International Internet Charging Regimes... Draft NZ Government po sition (comments sought)
To all NZNOG subscribers & ISOCNZ members:
This is pretty long so if you or, more particularly, your organisation have
no interest at all in international Internet connection costs please pass
by.
Last year I circulated some information to NZNOG about an APEC TEL study on
Internet costs, especially the costs of connection across the Pacific (the
concern being that non-US Internet users and ISPs are subsidising US users
and ISPs). This is stated to be because, unlike telephone charging, where
the costs are taken up by the teleco whose subscriber originates the call,
non-US ISPs have to rent circuits and thus pay for all traffic irrespective
of origin.
The study is now known as ICAIS (for: International Charging Arrangements
for Internet Services). An interim report has been prepared for the ICAIS
Task Force. The report concludes inter alia that about 90% of the costs of
Internet connection for Pacific Rim countries is due to the local loop,
about 7% is national backbone and a mere 3% is due to international link
costs (however the consultants who wrote the report consider this is still
considered sufficient to justify further work).
The Task Force is now preparing a report for the APEC TEL Ministerial
meeting which is scheduled for May. It would be fair to say that there is
much disagreement between US and Canada on the one hand and just about
everyone else on the other. Having set the ball in motion, Singapore has
been happy to let the Australian's carry the torch for reform and Japan, the
China and Chinese Taipei, Korea have all agreed with their position.
The two positions can be briefly summarised as: the reformers claim that
Internet development is being held back unfairly because everyone else
subsidises the US costs of connectivity. The opposing viewpoint (and one
that I personally hold to) is that there is no evidence of slow take up in
NZ and Australia (both are in the top 10 countries in terms of Internet use,
along with similarly 'disadvantaged' nations such as Finland, Sweden etc).
Most of the rest of the OECD group come well behind but, of course, well
ahead of the 2nd and 3rd world. Slow take up in Asia is due to other
factors, especially local connection costs and heavily regulated markets.
***************
The issue I want to raise here is: does the NZ Internet/ISP industry
perceive there to be a problem over this issue? I have asked this question
on the NZNOG list at least twice before and received essentially no
feedback. I have taken this to mean that there is not an issue for NZ
generally, and the ISPs in particular.
**************
For this reason, NZ has not advanced any particular position within the APEC
TEL but tends to side with the US and Canada. Our position is quite
different from that of Australia on this issue (although I cannot see how
they can seriously argue evidence of market failure in their case).
The brief paper below sets out a draft NZ statement for the Ministerial
meeting. I would be interested in any feedback at all (needs to be within a
few days, say Friday 14 April). We intend to snail mail a paper version to
CEOs of ISPs and other organisations but quick comment from the more
technical community would be helpful before we undertake that task. I would
emphasise that the NZ position is far from fixed at this point and no
statement has yet been made internationally.
It may be helpful to quote para 5.1.2 from the draft report as we think this
fully encompasses the NZ position (there is a reference to this statement in
para 6 below.)
Hello Frank:
The study is now known as ICAIS (for: International Charging Arrangements for Internet Services). An interim report has been prepared for the ICAIS Task Force. The report concludes inter alia that about 90% of the costs of Internet connection for Pacific Rim countries is due to the local loop, about 7% is national backbone and a mere 3% is due to international link costs (however the consultants who wrote the report consider this is still considered sufficient to justify further work).
I haven't seen the report, and I'm surprised that the local loop part of the cost is so high. Still, the ICAIS consultants have presumably arrived at this figure by talking to ISP in various of the 'member economies,' so I guess we (and ICAIS) have to work with it. In which case, I agree with you that there seems little point in governments trying to interfere. Concerning your para 10 and 11:
10 The impact of Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) needs to be taken into account. At this stage of technical development and with the declining relevance of ITU SG3 recommendations on international telecommunications traffic (accounting rates), we would not want to see any arrangements that imposed unjustified compliance costs or that endeavoured to mandate negotiations that would subject Internet traffic to similar costing regimes as voice telephony (for these reasons, New Zealand has not supported active ITU-T involvement in Internet charging arrangements either).
This is very important. We certainly don't want governments imposing a regime which would force ISPs to do PTT-style charging for voice calls over the Internet - that would severely limit the development of voice, video, multimedia, etc. technologies over the Internet.
11 The task group must avoid any outcomes where the cost of measurement or monitoring exceeds the cost/value involved. Unlike telephony, the Internet is not measurable in terms of traffic flows: the flows themselves do not indicate where the value of traffic lies, even if you could measure it.
I strongly disagree with the throw-away line "even if you could measure the traffic flows." There are many ISPs world-wide who DO measure traffic flows - using technology such as Cisco's NetFlow, or NeTraMet/NetFlowMet - and there IS a proposed Internet Standard for it (RFC 2720). You should delete that last phrase, particularly since you've already made the point about the cost of measurement being significant. Having said that, I agree that the value of the Internet isn't measurable just in terms of traffic flows - but that's a subjective, value-laden statement, which makes it harder to defend. Maybe you could add an example or two to make the point more strongly? Along the lines "the Internet allows much more varied styles of remote interaction than voice telephony, which greatly ehnaces the abilitiy for groups of people to work together despite being located in different economies" ??? Cheers, Nevil ------------------------------------------------------------- Nevil Brownlee Visiting Researcher Phone: (858) 822 0893 CAIDA, San Diego --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
On Tue, Apr 11, 2000 at 11:50:02AM -0700, Nevil Brownlee wrote:
11 The task group must avoid any outcomes where the cost of measurement or monitoring exceeds the cost/value involved. Unlike telephony, the Internet is not measurable in terms of traffic flows: the flows themselves do not indicate where the value of traffic lies, even if you could measure it.
I strongly disagree with the throw-away line "even if you could measure the traffic flows." There are many ISPs world-wide who DO measure traffic flows - using technology such as Cisco's NetFlow, or NeTraMet/NetFlowMet - and there IS a proposed Internet Standard for it (RFC 2720). You should delete that last phrase, particularly since you've already made the point about the cost of measurement being significant.
I didn't read the original comment as meaning that it was not possible to gather statistics from network traffic -- the point, I think, is that once you have those statistics, it's not obvious how to attribute value to them (I thought the "it" referred to the "value", not the "traffic"). A charging scheme that attributed value to volume of traffic, for example, would place all the value in the content consumer - content supplier relationship with the content supplier (since there would be a nett traffic volume inbalance in the direction supplier -> consumer). A charging scheme that attributed value to the direction a request was made (in an attempt to produce an analogue with the PSTN, for example) might place more value on the content consumer. Any such scheme ignores the symbiotic nature of the relationship between consumer and supplier, and leaves itself open to arbitrage, to the detriment of the industry as a whole. After all, who would _want_ to interconnect with a web farm that provided no client access, if the basis of interconnect was payment for nett bytes transferred? The number of services running across the PSTN is nice and contained, so that once you have a way of attributing value to a small number of services (local, toll, 0800, 0900, operator services, etc) it is relatively straightforward to make an agreement on interconnect. By comparison, on the Internet subscribers of the network are free to invent their own services without the interconnecting networks knowing anything about them. Hence any simplistic (and non-zero-settlement) charging regime imposed by network operators and based on aggregate traffic measurement is doomed to failure -- _that's_ what I thought the paragraph was referring to. Joe --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
Hello Joe:
I didn't read the original comment as meaning that it was not possible to gather statistics from network traffic -- the point, I think, is that once you have those statistics, it's not obvious how to attribute value to them (I thought the "it" referred to the "value", not the "traffic").
Fair enough. Seems to me you've provided more detail on what 'measuring the value' actually means - as I said earlier, more detail and/or some examples would help make the point more forcefully :-) Cheers, Nevil ------------------------------------------------------------- Nevil Brownlee Visiting Researcher Phone: (858) 822 0893 CAIDA, San Diego --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
I didn't read the original comment as meaning that it was not possible to gather statistics from network traffic -- the point, I think, is that once you have those statistics, it's not obvious how to attribute value to them (I thought the "it" referred to the "value", not the "traffic").
A charging scheme that attributed value to volume of traffic, for example, would place all the value in the content consumer - content supplier relationship with the content supplier (since there would be a nett traffic volume inbalance in the direction supplier -> consumer). [...]
hang on Joe - its a bit more complex than that - part of the underlying shift in the Internet world as opposed to the telephony world is the move from a tariff regime where one party is charged the entire end-to-end costs of the transaction to a world where both ends of a network 'transaction' bear part of the costs of the carriage of data across the intermediary transit networks. Rather than massively cut and paste it may be easier to point you to an article about peering and interconnection which explores these issues of bilateral partial path funding and its impact on inter-provider arrangements within the Internet. You'll find it at: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/759/ipj_2-1/ipj_2-1_ps1.html and (part 2) http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/759/ipj_2-2/ipj_2-2_ps1.html Geoff --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
On Wed, Apr 12, 2000 at 09:24:13AM +1000, Geoff Huston wrote:
hang on Joe - its a bit more complex than that
[...]
Rather than massively cut and paste it may be easier to point you to an article about peering and interconnection which explores these issues of bilateral partial path funding and its impact on inter-provider arrangements within the Internet. You'll find it at:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/759/ipj_2-1/ipj_2-1_ps1.html
I wouldn't pay any attention to that article, Geoff; the author is a known reprobate whose outlandish opinions on peering are well-known :) Joe --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
On Tue, Apr 11, 2000 at 18:33 +1200, Frank March wrote:
Last year I circulated some information to NZNOG about an APEC TEL study on Internet costs, especially the costs of connection across the Pacific (the concern being that non-US Internet users and ISPs are subsidising US users and ISPs). This is stated to be because, unlike telephone charging, where the costs are taken up by the teleco whose subscriber originates the call, non-US ISPs have to rent circuits and thus pay for all traffic irrespective of origin.
My gut feel is the concept is wrong. I haven't thought it all through, but some bullet points: 1. Asymmetric traffic Say we get an agreement a la the old toll refiling arrangements from the antedeluvian ITU days, the asymmetry of the traffic would surely mean non-US connectors would still pay the lions share? Or was it intended to be flat 50% each? 2. At What Level Does This Stop What about a client of an ISP that serves and browses, will ISP's pay me if I serve more than I browse? 3. 3% 'nuff said? 4. What Is The Problem? Uptake has not been slow in some countries under the current regime, as noted by Frank, perhaps it's just easier for some ETLA quango to point at the big nasty imperialist Yankee as the culprit and whine for subsidy. 5. What Subsidy? When I pay for my connection to an ISP, am I subsidising, or am I paying for a service? 6. Beware Interconnect As our own little imbroglio illustrates, interconnect is a dangerous weapon to wield. They are not well developed arguments, but I think there is a rather abstract conceptual approach being taken to give a veneer of authority to what is essentially some countries whining that there sluggishness is not their fault, when I would suggest, the 90% attribution to local access is no-brainer issue to address, and it can be locally without recourse to expensive international quango's. Hamish. -- You may not be able to change the whole world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. -- Katha Pollitt --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog
participants (5)
-
Frank March -
Geoff Huston -
Hamish MacEwan -
Joe Abley -
Nevil Brownlee