RE: Greed, stupidity, arrogance, and small genitalia.... (a c orporate study on the bells)

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

More on this topic via GMSV:

[snip]

BellSouth is moving ahead with its plan to rig the Internet.

The company -- which has said in the past that ISPs should be able to prioritize data traffic  -- is attempting to do 
just that, proposing to charge content companies for guaranteed fast delivery of music, video, data or voice.

In an interview with CBS Marketwatch, Bill Smith, BellSouth's chief technology officer, justified the move by saying 
companies that use its pipes to transmit bandwidth-taxing rich media should pay for the privilege of doing so. 
"[Telcoms] are the shipping business of the digital age," Smith said.

Bad analogies aside, BellSouth's plan, which charges consumers for Internet access and content providers for providing 
media to those consumers, does seem a bit like double-dipping to me. And as Google Internet evangelist Vint Cerf once 
noted, such pricing would inevitably discriminate against small content providers. "Enshrining a rule that broadly 
permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with 
others would place broadband operators in control of online activity,"

Cerf once said of a new telecommunications bill that would undermine network neutrality. "Allowing broadband providers 
to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the 
broadband Internet our country and economy need. Many people will have little or no choice among broadband operators 
for the foreseeable future, implying that such operators will have the power to exercise a great deal of control over 
any applications placed on the network. As we move to a broadband environment and eliminate century-old 
non-discrimination requirements, a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet 
continues to thrive. Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate 
what people can do online." 

[snip]

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/01/bellsouth_is_mo.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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