It’s not just broadband providers who are lobbying to be allowed to create a tiered Internet, it’s the telephone companies. Instead of comparing the Internet to cable/satellite television a single fact will be shared: the media wouldn’t stand for an a la carte TV system. The nature of the media is to deliver to the consumer what ever they feel is appropriate for mass consumption, regardless of quality or popularity.

Recently, due new technologies, the process of delivering different content at different speeds via the Internet has become much easier for ISPs. Cisco Systems with their next generation packet shaping routers can be thanked for this. Given this new power ISPs are limiting the bandwidth available for VOIP, p2p, streaming media, and online gaming. This is an end-user experienced tiered Internet, relative to the looming threat the damage this can do is minimal.

The big fuss is over what telephone companies ATT and Verizon want to do to the Internet’s backbone. Think of the Internet’s backbone as the water main that feeds the entire city. If it is decided that even though the main is at capacity the city decides to run a telephone utility line inside of the water main, taking up space that is already used. Now imagine that the city utility company was allotted several billion dollars to install a new water main and instead the money was lost within the management of the utilities company. In a sense this is what is happening today, and the cheapest solution for ATT and Verizon is a tiered Internet. Verizon and ATT have plans of rolling out their own VOIP and IPTV networks on top of their current Internet backbones, which currently are nearly at capacity.

Instead of paying the money to upgrade their networks, the telephone companies want to slow down the traffic to websites that don’t pay an extra fee for access to their networks. The main target is Google. Consumers are supposed to believe that Google doesn’t pay for its Internet connection, and should be made to pay up. In reality there is no such thing as free lunch, and nobody actually gets on the Internet for free.

Promises of more choices are deceptive at best. There already is established competition in VOIP and streaming media. The telephone companies truly desire to eliminate the competition to establish a monopoly choke-hold on the Internet. Packet shaping can do this easily by decreasing the bandwidth allowed for the competition until access to it is so slow that it is abandoned. Any extra cash collected via higher fees will end up financing a new yacht for the heads of the media companies instead of financing improvements to their own network.

Don’t give the telephone companies another chance, they’ve had too many already. Support network neutrality.

-John Havlik

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AT&T’s CEO Ed Whitacre is complaining once again, that it isn’t fare that web content owners are allowed to use large volumes of communications companies’ bandwidth for ‘free’. He wants big sites such as Google and others to pay for access to their clients. I read this a month ago but it has come up again. Don’t these people realize that Google doesn’t just plug into the Internet for free? Google must pay for several optical connections to their server farm and ISP fees, which their ISP pays to connect to other networks, such as AT&T’s network. Then the consumers, you and me, pay to connect to AT&T’s network, my Mediacom cable connection connects to the AT&T network. Why should Google and others pay twice for their Internet connection?

The real problem lies with what lies before us in the next five to ten years. About ten years ago we were promised fiber to the wall and all the bandwidth we could suck up, well about 100mbps both ways. What happened was the web 1.0 bubble popped. Suddenly around 2001 these big Telephone Companies found themselves with some fiber upgrades and a large amount of dark fiber, since the demand shifted, they stopped investing in their networks, except when they absolutely had to.

Now as the so called Web 2.0 movement catches fire and begins to run with the economic torch, the telephone companies realize that demand has increased (shifted to the right on the demand curve graph) but their supply capacity has remained the same since they foolishly lined the pockets of their CEOs and management instead of investing in their networks. The entire Web 2.0 movement will heavily push VOIP and IPTV. POTS will more or less die soon, as in by 2010. Once POTS dies as everyone uses VOIP, SBC/ATT will find itself with a bunch of worthless copper. They should have upgraded ever last inch to fiber but now it’s too late. That’s what Ed Whitacre is seeing, though he could be just seeing a plan to line his pockets since as a general rule of thumb all CEO/CFOs are corrupt, self-centered, evil rats. Their profits will dwindle and the new ATT will die a quick painful death, just like Enron.

Here is the link: The 200 Billion Broadband Scandal

-John Havlik

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