Web companies join forces to guard net neutrality

Internet companies including NHN Corp. and Google Inc. joined forces on Monday to safeguard free and equal access to content and applications on the Internet, while mobile carriers voiced opposition against the move, citing the explosion of data traffic and growing costs of broadband investments. Clashing views over the network emerged during a conference in Seoul held earlier in the day, as officials in the Internet industry spoke in favor of the network neutrality, while telecom companies expressed worries over the consequences that net neutrality can bring about. With the widening adoption of mobile computing devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, as well as the fledgling smart TV industry, which hiked the data traffic by sending multimedia contents over the broadband network, the debate over the net neutrality is poised to remain a controversial issue in the Internet and telecom industry for a while. "Net neutrality is one of the fundamental concepts of Internet ecosystem," said Chon Kil-nam, a professor who teaches at both Japan's Keio University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Chon argued that it should be users, not government or mobile carriers, who choose what to access on the Internet. An official from Google, a strong proponent of the neutral network, echoed Chon's view saying that the open Web benefits broadband network operators as it creates a healthy cycle of innovation and improved service with rich contents. This he claimed can attract more users and more broadband subscribers. "Maintaining openness in the Internet is not a zero sum game. All players win," said Ross LaJeunesse who serves as Google's head of public policy and government affairs in Asia Pacific region. Web companies that make profit by offering online services, such as Web search engine operators and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), recently launched an alliance for the open Internet in South Korea to better coordinate their efforts to protect net neutrality against telecom companies. Telecom companies, however, argued that as they bear the brunt of the spike in data traffic with the emergence of smart TV and tablet PCs in the mass market, keeping the net neutrality has become difficult. Telecom companies and broadband network operators have argued for applying different pricing schemes based on the amount of data users consume and giving preferential treatment to certain types of Web services to tackle the meteoric growth of data. "It is getting unfair to charge the flat-rate, capacity-based Internet fees to consumers regardless of their actual usage volume," said Kim Hee-su, vice president at KT Corp., South Korea's dominant fixed-line operator. "Since the traffic volume is concentrated on a small number of users, the suggested volume-based pricing can be designed in such a way that the majority of Internet users are virtually not affected. And, this economic solution is basically neutral in the treatment of data packets."