That issue is a tempest in a tea pot, Mitch. It would be a simple matter to say that an operator can't interfere with lawful content, meaning that best-efforts service has to be equal for all who use it. Equally simple to say that if an operator uses QoS for their own services they are obliged to offer the same to others at the same commercial terms.
In any event, look at U-verse today and most IPTV. These are walled-garden services that have QoS and they aren't considered violations. So I argue our current rules actually work against neutrality because they pull carrier video off-net where it's not regulated.
Structural separation is the wrong answer too. All you do is further increase costs which means lower ROI. We have the right answer stairing us in the face. Let operators use and sell QoS based on end-to-end inter-carrier settlement. If it's a good idea it will work. If it isn't nobody will buy it.
Tom - The argument in favor of net neutrality is that it would prevent carriers from blocking services like YouTube in favor of carriers' own video services. Same for Facebook and other services people want access too. More importantly -- and more likely -- carriers would be able to block startups. We wouldn't get the next YouTube because it never would have been permitted to start.
Is that a valid concern? Is there a way around that?
One proposal I've seen is to separate the ISPs from the network. The companies that run the line along the street and into homes would be different companies than the ones providing Internet service. The Internet service providers would be customers of the networking companies; consumers and businesses would be customers of the ISPs. Everybody wins. Do you see that as a viable option?
The fact that network operators are not prepared to invest in infrastructure is a result of inadequate ROI. In Europe, it's gone so far as to drive carriers to invest outside their home countries/markets for better return. The fact that we have no QoS for broadband services is a direct result of lack of settlement for service quality; operators won't guarantee QoS if they receive none of the money. We hear all the time that we have second-rate Internet in this country; we have second-rate policies.
I've been opposed to some of the neutrality principles from the mid-90s, Mitch. I co-authored an RFC intended to organize settlement among ISPs for traffic and QoS and I continue to believe that the 'Net would be better off with that in place. We're seeing a bunch of business distortions resulting from the lack of settlement, and eventually they're going to bite us seriously IMHO.
"OTT video" is indeed not a moral or topical judgment, but rather video streamed over best-efforts Internet connections and not within a walled garden.
I get a sense that you're opposed to at least some of what's generally considered as "net neutrality." Is that a fair assessment?
Also, what's "over the top video"? That's a new one on me. I'm thinking that's a technology description, and not referring to "Girls Gone Wild" or Tarantino movies (which are other types of over-the-top).
I wish I could always promising at least some hope, Susan, even though I pride myself on cynisism! There's so much network news that speaks to issues with profit in basic transport and streaming video is dependent on cost-effective transport. I think that rural operators and developing-country players are the ones most likely to be able to see a walled-garden-streaming model pay off. The question is whether it will be enough, and whether neutrality rules erode streaming by eroding revenue further. It's a complicated issue for sure!
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
YouTube's move to a partial pay-for-view model could help relieve a dearth of good new content but it could also complicate debates in many parts of the world over payment by content providers for delivery of their material to customers.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
MySpace is reinventing itself by focusing on content, but it's too late, and other social networks should learn from its example by looking toward a telco payment model if they want to sustain user commitment and their own revenue.
AT&T showed off lots of improvements to its IPTV service this week. The overall message: IP, Good! Cable, Bad! Phil predicts what it all means for the broadcast proletariat.
Mobile TV is everywhere, and yet, nowhere. Nobody uses it – because the handsets aren't good, the pricing is too high, and the coverage is not good enough. But Qualcomm's FloTV Personal TV aims to change all of that.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
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