Talk Abstract: The FCC's classification of broadband Internet access services as Title I information services rather than Title II telecommunications services under the Communications Act of 1934 has created shadow common carriers for the provision of broadband services, which is a state of affairs that continues under the FCC's network neutrality order in Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices (2010). Our nation needs to confront, as with the financial industry, the consequences of deregulatory policies that create shadow industries. Negative consequences include not only discrete instances of harm to specific individuals as to specific transactions, but also creates systemic risks for large-scale impacts on the nation's communications infrastructure and with spillover effects to other societal systems such as the nation's political system.

My presentation will emphasize how mischaracterizations (whether intentional or not) of key legal terms and concepts, such as common carriers and public utilities, have contributed to the development of the regulatory distinctions between broadband and narrowband telecommunications in the U.S. Such development has not transpired in Canada, notwithstanding its shared English common law history with the U.S. Proper understanding of these terms -- their underlying policy purposes and functions -- reveals the irrelevance of market structure in determining whether entities should bear legal classification as a common carrier and/or public utility. In other words, some properly understood legal terms eliminates the need to debate the meaning of some other terms (such as market power) for certain regulatory purposes.

Interested in Discussing: I am most interested in (i) market power, (ii) acceptable practices for data-gathering, and secondarily, (iii) interconnection, and (iv) regulatory distinctions.

Talk Abstract: Within policy debates about net neutrality and network management, what constitutes discriminatory network management and whether such management is reasonable have been central concerns. Whether network management techniques are "application-specific" -- that is, whether they treat traffic associated with certain applications differently from others -- is one criterion that the FCC and others have used to determine whether the techniques are unreasonable. While some network management techniques are easy to classify as application-specific (and detect using existing detection or measurement tools), others are more difficult to classify as application-specific and/or reasonable and more difficult to detect. This talk will provide examples of specific practices that demonstrate these ambiguities in existing conceptions of "application-specific" and "reasonable" network management.

Talk Abstract: Not available

Talk Abstract: Receiving authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network ("PSTN") will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers and also jeopardize longstanding legislative and regulatory goals seeking ubiquitous, affordable and fully interconnected networks. Even if incumbent carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities, they will benefit from substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide whether and where to provide service. On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will likely lose in the deregulatory process. Legislators and policy makers also may have underestimated the impact of no longer having the ability to impose common carrier mandates that require carriers to interconnect so that end users have complete access to network services regardless of location.

This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from prospective decisions by National Regulatory Authorities ("NRAs"), such as the United States Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"), to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services. The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, private carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol ("VoIP"), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks. The paper will examine three recent carrier interconnection issues with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace will create incentives for carriers to interconnect networks so that consumers will have ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement and other broadband services.

The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or promote universal service public policy goals. Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox, Cablevision and Google point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with at least temporary blockages to desired content and services by some consumers.

Interested in Discussing: Private, non-common carriers and their increasing role in ICT as largely unregulated networks having no duty to interconnect, pursue universal service objectives, offer postalized rates, etc.

Talk Abstract: After hearing for many years how the Internet's interconnection structure was in some way "broken," I'd like to examine if today's Internet interconnection structure is a relatively typical and relatively ordinary open market at work.

Talk Abstract: Convergence is rendering infeasible silo regulation of telephone, cell phone, cable television, and the Internet. Convergence is also stretching the reliance of current regulatory models on the concepts of Telecommunications Services and Information Services. In this short talk, I will start a discussion on how layering can provide a basis for regulation in an Everything-over-IP world. I will illustrate how layering can provide guidance as to how to ensure an Open Internet, how to provide universal service, how to regulate wireless networks, and how to treat over-the-top video service providers.

Interested in Discussing: Interconnections, Defining Market Power, Regulatory Distinctions

Talk Abstract: Mobile BB is driving the convergence of wireless and fixed BB services, inducing symbiotic changes to both and posing novel metrics challenges for policymakers. The answer to the question of whether mobile and fixed BB services are complements or substitutes, is that they are likely both -- depending on the context. Highlighting the range of interactions between mobile and fixed BB illustrates the range of challenges that confront policymakers with respect to issues such as measuring quality-of-service, targeting USF subsidies, managing the regulation of last-mile infrastructures, and spectrum reform.

Interested in Discussing: Defining Broadband

Talk Abstract: Not available

Talk Abstract: We present CAIDA's AS-rank project, a macroscopic ranking of ASes based on a measure of their influence in the global routing system by inferred customer cone size. The customer cone represents the fraction of ASes in the Internet that an AS can reach and be paid for transiting traffic to and from. Constructing the customer cone requires a reliable set of business relationship inferences.

This talk presents our methodology for inferring business relationships from public BGP data, our validation efforts for the relationship inferences that have been aided immensely by operator feedback, and our methodology for inferring the customer cone of each AS. We present analyses of the rankings of ASes over time.

Talk Abstract: The metrics used to assess backbone network market power may not be as relevant for access networks. A metric designed to assess access network market power should consider both the access variance, defined as the diversity of feasible paths into the access network, and the access network's market relevance.

Content delivery networks (CDNs) may provide some visibility into an access network's access variance. For example, a CDN will typically distribute requests from an access network's end users across multiple deployments depending on factors such as performance and cost. While some of these deployments may be located within the access network, other deployments may be in upstream networks that have interconnection agreements with the access network. This access variance could help ascertain the diversity of access methods other than establishing an interconnection agreement directly with the access network. This presentation will introduce the concept of access variance and facilitate a discussion on assessing the viability of potential paths.

Talk Abstract: This talk reviews empirical evidences on how Internet Service Providers compete in the United States. The author presents preliminary results of a work-in- progress market structure analysis done by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. The analysis uses performance data from the FCC's SamKnows project, along with information from the National Broadband Map and US Census, to examine empirically the relationship between broadband Internet market structure and product quality. Early results suggest that there is a systematic relationship between broadband quality and the number of firms in the market. The presentation also raises the importance of using a more complex definition of quality that goes beyond just considering data rates.

Talk Abstract: It appears that communication technologies, from snail mail to the Internet, can be characterized according to their performance in just a few dimensions, such as latency and reach. This may be of assistance in thinking in a unified way about communications.

A logarithmic measure of the value of communication is also proposed, which also helps explain some of the observed paradoxes.

Talk Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of what parameters can be used to define BB quality based on real user feedback and subjective testing. We provide an overview of a large scale measurement platform and how the data collected can be linked to QoE. We show how network operations can be driven by user QoE indexes.

Interested in Discussing: Defining BB, Interconnection, Regulatory distinction and Acceptable Practices for Data-gathering

Interested in Discussing: Data gathering practices, Measurement/verification