A few weeks ago, American cable operator Comcast was questioned by regulator FCC about the management of its digital voice service and how it may put competing voice services running over Comcast’s network at a disadvantage. This has again sparked the net neutrality debate. We as a company offering traffic management gear are naturally interested in this matter. So should ISPs be allowed to offer a QoS-enhanced IP voice service?
Phone companies were, of course, allowed to offer Internet access service, so on what grounds should an ISP be kept from offering its own phone service? And an important part of offering an IP-based telephony service is to make sure customers get the voice quality they have come to expect over the last century from their phones. This requires some kind of quality of service (QoS) guarantee — that can simply and effectively be granted through a prioritization scheme for Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic.
VoIP prioritization should be allowed as long as other, competing VoIP services are not explicitly disadvantaged. What we have seen repeatedly at our customers’ traffic management installations is an across-the-board prioritization for all VoIP services, including all SIP, H.323, IAX and Skype. Particularly in regions where broadband still means 512 kbit/s, this has left many ISP customers very happy because they are now able to practically use these services for the first time.
So is this net-neutral? I don’t know. But this is not the important question here. Important is, that it enables new services and thus stimulates innovation. And this is what should drive legislators and regulators instead of an emotionally charged debate about net neutrality.
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