November 30, 2010 03:42 AM UTC

Broomfield's Level 3--Net Neutrality Guinea Pig?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the New York Times’ media blog reports this afternoon, Broomfield-based network provider Level 3 Communications’ conflict with cable TV giant Comcast could be the start of a new showdown over “net neutrality”–the issue of whether all data transmitted across the internet is created equal, or whether providers can prioritize some traffic over other traffic. In this case, Comcast appears to be forcing the issue even further: can they entirely shut down, not just throttle, traffic on their network for competitive reasons?

Level 3 Communications, an Internet networking company that recently signed a deal to deliver movies to Netflix customers, said Monday that Comcast has effectively set up a tollbooth around its broadband Internet network.

Comcast demanded a “recurring fee” from Level 3 “to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content,” Thomas Stortz, the chief legal officer for Level 3, said in a statement Monday afternoon, seemingly alluding to the Netflix service. The action “threatens the open Internet,” Mr. Stortz added…

Mr. Stortz said in the statement: “Level 3 believes Comcast’s current position violates the spirit and letter of the FCC’s proposed Internet Policy principles and other regulations and statutes, as well as Comcast’s previous public statements about favoring an open Internet. While the network neutrality debate in Washington has focused on what actions a broadband access provider might take to filter, prioritize or manage content requested by its subscribers, Comcast’s decision goes well beyond this. With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast’s subscribers at all, unless Comcast’s unilaterally-determined toll is paid – even though Comcast’s subscribers requested the content. With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a ‘closed’ Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content.”

Level 3 said it would be approaching government regulators and “asking them to take quick action to ensure that a fair, open and innovative Internet does not become a closed network controlled by a few institutions with dominant market power that have the means, motive and opportunity to economically discriminate between favored and disfavored content.”

It should be very easy, as we’ve said before, to understand why this kind of thing makes anybody who runs just about any website (or anybody who even uses the internet) rather nervous. Obviously there are specific competitive issues in play here, but there’s also a bigger question: should equal access to internet data be a right of consumers, or should money–or favor, or whatever–be allowed to dictate that?

We’ll shut up and let you discuss, lest we give anyone any ideas.

(And all you Colorado elected officials out there…we’ll be paying very close attention to how you respond to this issue.)