Is Net Neutrality Possible?

It has been quite some time since the typical service provider executive has had confidence about the stability of rules governing the communications business. To greater or lesser degrees, there has been some element of regulatory instability and uncertainty since the mid-1990s, to go along with heightened market uncertainty.

Investors and executives do not like uncertainty. Yet greater uncertainty is likely what the industry now faces as the Federal Communications Commission ponders new rules about network neutrality, wireless competition and national broadband policy.

The latest reason for heightened uncertainty is the fundamental nature of questions inevitably raised by some of the regulatory discussions and rule makings, and the time it will take to sort out the application of the rules.

How does regulation separate "common carrier" obligations carriers may have from content rights they may have as providers of their own information and content services?

What does "common carriage" mean in an Internet era, for Internet-delivered services that might not work reliably and consistently in a strict "best effort" delivery mode?

What scope exists for "private IP" services provided to consumer users, much as business users have the right to buy "private IP" services that allow prioritization of packets?

How can regulation provide fair and equitable treatment of like services when the fundamental regulatory frameworks apply to different providers?

How does the framework handle instances where a "service" or "application" provider also acts as a "carrier"? When it is impossible to prevent a single legal entity from acting simultaneously as an information provider and a service provider and an application provider and a carrier, how does regulation handle the contradictions between treatment of roles?

Above all, will the sum total of new rules create more freedom, or less? And when freedom for one actor conflicts with freedom for another, how will balance be maintained?

The answers ultimately will matter for reasons other than perhaps-abstract notions about extending or squashing freedom; protecting individuals and companies from the power of government. At a time when everybody agrees that continued robust investment in facilities is in the public and national interest, how will the new rules affect investment and innovation?

The issue is not so much whether the outcome is greater freedom for application providers--that certainly will happen no matter what the outcome--but whether facilities providers also have freedom to change their business models to take advantage of new freedoms.

Virtually all regulators assume that the proof of deregulatory success is that incumbents lose market share and revenue. Some financial pain, inflicted on incumbents,  therefore is the whole point of deregulation.

But there is some point beyond which the infliction of pain must stop, or wider disruption of core facilities is impaired.

A rational observer might argue that "level playing fields" have yet to be fully created.. The issue is when such a point will have been reached, and how we will know it.

Will Net Neutrality Affect Teleworkers?

New "net neutrality" rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission could affect teleworkers across the country, says Irwin Lazar, Nemertes Research VP.

If new rules strictly require Internet access providers to treat all traffic equally, which has a nice ring to it, it follows that it would also be unlawful to prioritize traffic, such as giving top priority to voice traffic or conferencing traffic at remote work sites.

That might have implications for the sorts of broadband access services organizations are able to buy for remote workers.

Enterprises and organizations might very well require the ability to prioritize voice and conferencing sessions, while assigning lower priority to Web surfing or entertainment video, for example.

That might mean it is not possible to buy standard broadband access services, and might require sourcing of private business class connections where such prioritization is possible. The ability to create virtual tunnels and virtual private networks might be required, and therefore might preclude buying of consumer broadband connections.

That could prove troublesome for teleworker support, as Nemertes Research now estimates that 86 percent of companies are planning to increase the number of teleworkers.

Proposed Net Neutrality rules may hinder their ability to utilize latency sensitive applications without purchasing a business-class service with performance guarantees. Uses of client-based optimization as well as desktop virtualization are likely to increase.

"Do not continue to assume that your employees will always have cheap access to high-speed residential services," says Lazar. "Develop contingency plans that include purchasing of business class services, use of optimization, and, or desktop virtualization to guarantee application performance."

UC Glass Half Full?

Unified communications can improve productivity, a survey by Orange Business suggests. The poll shows that 41 percent of the CIOs of large multinationals are considering unified communications. The other way of looking at matters is that 59 percent are not looking at it.

CIOs say UC features such as integrating mobile devices into the enterprises, implementing real-time identification through presence, instant messaging, and adding audio conferencing and desktop videoconferencing to work-flows enhance business efficiency.

Orange's report polled more than 600 CIOs from multinational corporations across various vertical industries. It revealed that most companies had to track and support seven different communications tools and applications.

This multitude of communications tools not only hampered an MNC's ability to collaborate internally, but it also delayed businesses processes and decision making.

While 95 of the CIOs polled said that new communications technologies have increased productivity, the amount of communications tools used within their respective companies slowed down internal communications.

Some 45 percent of CIOs indicated that multiple communication channels cause severe delays in colleague response time which can negatively impact business processes and productivity.

Customer service was seen as the primary UC beneficiary by 33 percent of respondents, while 28 percent thought sales benefitted most.

What is not clear is how much those respondents are willing to pay to acquire various capabilities, or how much enterprise workers will agree with CIO assessments.

Despite Hype, Enterprise Workers Cling to Voice, Email

It appears that many enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools are struggling to be adopted, at least n Europe, says Stewart Baines, on the Orange Business blog. He notes recent research by Forrester Research indicating social networks, blogs, wikis and virtual worlds are being shunned by workers as they continue to communicate by phone or email.

The survey of 3,000 European knowledge workers found that, while 99 percent of workers collaborate with others and 81 percent work with two or more people in different time zones or regions, current tools do not meet their needs.

Security and control of information once it has been distributed seem to be clear barriers. But it might be more than that. Respondents seem to think collaboration tools simply are not engaging enough. About 44 percent of respondents say they still are looking for more engaging ways to collaborate.

About half of information security professional recently polled by Webroot say they intend to shelve plans for collaboration as a result of security concerns.

The Webroot survey found just 25 percent of security professionals are prepared to move ahead in spite of security concerns and only 15 percent have already resolved their security issues. The remaining 10 percent have no plans for collaborative working.

At least to some extent, Web-based collaboration tools appear still to be at some stage of supplier hype rather than end user demand, complicated by unresolved security and governance issues, at least in European enterprises.

What's the Value of a "Click"?

The number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16 percent in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8 percent of the Internet user base) accounting for the vast majority (85 percent) of all clicks, say comScore.

You can draw your own conclusions about what that means. Some might argue that display advertising "doesn't work." Others would argue simply that clicks are not the right way to measure impact.

“The act of clicking on a display ad is experiencing rapid attrition in the current digital marketplace,” says Linda Anderson, comScore VP. “Today, marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad.

"That’s precisely the wrong thing to do, because other comScore research has shown that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact," says Anderson. "As a result, savvy marketers are moving to an evaluation of the impact that all ad impressions – whether clicked or not – have on consumer behavior, mirroring the manner in which traditional advertising has been measured for decades using reach and frequency metrics.”

The results underscore the notion that, for most display ad campaigns, the click-through is not the most appropriate metric for evaluating campaign performance, comScore says.

Rather, advertisers should consider evaluating campaigns based on their view-through impact. The company has conducted more than 200 client studies demonstrating that online display ads generate significant lift in brand site visitation, trademark search, and both online and offline sales among those Internet users who were exposed to the online ad campaigns – whether they clicked on the ad or not, says comScore.

“A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity," says Anderson.

“You want people to visit your website, seek more information, purchase a product, become a lead, keep your brand top of mind, learn something new, feel differently – the list goes on. Regardless of whether the consumer clicked on an ad or not, the key is to determine how that ad unit influenced them to think, feel or do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise,” says Starcom USA SVP/Director, Research & Analytics John Lowell.

Social Media is Made for Mobile

Social media is about conversations. Mobile phones are about conversations. Social networking is about conversations. So how much insight is required to figure out that social media and social networking are about mobiles?

Today, every major social network offers its users a range of mobile services, from mobile web access to downloadable mobile applications. Although consumers with high-end devices may be the primary users of these mobile services, some social networks also offer a number of SMS-driven features that allow consumers to stay engaged by text, even on low-end mobile phones.

According to Nielsen, more than three million Twitter users in the United States regularly access the service using their mobiles. Additionally, many consumers are frequently using Twitter though text messaging and a range of downloadable mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. In fact, those third party applications might represent as much as 80 percent of mobile Twitter use, suggesting there could be as many as 15 million U.S. mobile Twitter users.

According to Nielsen, about 15 percent of Facebook users (11 million) in the U.S. regularly access the social network's mobile web version, plus three million users who use text messaging for Facebook access. There also are third party apps for mobile Facebook use as well.

More than 4.6 million users use the mobile version of YouTube as well, Nielsen says.

Net Neutrality Not Good for Real-Time Services?

One of the unknowns at the moment is how any proposed Federal Communications Commission network neutrality rules might affect a service provider's ability to offer quality-assured services.

That's possibly important for any users or providers of real-time services (voice and video), since bandwidth alone is not a guarantee of quality experience.

Real-time services are highly sensitive to latency and delay. The issue then is whether consumers will have the option of buying services optimized for real-time services.

Think of this as an end-user opportunity to buy bandwidth services that are akin to the Akamai content delivery service currently available to businesses.