Category: Internet Neutrality

AT&T Weighs In

I couldn’t have said this any better myself.

Now that we’re going from wired to wireless, these same folks don’t want “the open Web” to happen to them again all over again. If they have to compete in an open marketplace, with the best applications and services on neutral ground, well, they’ll just be consigned, once again, to a commodity service layer with low margins. That’s their greatest nightmare.

Be sure to check out this short but insightful post: AT&T Weighs In: Trust Us, We Know What You Want – John Battelle’s Searchblog.

The skinny on Google + Verizon

Google released the details of their talks with Verizon (Google Public Policy Blog: A joint policy proposal for an open Internet).  On the whole their proposal doesn’t sound all that bad. There is, however, one potentially dangerous point:

Fifth, we want the broadband infrastructure to be a platform for innovation. Therefore, our proposal would allow broadband providers to offer additional, differentiated online services, in addition to the Internet access and video services such as Verizon’s FIOS TV offered today.

At a glance, this sounds perfectly reasonable.  Yet, what this might effectively do is create a system of multiple networks–or multiple internets.  One of the greatest strengths of the Internet is the fact that it’s one big happy network (though admittedly less happy along the backbone where peering can be problematic).  Assuming that these innovative networks interconnect with the greater internet, we may end up right back where we started: with companies that run the wires in ways that are best for the bottom line. I’m not that convinced that’s the best way to run the network.

Edit: Looks as though I largely agree with Public Knowledge’s take on the situation.

Hopefully not as bad as it sounds

Google and Verizon in Talks on Selling Internet Priority – NYTimes.com.

Google and Verizon are discussing an agreement where Google would pay for preferential treatment on Verizon’s network. I hope Google has some larger strategy that we aren’t seeing here, because this could set an extraordinarily bad precedent.

Gigi B. Sohn, president and a founder of Public Knowledge, makes a great point: “The fate of the Internet is too large a matter to be decided by negotiations involving two companies, even companies as big as Verizon and Google.”

Internet TV for couch potatos

One of my favorite blogs that doesn’t often make it to posts here is OSNews. Their editor, Eugenia, takes on an issue that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately–Internet TV (The Next Big Tech Battleground: the TV).

She starts out by stating, “I’m a couch potato.” Aren’t we all?

Eugenia’s experience with her PS3 with Netflix and Hulu Plus leads her to believe that the best way forward is to bake this kind of functionality into televisions.

I get all these movies, shows, documentaries that make me want to ditch my Comcast box (which costs me a whopping $90 per month for the HD channels and DVR — and that’s without the movie channels or HBO). The only thing that’s missing from the new experience is Live TV (e.g. sports). But if a “smart” platform reaches our TVs, that lets you run applications, and have access to Netflix/Hulu/etc. content via their native applications for that platform, then Live TV will be inevitable.

I’m not sure whether I agree or disagree with that specific point, but I think her target of “the couch potato” is very illustrative.

Most online media platforms (Google, Boxee, and to a lesser degree Hulu and Netflix) are structured more towards searching for online videos as opposed to just delivering them. To a couch potato, that sounds like work.

Digital Video Recorders are similar technology that has taken off smashingly well. It is easy to use a DVR.  They fit the way television programming is structured — it’s simple to record an episode or series, and every series is packaged together in easily navigable folders.  Internet TV doesn’t even come close.

Eugenia ends on a very insightful note:

The only real obstacle in the kind of future I present in this article are Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. These companies make big business over their cable TV solutions, and it’s unfortunate that they’re also internet providers. Do you really think that Comcast will let you stream this highly competitive content over their network? I didn’t think so. It’d be like committing business suicide. …

So it all comes down to net neutrality. If this much-discussed law passes, at last, eventually our TVs will get revolutionized. Maybe it will take a few more years for all the TV manufacturers to settle down to the same platform, but it will happen.

I agree!