[IP] Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 13, 2005 2:30:35 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Telecoms want their products to travel on a
faster Internet
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Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet
Major site owners oppose 2-tier system
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | December 13, 2005
<http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/13/
telecoms_want_their_products_to_travel_on_a_faster_internet/>
AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right
to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own
Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently
than those of their competitors.
The proposal is certain to provoke a major fight with Google Inc.,
Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc., and Microsoft Corp., the powerful
owners of popular Internet sites. The companies fear such a move
would give telecommunications companies too much control over a fast-
growing part of the Internet.
The battle is largely over video services. Several major telecom
companies are working on ways to deliver broadcast-quality television
over the Internet. Currently, online video can be slow to download
and choppy to watch, even with higher-speed Internet services.
The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would allow
telecommunications carriers to offer their own advanced Internet
video services to their customers, while rival firms' online video
offerings would be transmitted at lower speed and with poorer image
quality.
AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a premium fee to
connect to the higher-speed Internet. The companies could also charge
websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher-
speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have
to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers.
The prospect of a tiered Internet with ''regular" and ''premium"
broadband services is spawning fierce debate as Congress takes up a
major overhaul of telecom regulations. The House of Representatives
last month held hearings on a preliminary draft by two GOP
congressmen, Joe Barton of Texas and Fred Upton of Michigan, that
would give the telecom companies the freedom to establish premium
broadband services. The telecom bill is due for action early next year.
A change along these lines would be different from the way the
Internet has operated. ''The Internet model has been that carriers
cannot interfere with the choices that consumers make," said Alan
Davidson, Google's Washington policy counsel.
Google is fighting the proposal, along with other large Internet
companies including Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. They fear they may
have to pay telecoms millions of dollars to gain access to customers
who use the premium Internet services. In addition, they argue, many
small Internet start-ups would be unable to pay the fees, which could
reduce consumer choice.
''Some of the most valuable new services won't be competitive,"
Davidson said.
The telecom companies said that since they are spending billions of
dollars to build new fiber-optic networks that can carry more data,
they are entitled to give their own offerings the bulk of Internet
bandwidth, and to charge others for higher-speed access.
''When costs are being driven into an equation, they have to be
recovered somewhere," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer of
BellSouth. ''Why do fundamental business economics not apply to the
Internet?"
Bill McCluskey , director of media relations for BellSouth, said the
premium plan would boost profits and encourage higher-speed broadband
network deployment. ''The more we are able to make, the faster we
will be able to roll out high-speed Internet to 100 percent of our
customers," he said.
Verizon Communications Inc., one of the biggest Boston-area Internet
service providers, did not return calls seeking comment.
Telecom companies like AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon use a technology
called DSL to provide high-speed Internet access to about 16 million
US subscribers -- mostly homes and small businesses. Cable TV
companies like Comcast Corp. have invaded the telecoms' main
business, telephone service. The telecoms want to strike back by
offering Internet-based television. They want to offer all the
programs now available on cable, as well as movie and game trailers,
and full-length films.
But standard Internet service is ill-suited to TV distribution. Video
signals have to arrive in a steady stream, but all Internet messages
are made up of tiny data packets that travel over the network, and
are reassembled at their destinations. Often these packets arrive out
of order, or are delayed by a few seconds. This doesn't matter with e-
mail or Web pages, but would ruin a TV broadcast or degrade the
quality of an Internet phone call.
The solution is to tag the TV or telephone packets with codes that
give them a higher priority on the network. These packets would be
delivered more quickly, ensuring a sharp picture and clear sound. The
telecoms must build additional network capacity to handle these
large, tagged files.
[snip]
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxxx
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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