The End of the Internet?

The Nation ^ | Wed Feb 1, 2006 | Jeff Chester

[sportutegrl]

Probably a bunch of professors accessing the Internet for free at their university.

[redgolum]

What makes you think an elected official would be involved? All you need is the right bureaucrat.

[JeffersonRepublic.com]

Just say no!... to AOL
bump

[presidio9]

[Tolkien]

The United States is the 19th ranked nation in household broadband connectivity rate, just ahead of Slovenia. Want to know why? Because, contends telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick, the Bell Companies never delivered symmetrical fiber-optic connectivity to millions of Americans though they were paid more than $200 billion to do it. According to Kushnick's book, "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", during the buildup to the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, the major U.S. telcos promised to deliver fiber to 86 million households by 2006 (we're talking about fiber to the home, here).

They asked for, and were given, some $200 billion in tax cuts and other incentives to pay for it. But the Bells didn't spend that money on fiber upgrades -- they spent it on long distance, wireless and inferior DSL services. Some headlines from Kushnick's work:

By 2006, 86 million households should have been rewired with a fiber optic wire, capable of 45 Mbps, in both directions.

The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.

The World is Laughing at US. Korea and Japan have 100 Mbps services as standard, and America could have been Number One had the phone companies actually delivered. Instead, we are 16th in broadband and falling in technology dominance.

A damning list of indictments, and one that puts the telcos' demands for a two-tiered Internet in harsh perspective (see " 'Course what we'd really like to do is 'prioritize' some of these services right out of business ..." and "Interesting approach, Bill; why don't you try it on your phone network first?"). We paid an estimated $2000 per household for fiber to the home and instead got DSL over the old copper wiring. As Kushnick notes, that's like ordering a Ferrari and getting a bicycle. The Bells should be ashamed.

By JOHN PACZKOWSKI

[longtermmemmory]

bellsouth does this now with its different levels of DSL speed. (and charging one price for home DSL and anther for business for the same level of "service")


no thanks.

I think bellsouth will have a rude awakening if vonage really starts to dig into their customer base.

[markedman]

Actually the telcos are being robbed blind. They provide all of the pipeline, backbone and crossconnects and then get hammered by Wall St for not being a "Google" - who would not exist if there was no connectivity. Like it or not, welfare ain't free, someone is picking up the tab.

[visualops]

As soon as I read this:

Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins.

I knew I was in lefty la-la land.

[Cyclone59]

Last time I checked, the internet has never been free. I get a bill every month for high speed internet access that gets me for 34.95....

[Sofa King]

How, exactly, are these companies going to increase their profits by making their product far less desirable to use? What business has ever followed this pattern of behavior? This article only makes the slightest bit of sense if you believe that corporations are fun by evil monsters who want to screw up over just for the hell of it. In other words, the type of person who reads The Nation.

[Arthalion]

Whitacre is an idiot. The Internet is based on the concept of peering. Both users and content providers pay to connect to a backbone provider already, and content providers actually DO pay more as their usage increases. What makes the Internet the Internet, and not merely the "AT&T Network", is that the networks peer each other, allowing an AT&T subscriber to communicate with a Verizon subscriber. That's it. Nothing special. When a communication occurs between networks, it ONLY happens because a PAID SUBSCRIBER on each end has initiated the connection. There are no freeloaders.

Whitacre needs to look at both history and current market trends before spewing this garbage. Once upon a time computer networks functioned EXACTLY the way he described. Companies like Compuserve, Delphi, and AOL used to keep us boxed in with "premium" content and per service charges. What happened? Internet providers started offering the same service for a flat rate, and the customers bolted. AOL was the only survivor, and even they only made a go of it after introducing unrestricted, unlimited Internet usage. For the past several years they've been trying to de-emphasize the Internet in favor of their own proprietary content, and the result has been that they're now hemmoraging customers like crazy.

If AT&T wants to be this stupid, they're going to have a fun fight on their hands. Non-wired solutions like Clearwire offer alternatives to DSL and Cable modems now, and many companies, including Google, have both massive fiber networks in their portfolio AND a vested interest in keeping the Internet free. What's AT&T going to do when they announce some new draconian fee structure, and Google announces their new $15 a month flat rate ISP service the following day...with unlimited Vonage-like telephony? The ONLY way to make this scheme work is to get EVERYONE onboard, and there are simply too many connection methods and too many people with a profit motive favoring a free Internet to allow that to happen. Any service introducing these fees will simply see their biggest, best paying customer groups leave in favor of their flate rate competition.

[Moonman62]

"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"

Because if it weren't for those content companies, nobody at the customer end would want to pay for your stupid pipe. They are doing you a favor you nitwit.

[Element187]

the american people are a very strong entity.... we know how to protest with our wallets quite efficiently.

[Arthalion]

When people talk about the "free Internet", they're generally referring to free as in speech, not free as in beer. The Internet is still largely free of regulation, and people on one network are free to connect to and read content on any other Internet connected server in the world. We pay to connect to the Internet, but once we have that connection were free to do anything we want with it.

[Sofa King]

*This article only makes the slightest bit of sense if you believe that corporations are run by evil monsters"

[Bigh4u2]

"establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access"

Anyone remember PRODIGY?

When it first came out it had a similar scheme.

[olde north church]

No politician would ever go along with this... instant political death.

Would that be in the same way they stood so rock-ribbed against taxing Internet commerce? You'll take it unlubed.

[Jeff Gordon]

I think bellsouth will have a rude awakening if vonage really starts to dig into their customer base.

Things tend to get annoyed when rudely awakened. If you are going to rudely awaken a sleeping dragon, you should do it very carefully.

[adam_az]

"As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November, "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!""

You're 100%

I bet the quote above from the article is out of context. After all, it's an article from the Nation.

They aren't using his pipes for free - Google's ISP (I think it's L3?) has a peering agreement with AT&T. They carry each others traffic.

[adam_az]

On second read, they might be referring to using QoS packet stamping for different types of traffic.

Apparently the articles author is mad that he might not get his P2P warez and porn as quickly.