Quality of Service Monitoring: Performance Metrics Across Proprietary Content Domains

We propose a quality of service (QoS) monitoring program for broadband accessto measure the impact of proprietary network spaces. Our paper surveys otherQoS policy initiatives, including those in the airline, and wireless and wirelinetelephone industries, to situate broadband in the context of other marketsundergoing regulatory devolution. We illustrate how network architecture cancreate impediments to open communications, and how QoS monitoring candetect such effects. We present data from a field test of QoS-monitoring softwarenow in development. We suggest QoS metrics to gauge whether information"walled gardens" represent a real threat for dividing the Internet into proprietaryspaces.To demonstrate our proposal, we are placing our software on the computers of asample of broadband subscribers. The software periodically conducts a battery oftests that assess the quality of connections from the subscriber's computer tovarious content sites. Any systematic differences in connection quality betweenaffiliated and non-affiliated content sites would warrant research into thebehavioral implications of those differences. If, however, the data shows thatthere are no chronic biases in connection quality, then it would be fair toconclude that the walls on the garden are low enough not to be detrimental topublic communications.QoS monitoring is timely because the potential for the Internet to break into aloose network of proprietary content domains appears stronger than ever. Recentcourt rulings and policy statements suggest a growing trend towards relaxed scrutiny of mergers and the easing or elimination of content ownership rules.This policy environment could lead to a market with a small number of large,vertically integrated network operators, each pushing its proprietary content onsubscribers.The move towards proprietary space conflicts with the open philosophy onwhich the Internet was founded. That alone, however, is not a reason forregulators to intervene. Policy makers require empirical evidence thatproprietary barriers require a public response. Unfortunately, traditionalindicators of harm to consumers from industry mergers, like measures ofprogramming diversity on cable systems, are insufficient when Internetconnectivity becomes the norm for access networks.Conventional measures of diversity make little sense if all providers offer accessto the Internet. Any differences in information variety resulting from special,proprietary content would be swamped by the content of the Internet. Whatmatters more than a binary measure of availability are the quality and equality ofthe connection to diverse content providers over access networks.It is unlikely that an Internet access provider would completely block the contentof its competitors. Any provider wishing to steer subscribers away from nonaffiliatedcontent would be more likely to do so by delivering that content at aslightly lower quality compared to affiliated content. The degradation of qualityneed not be blatant to be effective--a differential of a few milliseconds betweenaffiliated and unaffiliated sites should suffice to condition users to abandon nonaffiliated,"slower" content sources. A QoS monitoring system would alertpolicymakers to the development of such scenarios.