One issue is the notion that Internet service providers, telcos like AT&T and cable broadband cos. like Comcast are just asking for heavy users to pay more for using 'their pipes.' This is a bit disingenuous: first off, the nature of the Internet is such that traffic rarely, if ever uses only one 'set of pipes,' secondly Google, Yahoo et al. do pay for their bandwidth - I can only imagine what their bills look like. A Chron graphic shows the fast lane as as a kind of peer-to-peer bypass provided by the ISP - both an oversimplification and misrepresentation of the real way 'fast lanes' will work.

On the one hand, the telcos et al. could hook up a relatively few big providers to their users in this way, but the fastest growing segment of content providers by far is users, not traditional providers. Without ISP collusion - some sort of massive price-fixing scheme - this just won't be how the 'fast lane' works. What the telcos/cablecos are proposing is not adding capacity: what they are really proposing is restricting capacity. They want to create a ghetto, a sub-class that only the wealthy can escape.

What this is really about is telcos and cable companies imposing their view of the world on Internet users. Cable companies traditionally provided one-way service, provider to user only, and the telcos, who should be much more two-way savvy, are trying to copy that. What both have already done is to erect artificial gates on the 'last mile' - and they are proposing to add even more restrictions as a way of basically shaking down content providers and others who have invested both tremendous amounts of intellectual and real capital in creating the Net ecosystem.

The telcos and cable companies are saying, like so many Tony Sopranos, 'Thank you all you innovative little guys (some who have grown up to be Google, Yahoo and Amazon) for creating this trillion dollar business on the Net: now we're going to offer 'fast lane packet insurance:' be a shame if we to had to whack your packets - and your business - in the knee. So just pay up and we can avoid any, er, um, unpleasantness.'

One of the reasons that the Internet has, in the words of John Doerr, created unprecedented legal wealth (i.e. jobs and new companies), is that it is (so far) utterly packet agnostic. Packets are packets and she who can figure out how to send and recieve packets that solve user's problems or fulfill their needs affordably and well has by and large prospered. With the proposed arrangement, that will no longer be the case. There will be 2 Internets: Ghetto Internet where your innovation and business model will likely not work, and the Gazillionaire's Club Internet, where the doorman will never let you in if you aren't already awash with cash.

Another big problem here is that the nature of 'content provider' is undergoing a radical sea-change. A huge amount of Net content is user-generated: blogs, photo blogs, podcasts, media-heavy home pages et al. are already dwarfing, in volume if not total readership, the content being provided by the traditional media producers. Google is proving that popular blogs and other user-made content is just as good as anything else at generating revenue for advertisers - buying keywords is more important than buying a medium location. What AT&T and Comcast are already doing, by only providing asymmetrical broadband and dynamic IP addresses at consumer and small business price points, is making it hard for users to investigate and provide new and interesting forms of content, like video, podcasts et al.

There is no technical reason for asymmetry in a broadband connection: the providers go out of their way to configure their equipment that way - change a software setting, and your line now runs at full speed in both directions - no additional investment required (indeed most off-the-shelf routers and other Internet gear do not even have a way to throttle performance in one direction only - the telcos and cablecos use special gear to acheive that sorry state). There is also no reason not to provide users with the option of static IP addresses: the paucity of IP addresses is probably overstated (and certainly self-serving), and, anyway, IPv6, which will likely start arriving next year will make that particular semi-myth moot. These two artificial roadblocks reflect both the mind-set of telcos and cablecos ("Users only want to receive content, they don't want to provide content") and their efforts to artificially block the last mile.

The same argument applies to fast lanes. Moore's law is improving routers and other Net infrastructure just as fast as it improves PCs and other devices - it's getting ever cheaper to provide bandwidth. Telcos and cablecos are proposing to configure even more of their equipment so it cripples one class of user. Useless, short-sighted and stupid, IMHO and reminiscent of the way that Hollywood fought VCRs and DVDs - the very media that have become one of their largest revenue producers. Net usage - and ISP revenue - will grow much faster if telcos/cablecos empower everyone equally. Note that I'm not proposing the ISPs give anything away for free: charge fair prices, and I and the rest of the world will pay them. Just stop this fakery. Stop crippling the Net, and by all means don't cripple it more...
Comments 12:02:50 PM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures