Universal Access and Network Neutrality were the hot topics at a three-day conference held in late August at Victoria University.
The Asia-Pacific International Telecommunications Society Regional Conference was hosted by the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a number of keynote speakers were imported from around the globe.
At times discussion on Universal Access strayed into questioning the Government's direction with Fibre, which was perhaps inevitable. There was discussion of the relevance of universal access concepts to broadband, access vs. use, impact on economic growth, social justifications, potential network effects, urban vs. rural expectations, "rights" to broadband, mobile capability upgradeability, and price discrimination.
The presentations were quite polarised between those doing projects and an academic economist viewpoint, and it was difficult to see a consensus on the issue arising.
The Net Neutrality debate managed to deal with the "it's just American politics" approach and also the "everyone should be treated equal" approach, with the issues being considered regardless of the nomenclature. Thus the question posed "If there is discrimination or non-neutrality, is this a problem?"
The issue of net neutrality typically relates to the potential for ISPs and content providers to strike deals that would advantage the delivery of the traffic supplied by a content provider, at the expense of the consumer or at the expense of the overall value to society. It was generally concluded that New Zealand has been protected to some degree by usage-based charging from ISPs and that industry specific regulation is not preferred.
Questions were therefore raised about the capability of existing competition law to deal with any issues that arise. It may be that New Zealand law needs reviewing.
Further attention may need to be paid to the many layers of the Internet and opportunity for neutrality issues to arise at other layers, particularly as video volumes develop. This is another reason to rely on more generic competition law rather than have ongoing regulatory issues arise.