Technologies supporting Zero-Rating and local regulations
Abstract
ISPs and carriers, who operate the Internet, have to maintain the norm - privacy of communications, which is a superordinate concept of security or stability and guaranteed by the Constitution. On the other hand, content providers cooperate with telecommunication companies and give favorable treatment to specific applications aiming to improve their own services. This is known as Zero-rating problems and these days has been drawing attentions rapidly.
Some people critisize that Zero-rating easily gives advantages to existing and specific contents and eliminate competitions between existing and newly developed applications. So it is prohibited in some countries or areas.
By the way, as one of the technologies enabling Zero-rating, DPI is known, which investigates contents of packets. In the first place, what kind of activity is DPI? And is it allowed to do things like this to achieve Zero-rating, which involves the privacy of communications?
So far, for stable operation, self-defence and emergency evacuation can be treated as justifiable noncompliance with the law if it's in emergencies. And regular measures have been permitted if they have rationale for the purpose, necessity of the practice or reasonableness of the means.
In this session, we'd like to share DPI, a technology to support Zero-rating, and local reguration(discussed in the terms of privacy of communications in Japan). And we'd like to discuss what operators should think about if they deploy DPI to achieve Zero-rating or build a network which gives priority on connectivity for specific contents.
