GENEVA–26 February 2010–The Internet Society this week submitted a paper on “Open Inter-networking” to a Net Neutrality expert group convened by French Minister of Internet Economy, Nathalie Kosciusko MorizetI. The paper proposes a set of policy considerations derived from the need to preserve access, choice, and transparency as key to ensuring the Internet remains a platform for innovation and economic development.

The modern Internet features increasing complexity of uses and demand for bandwidth. The Internet Society believes that openness is the overarching principle that has ensured the success and growth of the Internet to date. Internet standards, development, and governance are open to all to participate, contribute, create, shape, and build. This openness is reflected in key characteristics of the Internet, including:

• Shared global ownership – no central control
• Open technical standards
• Collaborative engagement models – researchers, business, civil society, government
• Freely accessible processes for technology and policy development
• Transparent and collaborative governance

Policy and regulatory approaches should take into account the overarching principle of openness, as well as the enabling characteristics of access, choice, and transparency. In practical terms, this means encouraging:

• Effective competition at the network and services level;
• A diversity of competitive service offerings that are transparent and enable the user to make an informed choice of provider and level of service;
• Unimpeded access to a diversity of services, applications, and content offered on a non-discriminatory basis;
• Comprehensible and readily-available information as to service limitations, network and traffic restrictions that the subscriber is subject to, and;
• Reasonable network management that is neither anti-competitive nor prejudicial.

The complete “Open Inter-networking: Getting the fundamentals right: access, choice, and transparency” paper is available at:

English:
http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/usercentricity/20100222-Inter-Networking.pdf

French:
http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/usercentricity/20100222-Inter-Networking-fr.pdf