AK. A. TAIPALE of the Center for Advanced Studies iIn Science and Technology Policy has published a paper which explores the subject of the neutrality of the Internet and the implication of this for US national disaster recovery and emergency planning.

Introduction (verbatim):
As telecommunications reform legislation winds its way through the Congress, "net neutrality" has emerged as the latest beltway buzzword and the subject of a contentious lobbying war between large internet content providers such as Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo, and Amazon on one side and the major broadband service providers like ATT, Bell South, Qwest, and Verizon on the other over who is going to bear the cost of distributing bandwidth-intensive content and how best to encourage innovation and required investment in new higher-speed broadband networks.

The content providers favor imposing net neutrality regulations on telecommunications providers that would prohibit carriers from charging content services higher fees in return for speedier delivery or guaranteed through-put and would mandate that no content could be prioritized over another. While that sounds great in theory, there's a downside to enforced net neutrality - skewed incentives and no capability to prioritize critical services in times of national emergency.

Read the paper at http://cas-research-brief-0614.info/

•Date: 27th June 2006• Region: US •Type: Article •Topic: Emergency planning
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