 I've just enjoyed moderating a session on from circuits to packets, looking at how the quality of voice can be maintained in the future as we move away from the world of TDM circuits to all IP networks. I started off by talking about some of the problems that people are experiencing. Because when we move to packets, it isn't a free ride. When we share these resources, there's a kind of statistical vibration that happens in the networks. And that upsets the voice quality. And if there's too much of it, then the phone calls don't work. So I looked at some examples, like in fixed networks and unified communications and LTE, some of the quality and cost issues that we face. Then we looked at some of the issues for the regulator. So the problem the regulator faces is in looking at these whole supply chains for assuring voice quality, is how do they maintain a floor for that quality and therefore maintain a price? And the incentives for people all along that supply chain to deliver phone calls that work really well, and also to expand that market beyond just traditional standard quality phone calls to high quality phone calls or to video conference calls. The third thing we looked at was new possible commercial and technical structures for the market. If you want to create incentives for people to maintain the quality, then the old ways in which we built things around circuits may not be appropriate. In the circuit world, we charge everything based on minutes, because that was the thing that was scarce, was moving the media around from A to B. In the future, the things that might be scarce are rather different. It could be, how much trust do we have in particular suppliers? And is a particular identity one that we can have faith in? So the money might start to shift, and therefore the regulatory structures need to shift. We talked a little bit about a possible new way of thinking about the market. Maybe we ought to have some quality thresholds that regulators impose, so that if you want to use a number, you have to meet some minimum requirement. And if you don't meet a certain level, there's a tax you have to pay for not meeting that requirement. But if you get above that level, then there are certain benefits you get from the regulatory system. And in this way, we can create a system that serves the need to expand the market and also help to lower the cost of these services, too, so that they can reach a much, much wider audience. So how does network neutrality fit into maintaining good quality for voice and other applications and services? Well, if you want to create a supply chain for voice or any other service like video, you want to create incentives for the supplier to be able to deliver a good quality service that has to then cascade all the way down that supply chain. At the end of that supply chain, you have a retail ISP delivering to the end user. And what you need is a market for quality, a price set for quality, where they can buy the right quality to deliver the service they need to the user. If they want to deliver unassured services to the user, that's one price. If they want to buy assurance, though, they should be able to buy it. And depending on the quality level, there'll be different prices. That could be a high price for good quality, but equally, it could be a much lower price for letting your traffic be time delayed and having a low quality.