OREANDA-NEWS. June 07, 2011. FAS Russia held a meeting of its Expert Council on Communications regarding network neutrality.

Opening the meeting, the Chairman of the FAS Russia’s Expert Council, Deputy Head of FAS Russia Anatoly Golomolzin said that in the past two years in the Russian Federation, like in other countries throughout the world, the traffic structure has distinctly changed with considerable increase of the volume of the so-called peer-to-peer traffic – the traffic in the networks, where each node can simultaneously act as a receiver as well as a sender. The most popular peer-to-peer network is Torrent, services like Skype, which download extra-large volumes of multimedia files. Expanding the scope, range and quality of services undoubtedly benefit consumers and create necessary conditions for innovations.

At the same time, changing the traffic nature, not just from a particular node but in various directions, creates certain problems for data transmission channels of Russian providers, both fixed and wireless. If a group of consumers gains new possibilities it can result in deteriorating the quality of data transmission (speed) for other consumers, and for providers it can increase the risk of breaching the conditions of the contracts for providing communications services in the part of the asserted service quality.

The Expert Council heard reports of an Assistant to a member of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Ye. Voinikainis; and Skype European Director for Government and Regulatory Affairs, Jean-Jacques Sahel. The reports caused considerable interest, raising numerous questions from members of the Expert Council and invited participants, followed by a keen discussion. The Expert Council discussed practice of resolving the issues related to network neutrality and various regulatory models adopted or being discussed in Europe, America and Southeast Asia.

The Expert Council pointed out that the law of the Russian Federation establishes the fundamental principles of network neutrality: transparency of providing services, informing users and providing public services to all users at equal conditions. At the same time, industry regulations formalize principles that are contrary to the basic norms of network neutrality: determining the traffic transmission procedures, establishing different approaches to regulating data transfer services depending on the type of transmitted data (voice and other type of information). Therefore, to implement the network neutrality principles it is necessary to ensure technological neutrality of industry regulation.

Anatoly Golomolzin said that FAS Russia’s practice of investigating antimonopoly cases shows that providers often exercise traffic to gain unjustified competitive advantages rather than to achieve technological goals, to ensure security or integrity of communications networks. Such cases relate to interaction of providers of cellular and fixed communications and restrictions of competition on the market of Internet access services.

Summing up the discussions, Anatoly Golomolzin formulated a common point of view as to how important it is to discuss the issues of network neutrality. A decision was made to form a Working Group comprising members of the Expert Council and interested persons and experts in the field.

The objectives of the Working Group:

- Ensure continuous monitoring of the issues of network neutrality;

- Prepare a review on network neutrality;

- Prepare recommendations to implement basic principles of network neutrality in the Russian Federation.

The first meeting of the Working Group will focus on preparing a review on the problems of network neutrality. Along with the materials submitted by the presenters to the Expert Council on Communications, the Working Group will discuss the conclusions on the issue made at a meeting by the Competition Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is scheduled to take place in summer 2011. The Working Group will also discuss the first findings obtained as a result of the monitoring.

Recommendations regarding implementation of the basic principles of network neutrality in the Russian Federation must be prepared no later than in six months. It is planned that the issue will be discussed at a joint meeting of two FAS Russia’s Expert Councils: on communications and on information technologies.

Reference:

There are several definitions of network neutrality. In general, network neutrality means that users have access to all services that can be provided through Internet, without differentiating according to the types, volume and origin of traffic, and without discrimination.