[cooperation-wg] Berec network neutrality consultation - reminder

> This is a public consultation, so I’d suggest that if others who have
made submissions felt able to share them here, it would be useful to this
group’s discussion of the issue.

Great idea, M-Lab put in the below. We would have reached out a bit more in
anticipation of other signatures, but similarly, time constraints.

tldr; Measurement Lab predictably wants to make sure that measurement is a
part of any set of rules.

---

Re: Public Consultation on Draft BEREC Guidelines on Implementation of Net
Neutrality Rules


Dear Madam or Sir,

Measurement Lab (M-Lab) submits this letter in order to express its support
for the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC)
in its efforts to promote public transparency on broadband access in its
Guidelines on Implementation of Net Neutrality Rules, released 6 June 2016.
M-Lab is an international consortium of research, industry, and public
interest partners dedicated to providing an ecosystem for the open,
verifiable measurement of global Internet performance. Our experience as a
partner to national regulatory agencies (NRAs) around the world, including
in several European Union member states, has demonstrated that transparent
and reproducible measurement of broadband access is critical to ensuring a
healthy Internet that serves as an engine of innovation.

In Regulation (EU) 2015/2120, the European Parliament and the Council of
the European Union emphasize that transparency and monitoring of compliance
to the Net Neutrality Rules by member states constitutes a core component
of safeguarding open Internet access. The Parliament and Council
particularly focus on the essential role of measurement regimes provided by
national regulatory authorities in ensuring that Internet users are able to
effectively exercise their rights as consumers and make informed choices in
a competitive market. One aspect of the transparency requirement is
providing the public with mechanisms to monitor their own Internet access
and seek remedies for non-compliance. In its Draft Guidelines, BEREC
further positions these recommendations within its previous reports on
frameworks for monitoring network neutrality and the provision of Internet
access services. Rather than explicitly establishing rules for monitoring
mechanisms and their certification by NRAs, in its Draft Guidelines, BEREC
instead encourages the public availability of measurement tools at no cost
to the end-user, while reinforcing the best practices outlined under
previous BoR documents. Critically, these mechanisms include monitoring of
specialised services and discrimination of traffic based on application or
destination, in addition the basic comparisons between actual and
advertised speeds. M-Lab supports these initiatives and encourages their
extension in line with the European Union’s regulatory and development
mandates.

As BEREC demonstrates in its “Monitoring quality of Internet Access
Services in the Context of Net Neutrality,” and other BoR reports, in
practice performance measurement is a complex field of ongoing development
with continued research opportunities. In October 2014, Measurement Lab
released a report entitled “ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer
Internet Performance,” the product of a two-year collaborative effort using
our extensive measurement dataset to understand how interconnection
arrangements impact end-user access in the United States. Through
comparative analysis across the country, and amongst a diverse set of
Internet access providers, we were able to demonstrate significant
degradation in consumer broadband service over an extended period;
degradation associated with disputes related to the business relationships
between ISPs. This report, reinforced by subsequent M-Lab research, has
since contributed to a stronger public discourse on the role of the
business relationships at the core of the Internet, and has been cited in
regulatory filings by a breadth of parties. Commercial disputes between
network providers are not unique to the United States. European member
states individually have already intervened in interconnection issues
through regulatory reporting mechanisms and merger agreement conditions,
and BEREC acknowledged the need of regulators to consider interconnection
arrangements in its Draft Guidelines.

Performance measurements that provide data on the impact of congestion
between access ISPs and other network providers promises to be the most
thorough and scalable approach to interconnection transparency in the long
term. In its final Guidelines, BEREC should explicitly encourage national
regulators to include interconnection and other network segments in their
measurement initiatives. Such a recommendation would incentivize NRAs to
meaningfully increase their visibility into the diverse set of conditions
that could potentially affect accessibility, rather than rely on testing
mechanism that measure against a single location or infrastructure within
the networks of last-mile providers.

M-Lab is committed to being a strong partner in these monitoring
mechanisms. In the coming months, we will further increase our
infrastructure footprint to cover multiple transit networks in significant
interconnection locations and population centers across the European Union.
M-Lab’s presence in diverse networks and geographies will bolster the
ability of researchers and regulators to use our data to identify issues
specific to a given market, and monitor the continued development of
connectivity across and within Europe. Furthermore, M-Lab’s infrastructure
is provided through an open partnership program with network providers and
regulators. The promotion of interconnection measurement will increase
interest and participation in such initiatives, further supporting
transparency on broadband accessibility and the creation of rich
performance datasets.

M-Lab has partnered with academic institutions, private companies, and
civil society organizations around the world in order to provide
measurement tools in local languages and integrated in consumer
applications. One initiative, MeasurementKit, hosted in the Nexa Center for
Internet & Society at the Polytechnic University of Turin, builds on the
experiences of the network neutrality measurement tool Neubot.
MeasurementKit provides a library for device manufacturers and software
developers to integrate open measurements tools into deployed applications
and hardware. M-Lab has also developed consumer-facing tools, such as
browser extensions and web portals to provide easy measurements in the
browser and on mobile devices. One of these developments was recently cited
as the monitoring mechanism of the Authority for Consumers and Markets in
the Netherlands. Similar initiatives have been developed by NRAs themselves
in Europe, such as in Greece and Cyprus. Despite differing self-interest,
deployments and motivations, these efforts build toward a common dataset
and increase the amount of performance information provided by European
Internet users. All of these monitoring mechanisms and tools utilize the
Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), which as a result provides a perspective
into consumer connectivity that is directly comparable across member states
and against other competitive economies.

In order to ensure that the monitoring mechanisms offered by member states
provide critical resources to the public and regulators in order safeguard
the open Internet, the final Guidelines on Implementation of Net Neutrality
Rules should:

* promote the availability of easily-accessible, user-facing measurement
tools for analyzing Internet access performance and network neutrality on
mobile and wireline connections;
* encourage NRAs to adopt measurement mechanisms that provide openness and
comparability across member states, to avoid piecemeal implementation of
monitoring programs and in support regional analysis;
* include interconnection congestion and other sources of performance
degradation relevant to end-to-end accessibility of broadband Internet
users within monitoring mechanisms; and,
* support monitoring mechanisms that provide publicly-available datasets,
open-source software and open methodologies.

Measurement Lab currently provides NRAs and consumers with a rich set of
free and open tools to conduct independent assessments of broadband access
using objective methodologies and tested platforms. As a result of its
unique, collaborative model, M-Lab receives tens of thousands of
measurements from Internet users in European countries on a daily basis.
The Interconnection Study, and subsequent research, affirmed the strength
of this open and collaborative approach to Internet performance monitoring.
This research also proved that network management practices, traffic
discrimination and congestion can be independently measured by
third-parties and consumers, reducing opacity of such business
arrangements. While we anticipate that BEREC will continue to provide NRAs
with recommendations on monitoring framework beyond the implementation of
the Net Neutrality Rules, the Guidelines currently offer an opportunity to
further ensure rigorous measurement of broadband access through the
promotion of principles of openness and comparability. Measurement Lab
looks forward to supporting BEREC’s monitoring mechanisms and evaluation of
measurement tools, within the Guidelines and in anticipated further reports
on measurement.


Respectfully submitted,

Collin Anderson
Researcher, Measurement Lab


On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 5:59 AM, Chris Buckridge <chrisb at ripe.net> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> Thank you, Gordon, for this alert. We at the RIPE NCC have also been quite
> late to this process, but following discussions internally and with some
> community members over recent days, we have made the following submission
> on behalf of the RIPE NCC.
>
> The imminent deadline unfortunately made it impossible to share this with
> the Cooperation WG and obtain further comments ahead of submitting. And as
> it is a submission from the RIPE NCC, the scope of our comment is
> necessarily quite narrow - in short, please ensure that there is clear
> guidance from BEREC that nothing in the Regulation should be interpreted as
> hindering or restricting IPv6 deployment.
>
> This is a public consultation, so I’d suggest that if others who have made
> submissions felt able to share them here, it would be useful to this
> group’s discussion of the issue.
>
> Best regards,
> Chris
>
> ———
>
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > From: Chris Buckridge <chrisb at ripe.net>
> > Subject: RIPE NCC Submission on BEREC Guidelines on Net Neutrality Rules
> > Date: 18 July 2016 at 11:39:48 GMT+2
> > To: Serge Radovcic <sr at ripe.net>
> >
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > The RIPE NCC would like to submit the following comment and suggestion
> on the BEREC Guidelines on the Implementation by National Regulators of
> European Net Neutrality Rules.
> >
> > The deployment of IPv6 by European network operators has been identified
> as a priority for the European Commission and for many national regulatory
> authorities. It is therefore important that the European Net Neutrality
> Rules not be misinterpreted as hindering or discouraging network operators
> from deploying IPv6.
> >
> > The case of network operators running both IPv4 and IPv6 services is
> noted in Paragraph 16 of the current draft:
> >
> > 16. Where restrictions to reach end-points stem from the use of two
> different internet addressing schemes, IPv4 and IPv6, this typically does
> not mean the services cannot be defined as an IAS. While it is not possible
> to connect two different types of addresses without any translation
> function, BEREC considers that the term “virtually all end points” should,
> at present, not be interpreted as a requirement on ISPs to offer
> connectivity with both IPv4 and IPv6.
> >
> > The RIPE NCC would like to suggest that a final sentence be added to
> this paragraph, as follows:
> >
> > ***
> > However, we do not believe anything in this Regulation should discourage
> or restrict the practices or technologies used by operators to facilitate
> their deployment of IPv6.
> >
> > ***
> >
> > The RIPE NCC would be happy to provide further commentary or advice on
> this issue should it be useful.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Chris Buckridge
> > External Relations Manager
> > RIPE NCC
> >
> >
> >
> > About the RIPE NCC
> >
> > Founded in 1992, the RIPE NCC is a not-for-profit membership
> organisation. As one of the world’s five Regional Internet Registries
> (RIRs), it administers Internet number resources for more than 13,900
> members in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.
> >
> > As an RIR, the RIPE NCC is governed by policies developed by the RIPE
> community via open, transparent and bottom-up processes.
> >
> > The RIPE NCC also serves as secretariat for the RIPE community,
> providing neutral platforms for community interaction to develop Internet
> number policy and share experience and ideas.
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </ripe/mail/archives/cooperation-wg/attachments/20160718/ef7fe140/attachment.html>