The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet

2006-01-22 Thread Robert G. Seeberger
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012100094.html?nav=rss_technology

http://urlx.org/washingtonpost.com/b814

Do you prefer to search for information online with Google or Yahoo? 
What about bargain shopping -- do you go to Amazon or eBay? Many of us 
make these kinds of decisions several times a day, based on who knows 
what -- maybe you don't like bidding, or maybe Google's clean white 
search page suits you better than Yahoo's colorful clutter.

But the nation's largest telephone companies have a new business plan, 
and if it comes to pass you may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly 
responds much faster to your inquiries, overriding your affinity for 
Google. Or that Amazon's Web site seems sluggish compared with eBay's.

The changes may sound subtle, but make no mistake: The 
telecommunications companies' proposals have the potential, within 
just a few years, to alter the flow of commerce and information -- and 
your personal experience -- on the Internet. For the first time, the 
companies that own the equipment that delivers the Internet to your 
office, cubicle, den and dorm room could, for a price, give one 
company priority on their networks over another.

This represents a break with the commercial meritocracy that has ruled 
the Internet until now. We've come to expect that the people who own 
the phone and cable lines remain neutral, doing nothing to influence 
the content on your computer screen. And may the best Web site win.

For more than a year, public interest groups, including the Consumer 
Federation and Consumers Union, have been lobbying Congress and the 
Federal Communications Commission to write the concept called network 
neutrality into law and regulation. Google and Yahoo have joined 
their lobbying efforts. And online retailers, Internet travel 
services, news media and hundreds of other companies that do business 
on the Web also have a lot at stake.

Meanwhile, on the other side, companies like ATT, Verizon and 
BellSouth are lobbying just as hard, saying that they need to find new 
ways to pay for the expense of building faster, better communication 
networks. And, they add, because these new networks will compete with 
those belonging to Comcast, Time Warner and oth er cable companies --  
which currently have about

55 percent of the residential broadband market -- this will eventually 
bring down the price of your high-speed Internet service and 
television access.

Would these new fees imposed by carriers alter the basic nature of the 
Internet by putting bumps and detours on the much ballyhooed 
information superhighway? No, say the telephone companies. Giving 
priority to a company that pays more, they say, is just offering 
another tier of service -- like an airline offering business as well 
as economy class. Network neutrality, they say, is a solution in 
search of a problem.

Maybe you've never heard of this issue -- and if so, you're far from 
alone. In my job as a media analyst, I've been talking in recent weeks 
to lobbyists for some of Hollywood's major entertainment 
conglomerates. These are people who know that consumers' ability to 
download their studios' movies and television shows as easily and 
cheaply as anyone else's will be key to the studios' future profits. 
Yet hardly any of them were more than vaguely concerned about the 
potential ramifications of network neutrality.

But lately the issue, a matter of heated debate on obscure blogs and 
among analysts like me, has begun to attract the attention of the 
mainstream press. There are a couple of reasons.

One is that Congress is taking first steps toward updating and 
rewriting the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a key legal underpinning 
for media, telecommunications and Internet activity. This process, 
required by technological advances, will probably take a year to 
complete.

More dramatically, executives at ATT and BellSouth got into the 
headlines recently with a series of audacious statements. In a 
November Business Week story, ATT Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. 
complained that Internet content providers were getting a free ride: 
They don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. . . . 
They use my lines for free -- and that's bull, he said. For a Google 
or a Yahoo or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for 
free is nuts!''

It was a stunner. Whitacre had apparently declared that ATT planned 
to unilaterally abandon its role as a neutral carrier.

Whether or not you agree with Whitacre, you can understand his 
frustration. Companies like Google and Yahoo pay some fees to connect 
to their servers to the Internet, but ATT will collect little if any 
additional revenue when Yahoo starts offering new features that take 
up lots of bandwidth on the Internet. When Yahoo's millions of 
customers download huge blocks of video or play complex video games, 
ATT ends up carrying that increased digital traffic without 
additional 

Re: The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet

2006-01-22 Thread Trent Shipley
I tend to favor technicalism -- a political stance that favoring the free play 
of technology.

I hate the digital millennium copyright act because it is capitalist 
Ludditeism.  The DMCA tries to protect an version (a relatively recent 
version) of intellectual property against free technological innovation.

In the same way, trying to protect TCP/IP users from discrimination by 
switched carriers is bad policy.  It is technically feasible for the carriers 
to partition the market for bandwidth.  As a matter of general policy, the 
carriers free access to technology should not be prevented.

On Sunday 2006-01-22 10:44, Robert G. Seeberger wrote:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR200601210
0094.html?nav=rss_technology

 http://urlx.org/washingtonpost.com/b814

big DEFANGED_snip/

 xponent

 Developing Maru

 rob


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