Posted on 07/06/2006 6:20:34 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SOFIA (Reuters) - Google warned on Tuesday it will not hesitate to file anti-trust complaints in the United States if high-speed Internet providers abuse the market power they could receive from U.S. legislators.
The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee last week approved sweeping communications reform legislation that would make it easier for telephone companies like AT&T to offer subscription television to consumers.
But it narrowly rejected attempts by some lawmakers to strengthen safeguards on Internet service, which had pitted high-speed Internet, or broadband, providers such as AT&T against Internet content companies like Google.
The battle centred on whether broadband providers can charge more to carry unaffiliated content or to guarantee service quality, an issue called Net neutrality.
"If the legislators ... insist on neutrality, we will be happy. If they do not put it in, we will be less happy but then we will have to wait and see whether or not there actually is any abuse," Vint Cerf, a Google vice-president and one of the pioneers of the Internet, told a news conference in Bulgaria.
"If we are not successful in our arguments ... then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice's anti-trust division," he said on Tuesday.
Cerf is visiting Bulgaria at the invitation of President Georgi Parvanov to discuss ways to boost information technology business and Internet access in the country.
The U.S. bill includes provisions aimed at preserving consumers' ability to surf anywhere on the public Internet and use any Internet-related application, software or service.
"My company, along with many others believes that the Internet should stay open and accessible to everyone equally," Cerf said.
"We are worried that some of the broadband service providers will interfere with that principle and will attempt to use their control over broadband transport facilities to interfere with services of competitors."
Despite extensive lobbying by the telephone carriers, prospects for a final law this year remain uncertain. Congress faces a dwindling number of work days because of the November elections.
If the measure passes the full Senate, it would have to be reconciled with a narrower bill approved by the House of Representatives.
Riduculous, Google is more of a monopoly in its field (internet search) than any single telecommunication company is in their field. Google just doesn't want to face the competition from others who may pay for better access speeds for their users.
The idea of hearing Google speak out passionately in favor of net neutrality does seem a bit odd at first.
Then again, considering that Vint Cerf himself is saying this, I am not at all surprised.
No, they just have a majority marketshare. And even if they were a monopoly, a monopoly isn't necessarily a bad thing.
There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.But this service is now going to go through the internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discriminate against those people
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.
Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.
It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.
The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutrality that hits you and me.
Google wants to corner the market in online content. The telco's wanting to make a fee based QoS is a major threat to their strategy.
I have a feeling someone didn't explain the Internet to the senator very well.
The best part is that both the senator and his staff likely use the same internal email servers, and his email never was routed over the Internet. He needs to contact the Sentate IT department.
That is an absurd statement. Wireline utilities are classic natural monopolies. No monopoly exists in the search industry.
According to this, earlier this year WorldCom was purchased by Verizon. But Verizon still has nowhere near as large a share of the internet connectivity than Google does internet search. Google saying they're going to sue them for "anti-trust" is laughable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldCom
Google better watch out who it threatens, the congress tends to not like having their decisions second guessed and google might end up looking at an anti-trust complaint against itself, just ask Microsoft...
Exactly...
Don't be silly. There are no "levels" of monopoly. Any consumer can freely choose another search engine; I know I do.
That said, Google and a few others want to be able to monopolize bandwidth without actually having to pay for it. Streaming content is just different from HTTP. If that gets people's panties in a bunch, tough.
I never said Google was a monopoly, but them claiming they're going to sue an ISP or a group of ISP's for "anti-trust" is ridiculous. The fact they have a greater share of their own market than any single ISP has of the ISP market signifies how ridiculous it is.
You said Google was more of a monopoly than any telecommunications company.
In vast areas of the U.S., including my town, the incumbent local exchange carrier has a 100% monopoly on wireline communications. The telcos also act as a cartel, colluding to avoid competition across their franchise areas. The telephone company utilities have monopolies that Microsoft can only dream of.
Google isn't talking about filing suit over local telecommunications, they're talking about the internet backbone, where there is no one near having a monopoly. I say iy never happens, and is just another ruse by Google to keep their stock artificially inflated.
Wrong again. Google has acquired it's own fiber network to backhaul their traffic.
The dispute between Google and the telcos is centered on the "last mile" from the local wire center to the customer premises. The telcos are trying to prevent Google and other competitors from offering video services that would compete against their nascent IPTV services.
Net nuetrality like Google wants is not confined to "last mile", whatever made you think it was?
Tell you what, just ping me if your imaginary anti-trust suit against anyone who doesn't have a monopoly ever happpens. Thanks.
Sorry about the spelling and typos, I'm on a cell phone today, there's so many types of ISP's these days...
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