transition point was when FCC chairman Tom Wheeler got so much pushback on the “commercial reasonableness” standard that the FCC “needed something else besides ‘no blocking.’ ”

Whatever you call it, cable operators wish the definition excluded Title II.

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Verizon Calls Optimization Tests Reasonable Net Management

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