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
