NEW YORK — On a business trip to London in August, Jeff Pulver was blocked from making an Internet phone call over the broadband connection in his hotel room. He had no trouble using that same line to connect with his cable TV box back home in New York to watch live American television.
"For 14 pounds ($28), I could have watched pay per view. Instead I was watching Law and Order," said Pulver, the mischievous founder of an online phone service called FreeWorldDialup and other ventures that relish the opportunity to bypass the telecommunications establishment via the Internet.
Clearly, since the Le Meridien hotel chain went to the trouble of making it harder for guests to avoid in-room phone charges with Internet calling, one can well imagine that it would rather customers not use their broadband connections to bypass the hotel's pay TV services either.
Should the hotel, having made the investment to wire its rooms with broadband, have the right to maximize the return on that expenditure by controlling its use? Or should Pulver, having already paid whatever fees were requested for his room and Internet service, be free from any controls on how he can use that connection?
These are the questions moving to the industry forefront now that the telephone wars are done.
A momentous year of government edicts and mergers has put to rest a decade-long clash among local and long-distance companies for access to the nation's homes and offices using Bell phone lines.
To the victors, the newly supersized Bells known as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications, goes an immediate collision with the cable TV industry. Both sides have been investing heavily in their networks to deliver a full menu of phone, Internet, video and wireless services.
But as a direct byproduct of this arms buildup, network operators of all stripes may find themselves butting heads with a new common foe: the Googles, eBays and Vonages of the world, or any Web business that delivers its wares to end users over broadband connections.
As phone and cable companies beef up their networks with more capacity to sell high-definition video and multimedia combinations of TV, Internet and phone, Web-based merchants see an opportunity to deliver new products down these widening pipes, too.
In the most high-profile examples to date, the iTunes Music Store from Apple Computer has started selling episodes of TV shows from Walt Disney's ABC and General Electric's NBC Universal, while Time Warner's AOL unit plans to stream episodes of about 100 vintage TV shows from its website.
There's also the Slingbox, the device that delivered Jeff Pulver's home cable signal to a laptop in Europe, and which he also uses to watch TV on a high-speed cellular connection from Verizon Wireless — in likely violation of that company's network usage rules.
Without the proliferation of speedier Internet connections, those services would be impossible, and some pipe owners, from phone and cable companies to wireless operators, hotels and coffee shops, aren't so keen on providing free unlimited bandwidth for Web-based vendors.
For the moment, the debate is largely philosophical, and political. Aside from those foreign governments who block access to certain websites and Internet phone services, and a notorious incident where a North Carolina phone company was fined for blocking Vonage Holdings from connecting calls, most broadband providers allow their customers to go anywhere they please and do as they wish.
Still, that didn't stop the Federal Communications Commission from issuing a non-binding policy statement in August seeking to "preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of (the) public Internet."
Nor did it stop the FCC in October from requiring similar guarantees of "Network Neutrality" for two years in approving the acquisitions of AT&T by SBC Communications and of MCI by Verizon Communications.
Congress also has found a need to address the question in drafting new legislation to govern the telecom industry, prompting heavy lobbying over the exact wording.
One provision in the latest version of the bill says network operators may not "block, impair, or interfere" access to "any lawful content, application, or service provided over the Internet," though another provision appears to cloud the issue by adding the word "unreasonably" to that same sentiment.
But the flash point in the bill may be a provision granting network operators the right to provide "enhanced quality of service" for their own TV and other services.
At the simplest level, there's nothing so revolutionary about that concept.
Cable TV providers have long reserved a big portion of their wires for their video service, leaving a smaller swath for Internet access. And when it comes to their new Internet-based phones services, cable companies also prioritize the digital voice packets to bolster sound quality.
Yet words like "prioritize" and "quality of service" strike some critics as mere euphemisms for more dastardly intentions.
"If a company talks about quality of service, it could be code for discrimination among sources of content," said Paul Misener, vice president of public policy for Amazon.com, which has joined an informal coalition with Google and other Web-based businesses to preserve what they see as inalienable rights of Internet use.
Misener said that despite pledges by broadband providers that they have no plans to lock down the flow of Web traffic, their lobbying effort "shows how hard they're fighting this, which shows their ultimate intentions."
In addition, though some broadband providers are upgrading their networks with way more bandwidth than most any user might need today, others face capacity constraints. This is particularly true of cellular operators, whose "high-speed" wireless services are barely as fast as today's slowest wired connections.
The new AT&T (formerly SBC) is equipping its fiber-optic network to provide bandwidth of about 25 megabits per second. About three-quarters of that bandwidth needs to be set aside so AT&T can meet its goal of launching a service that can deliver four different channels at the same time to any home with multiple TVs. As such, AT&T plans to offer a broadband connection with speeds of up to 6 mbps.
While few argue with AT&T's right to shape its new U-Verse service as it sees fit, what if a customer wants broadband but not the video service? Some would argue that such subscribers, rather than being limited to 6 mbps, should have an option to pay extra for access to the full pipe, even if they plan to use that bandwidth to buy a TV service from a rival that might one day be offered via the Internet.
Not surprisingly, broadband providers don't quite agree.
AT&T and BellSouth argue that it's only natural for them to want to ensure better quality in competing for customers — and only fair for Web services that want to offer the same level of quality to compensate carriers for the up-front investment and operating costs of a broadband network.
Those who refuse may find their traffic relegated to second-class status on the network.
"There seems to be a mentality that they can put more and more through our pipes for free," AT&T Chief Executive Edward Whitacre said in an interview. "We're the ones who built the network. You cannot make that sort of investment if you can't make a return on the capital. They're more than welcome to use our networks, but if they do, they're going to have to pay. It's not free."
Such comments tend to send shudders through the Internet world, where both consumers and service providers have been weaned on years of freedom to visit any website and download any legal content without restriction.
If any money changed hands beyond the monthly broadband fee, it was between the website and the customer, not between website and Internet service provider.
Whitacre and others see no reason why the business model need be etched in stone. Nor do they accept the contention that a broadband subscriber's monthly fee equates with some blanket entitlement.
"They only pay for a broadband loop from a central office to their home," said Whitacre. Delivering content from Web servers to end users "takes huge (network) backbones to get across the country."
William Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth, argues that competitive forces, rather than regulation, are all that's needed to prevent the totalitarian online environment that the webcamp fears.
"We have no intention whatsoever of saying 'You can't go here, you can't go there, you can't go somewhere else,'" Smith said. "We have a very competitive situation with cable. If we start trying to restrict where our customers can go on the Internet, we would see our DSL customers defect to cable in droves."
But, he added, "If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or I can buy a first class ticket from Delta. I've made a choice as to which experience I want."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-12-25-neutral-net_x.htm
"For 14 pounds ($28), I could have watched pay per view. Instead I was watching Law and Order," said Pulver, the mischievous founder of an online phone service called FreeWorldDialup and other ventures that relish the opportunity to bypass the telecommunications establishment via the Internet.
Clearly, since the Le Meridien hotel chain went to the trouble of making it harder for guests to avoid in-room phone charges with Internet calling, one can well imagine that it would rather customers not use their broadband connections to bypass the hotel's pay TV services either.
Should the hotel, having made the investment to wire its rooms with broadband, have the right to maximize the return on that expenditure by controlling its use? Or should Pulver, having already paid whatever fees were requested for his room and Internet service, be free from any controls on how he can use that connection?
These are the questions moving to the industry forefront now that the telephone wars are done.
A momentous year of government edicts and mergers has put to rest a decade-long clash among local and long-distance companies for access to the nation's homes and offices using Bell phone lines.
To the victors, the newly supersized Bells known as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications, goes an immediate collision with the cable TV industry. Both sides have been investing heavily in their networks to deliver a full menu of phone, Internet, video and wireless services.
But as a direct byproduct of this arms buildup, network operators of all stripes may find themselves butting heads with a new common foe: the Googles, eBays and Vonages of the world, or any Web business that delivers its wares to end users over broadband connections.
As phone and cable companies beef up their networks with more capacity to sell high-definition video and multimedia combinations of TV, Internet and phone, Web-based merchants see an opportunity to deliver new products down these widening pipes, too.
In the most high-profile examples to date, the iTunes Music Store from Apple Computer has started selling episodes of TV shows from Walt Disney's ABC and General Electric's NBC Universal, while Time Warner's AOL unit plans to stream episodes of about 100 vintage TV shows from its website.
There's also the Slingbox, the device that delivered Jeff Pulver's home cable signal to a laptop in Europe, and which he also uses to watch TV on a high-speed cellular connection from Verizon Wireless — in likely violation of that company's network usage rules.
Without the proliferation of speedier Internet connections, those services would be impossible, and some pipe owners, from phone and cable companies to wireless operators, hotels and coffee shops, aren't so keen on providing free unlimited bandwidth for Web-based vendors.
For the moment, the debate is largely philosophical, and political. Aside from those foreign governments who block access to certain websites and Internet phone services, and a notorious incident where a North Carolina phone company was fined for blocking Vonage Holdings from connecting calls, most broadband providers allow their customers to go anywhere they please and do as they wish.
Still, that didn't stop the Federal Communications Commission from issuing a non-binding policy statement in August seeking to "preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of (the) public Internet."
Nor did it stop the FCC in October from requiring similar guarantees of "Network Neutrality" for two years in approving the acquisitions of AT&T by SBC Communications and of MCI by Verizon Communications.
Congress also has found a need to address the question in drafting new legislation to govern the telecom industry, prompting heavy lobbying over the exact wording.
One provision in the latest version of the bill says network operators may not "block, impair, or interfere" access to "any lawful content, application, or service provided over the Internet," though another provision appears to cloud the issue by adding the word "unreasonably" to that same sentiment.
But the flash point in the bill may be a provision granting network operators the right to provide "enhanced quality of service" for their own TV and other services.
At the simplest level, there's nothing so revolutionary about that concept.
Cable TV providers have long reserved a big portion of their wires for their video service, leaving a smaller swath for Internet access. And when it comes to their new Internet-based phones services, cable companies also prioritize the digital voice packets to bolster sound quality.
Yet words like "prioritize" and "quality of service" strike some critics as mere euphemisms for more dastardly intentions.
"If a company talks about quality of service, it could be code for discrimination among sources of content," said Paul Misener, vice president of public policy for Amazon.com, which has joined an informal coalition with Google and other Web-based businesses to preserve what they see as inalienable rights of Internet use.
Misener said that despite pledges by broadband providers that they have no plans to lock down the flow of Web traffic, their lobbying effort "shows how hard they're fighting this, which shows their ultimate intentions."
In addition, though some broadband providers are upgrading their networks with way more bandwidth than most any user might need today, others face capacity constraints. This is particularly true of cellular operators, whose "high-speed" wireless services are barely as fast as today's slowest wired connections.
The new AT&T (formerly SBC) is equipping its fiber-optic network to provide bandwidth of about 25 megabits per second. About three-quarters of that bandwidth needs to be set aside so AT&T can meet its goal of launching a service that can deliver four different channels at the same time to any home with multiple TVs. As such, AT&T plans to offer a broadband connection with speeds of up to 6 mbps.
While few argue with AT&T's right to shape its new U-Verse service as it sees fit, what if a customer wants broadband but not the video service? Some would argue that such subscribers, rather than being limited to 6 mbps, should have an option to pay extra for access to the full pipe, even if they plan to use that bandwidth to buy a TV service from a rival that might one day be offered via the Internet.
Not surprisingly, broadband providers don't quite agree.
AT&T and BellSouth argue that it's only natural for them to want to ensure better quality in competing for customers — and only fair for Web services that want to offer the same level of quality to compensate carriers for the up-front investment and operating costs of a broadband network.
Those who refuse may find their traffic relegated to second-class status on the network.
"There seems to be a mentality that they can put more and more through our pipes for free," AT&T Chief Executive Edward Whitacre said in an interview. "We're the ones who built the network. You cannot make that sort of investment if you can't make a return on the capital. They're more than welcome to use our networks, but if they do, they're going to have to pay. It's not free."
Such comments tend to send shudders through the Internet world, where both consumers and service providers have been weaned on years of freedom to visit any website and download any legal content without restriction.
If any money changed hands beyond the monthly broadband fee, it was between the website and the customer, not between website and Internet service provider.
Whitacre and others see no reason why the business model need be etched in stone. Nor do they accept the contention that a broadband subscriber's monthly fee equates with some blanket entitlement.
"They only pay for a broadband loop from a central office to their home," said Whitacre. Delivering content from Web servers to end users "takes huge (network) backbones to get across the country."
William Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth, argues that competitive forces, rather than regulation, are all that's needed to prevent the totalitarian online environment that the webcamp fears.
"We have no intention whatsoever of saying 'You can't go here, you can't go there, you can't go somewhere else,'" Smith said. "We have a very competitive situation with cable. If we start trying to restrict where our customers can go on the Internet, we would see our DSL customers defect to cable in droves."
But, he added, "If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or I can buy a first class ticket from Delta. I've made a choice as to which experience I want."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-12-25-neutral-net_x.htm
