QoS for Fixed and Mobile Ultra-Broadband

8Network Neutrality

Network neutrality is directly related to the appearance of the Internet. It has played a consistent part since the beginning of the modern Internet, which started with the privatization of the network around 1995. The main idea of independent applications running over unified networking based on the IP in the middle of the protocol hourglass has made the Internet a success and Internet technologies have become a unified packet‐switching technology on the global telecom/ICT scene [1]. The independence of applications and services from network providers (generally speaking) and from national regulations has created possibilities for innovative services and applications globally without requirements for a consensus about them among standards developing organizations, researchers, or policy makers. That has allowed the number of services and applications in the telecom/ICT world to increase exponentially, including some standardized and some proprietary ones. But all of them are created for the benefit of the end‐users as the customers of service providers that offer such services, noted as over‐the‐top services in previous chapters of this book. The same relates to the contents that are transferred by various OTT services and applications. This is regarded as network neutrality of the Internet (as a global network) to all services and applications running over it, including those that exist now and future “killer” services.

8.1 Introduction to Network Neutrality ...