March 15, 2006 4:00 AM PST
Debate heats up over Net neutrality
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Increasingly, it's also an issue on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers are developing rules to maintain so-called Net neutrality--also called network neutrality--and prevent the emergence of a tiered system.
At the Voice over the Net (VON) conference at the San Jose Convention Center on Tuesday, companies on both sides of the bandwidth aisle debated how much Net regulation is needed. But the broader discussion was what exactly Net neutrality means and whether legislators are discussing a solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist.
"I am hopelessly confused about Net neutrality," said Blair Levin, a managing director and regulatory analyst for Stifel, Nicolaus and Co., a financial research company. "I know what the Bells are saying, but it's unclear what they mean."
CEOs from network owners AT&T and Verizon Communications have made comments suggesting they plan to create a system where some companies would have to pay more for their data-intensive use of the Net, which, they argue, slows access for regular customers. But for the most part, details of those plans are still unclear.
On the other side of the debate are companies such as Google, eBay and Yahoo, which are against any companies taking on the role of "IP traffic gatekeeper." They support the idea of federal rules that would further restrict network owners from blocking or restricting traffic.
That idea doesn't sit well with cable companies and phone companies-?namely AT&T and Verizon Communications?-which argue that new regulations could have unintended consequences that would stifle innovation and hurt consumers in the long run. And while they do not support new legislation that has been introduced to protect Net neutrality, they have filed petitions with the Federal Communications Commission to loosen existing regulations to give them more flexibility in what they do with their own network infrastructure.
Cisco Systems, which supplies the phone companies with networking equipment, has joined its telecommunications customers in cautioning Congress about introducing new laws. Last week, Cisco CEO John Chambers wrote a letter to Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In short, Cisco's position is that no legislation is needed at this time and that phone companies should be allowed to experiment with different technologies within their networks to form new business models and alleviate network congestion.
Robert Pepper, senior managing director of technology policy for Cisco, attended VON and echoed Chambers' thoughts.
"We don't think that new regulation is needed on (Net) neutrality," Pepper said in an interview. "The FCC needs to use the existing policies to punish bad actors and bad actions. Additional regulation could end up hurting innovation rather than helping it."
Bandwidth hogs
The debate is heating up as new applications such as voice and video make their way onto the Internet. These features require a certain quality of service for them to work properly. Network owners argue that these services, which are often offered by other companies, eat up bandwidth.
Cisco believes the phone companies could use their technology to manage their network resources more efficiently and prioritize services for consumers. Today consumers who want access to high-bandwidth applications like video must subscribe to expensive broadband packages. These consumers may not need all this bandwidth all the time, but today they're forced to pay a flat fee for a set slice of Net access.
If network operators were able to provide priority to this video traffic through their network and charge the content providers for this priority, their customers could access their content over lower-speed broadband connections. In this scenario, a tiered service could actually benefit consumers, they argue.
But Google, PacWest Telecom and others, which have written a letter to Rep. Barton urging him to preserve Net neutrality, fear that network operators will abuse their market power and give their own services priority over their competitors. They also fear that the fees they charge competitors will keep some small companies from being able to deliver new services.
"They shouldn't be able to give preference to their own content over someone else's content," said John Sumpter, vice president of regulatory affairs for PacWest. "The solution is a form of Net neutrality that would not allow them to discriminate against other companies' applications."
Representatives from the phone companies say these fears are unfounded because customers would not allow this to happen.
"We have no intention of blocking or degrading other services on our network," said David Young, vice president of federal regulatory issues for Verizon. "We are giving customers what they want, which is fast pipes at a low cost. Anyone who tries to take that away from consumers will be punished by the market."
How Congress will handle Net neutrality is still up in the air. Barton has introduced a draft bill to the House Commerce Committee that would prohibit network operators from blocking or interfering with access of applications on the Internet. And Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, is working on a measure that will foster "equal treatment" for all Internet content and dispel worries that telecommunications providers will play favorites in the future.
But on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said that a proposal to overhaul U.S. telecommunications laws may not require network providers to follow Net neutrality principles.
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2 Will you offer tiered (e.g., "gold", "silver", and "bronze") Internet packages to customers otherwise operating at the same bandwidth?
3 Will you monitor and/or block voice-over-IP (VoIP), peer-to-peer file transfers, or any other class of communication by customers?
The answers might surprise you...
Wouldn't favoring certain content providers adversely affect international traffic? Lets say someone in Austria wanted to take a course on the Japanese language... directly from the source... University of Tokyo.
Well since nearly all internet traffic crosses the good ol'Bell networks... would this Austrian get his service degraded?
Sounds to me like Congress does need to get involved with this and prevent the Bells from spreading peanut butter all over the lines.
To me this would be like saying as long as you are calling someone in California or New York... your call will go through... but if you are calling someone in middle america, you will have to keep trying until we get a line free.
I don't get the argument and believe me I'm trying to. These companies are not building a better network for the betterment of the Internet. They're building it to make more money. You can call them "Gatekeepers" If you wish, but it is their choice to provide better service to higher paying clients.
As for them filtering content, the FCC will no doubt be bombarded with complaints and those guilty of the offense will suffer many long hours in the courtroom in addition to a serious loss of customers.
Picture if you will, being the owner of Google that finds it's content being filtered by it?s provider or any other provider. How much will Google pay that provider for their bandwidth and will they even pay. Most likely, not.
The Internet was intended to FREE but you can't build roads and not fix the potholes. Our society has proven that given certain freedoms they will abuse those very freedoms thus requiring rules and regulations to be implemented.
What we're talking about is the need of a governing body that's required to put to the people, the ultimate decisions if we want the Internet to remain FREE and not monopolized. The hardest thing for me personally to understand is why with all of our given technologies and abilities we as a people still can not jump on the net and cast our vote on any given subject. For those of us who can?t afford the expenses necessary to get onto the net there are several other ways we could make this work. I.e. phone polls, ATM?s, and hell, even the good old pony express.
Its already been demonstrated what not having net neutrality laws will allow, a few unscrupulous ISPs have tried to interfere with competing services (mainly degrading or even blocking packets to Vonage) but let me take it a step further to a very possible hypothetical. Mr. DSL customer signs up and pays for ESPN live webcasts, everything is great for a time, video is good, audio is clear. Then come one game day you web cast video basically sucks, there are no net neutrality laws, and since ESPN did not pay the ransom and now every other packet is being dropped, because of ?network congestion?. Even though it worked fine the day or week before. (and yes I aware of lack of QoS over the internet, but lets assume that?s not the cause here). So the next day Mr. DSL customer gets an email suggesting that they should try Telco?s Live sports channel for free, and amazingly it works perfectly. Mr. DSL customer cancels his ESPN subscription and signs up with the Telco?s paid video service. The Telco?s already have an advantage in that they can position their content and services servers physically closer to their end users than any competitors (which should lead to a better service) so why then do they also want the right to artificially degrade the services of others?
You want to take about stifle new services?.suddenly any content or service provider that does not pay the Telco?s ransom will not be able to compete, plain and simple. Basically we would probably not have Yahoo, Vonage, YouTube, Google or Amazon, (to name a few) and everyone would still be using CompuCom and AOL as their only source for content.
I am not a big fan of government regulations but in this case when the very nature of the internet under siege by greedy network operators, I say we need it, and I will cast my vote in November accordingly. (I hope you do too)
Users are also paying for bandwidth. The
providers currently charge based on bandwidth
and SLA.
What providers really want is for companies to
purchase bandwidth for each provider (their
provider, plus the other consumer's). If
companies A and B have ISP's C and D
respectively, and customers at ISP X, they have
to pay charges to their ISPs plus ISP X. If A
and B bought the same bandwidth from C and D,
but A bought 2x bandwidth from X, then customers
of X would see A as being twice as fast.
Basically, the company pays twice for the
service and receives the lower of two bandwidths
as a result. Note that the consumer can pay to
increase his bandwidth, but not to increase the
bandwidth between him and the company he's
dealing with.
It's a scam, really. If the carriers cared about
the consumer or the companies they service,
they'd simply offer metered service with
optional throttling or capping. They have the
ability to do it.
You want to take about stifle new services?.suddenly any content or service provider that does not pay the Telco?s ransom will not be able to compete, plain and simple. Basically we would probably not have Yahoo, Vonage, YouTube, Google or Amazon, (to name a few) and everyone would still be using CompuCom and AOL as their only source for content.
I am not a big fan of government regulations but in this case when the very nature of the internet under siege by greedy network operators, I say we need it, and I will cast my vote in November accordingly. (I hope you do too)
The problem arises when your ISP decides to control what access you get to your connection. It is a common practice to throttle or cap users that are excessively downloading.
Is this a fair practice?
If I have optionally selected to pay extra for improved speeds, why should I then be penalized for utilizing my service? The topic of applying a tariff on specific uses of my broadband connection has also come up lately. Should I have to pay a different fee to utilize VoIP services along with my web browsing?
If an ISP choses to place restrictions on the amount of bandwidth I consume in any 30 day period, that is completely acceptable. If I choose to consume that quota over the first week of the month, that should be my choice.
Perhaps the ISP's need to move back to the consumption business model and away from unlimited access, but I certainly do not agree with offering priority at a premium.
Charging me for every Gb of transfer per month would certainly encourage me to use my bandwidth more responsibly, and it would certainly unclog the pipelines if there was a tangable cost to downloading 100 Gig of music and movies every month.
This will prevent their "triple-play" dreams when they attempt to over real time critical applications like VOIP and especially IPTV. The latency, bandwidth comsumption and retransmissions will prevent IPTV services. Therefore they want to create a high-priority tier for the telco content.
line is that greed causes friction.
Solution, create a "socialist" Internet experience and anyone who desires to talk using either audio or visual components rather than current email will receive a set price, no matter who provides for it. They are, after all, only concerned with pleasing the consumer they claim.
I personally could choose the fastest one with the least amount of PHISHING and SC(P)AMMERS.
http://www.buckleupnow.com
www.teletruth.org
The telcos scammers have bought and paid for legislators on every level. Beware fake arguments. Write your congress people.
A Little History
How about a little history of the internet and the TELCOS. When the internet was first started, anyone remember what it was called?? How about ARPA/DARPA net. This network was built not by the telcos but by the TAXPAYERS of the US. The Telcos (MABELL) was shown this in the early 70's and was offered a chance to get on board. The response back then, what is in it for US??? At the time there was nothing in it for them so they passed. Now fast forward to today. The TELCOS are claiming thet THEY BUILT the netework, WRONG. OUR tax dollars are responsible for the internet as it is today. The TELCOS seem to forget that they HAD the chance back in the internets early day and passed it up. Now the TELCOS want to charge not only it's subscribers, but also the providers for usage. Now there is a thing called a cross connect agreement that the TELCOS have with each other and all of the MAJOR BACKBONE carriers of the internet. So what gives the TELCOS the right to basicly violate the cross connect agreements and charge Yahoo and Google money to provide data that the TELCOS subscriber, who is paying the TELCOS for the service, requested. After all Google and Yahoo pay someother carrier for the bandwidth they use. The cross connect agreement between the carriers covers that. HMMMMM sounds like the TELCOS are double dipping to me. Or are they just being GREEDY. Either way you look at it the TELCOS are just a bunch of cry babies trying to make a buck off of what you and I have already bought and paid for.
Yes, they might own the fiber lines, but guess what, we the taxpayers bought and paid for them also. Back in the 90's with deregulation they were given a bunch of tax incentives to build up their existing network. Now they claim that THEY did all of this at THEIR expense. Did they really?? NO, that was what the tax incentives were for, so they did not pay anything, they were paid to do it.
The TELCOS need to grow up and learn that they can not have it both ways.
- Net Neutrality
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by tmccarty8
March 15, 2006 11:04 AM PST
- Maybe it's time for Google and Yahoo and MSN to get togather and form a holding company and just buy the Telco's! Who could argue with that? I agree with all of the folks who say that WE paid for the fiber installations, NOT THE TELCO'S. MA Bell always was a greedy MOTHER, some things never change.
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