Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: December 13, 2005 2:30:35 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Telecoms want their products to travel on a  
faster Internet
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

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 () globe com.
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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