Today’s editorial on Internet regulation in the LA Times is the best one yet from the MSM. They focus on traffic priorities, the key regulatory issue:
Cable operators already divide their wires into two sections: one for prioritized data, which is used for television and related services, and another for Internet access. As phone companies add capacity to their networks, they should be able to take a similar path.
This approach is also consistent with what Internet users expect when they sign up for broadband. Having paid a premium for better Internet access, they don’t want their broadband provider cutting deals that could put their favorite sites at the tail end of the pipe. Meanwhile, Web-based companies shouldn’t be forced to pay more just to continue delivering the experience they deliver today.
Unfortunately, that’s not the route taken by the House earlier this month when it passed a bill to make it easier for phone companies to offer cable TV-like services. The Senate Commerce Committee is about to take up an even less attractive alternative that would provide a weak guarantee of users’ rights but no protection for websites against discrimination by broadband providers.
That last paragraph is wrong, however. On today’s cable system, TV, telephone, and Internet all move in separate bands, where they don’t interfere with each other (the technique is “frequency-division multiplexing” or FDM). On a single-frequency fiber, this is accomplished by “time-division multiplexing” (TDM) which may be implemented in a couple of ways, one of which uses priorities to gain great efficiencies (this technique is central to the Internet’s transport system.) Congress doesn’t have the power to change this, but new technology can, if it’s really a good idea.
The regulations promoted by the Google-backed coalition can be read in such a way that TDM is illegal, and that would do great harm to everybody.
Google’s main concern is protection from transport fees, and eBay’s is protection of its Skype service from technically superior offerings using priorities. These special interests should not dominate future regulations, especially as they’ve been sold on a number of false premises.
The Internet is much less neutral than they claim, and killing priority traffic doesn’t “protect free speech”. Traffic management at this level is a question of milliseconds, something the typical web surfer is unlikely to notice.
Richard, would net neutrality legislation prohibit the cable companies from reserving a frequency band for their broadcast video services? If not, could the cable companies reserve such a large amount of bandwidth that there would not be enough bandwidth left to handle IPTV? Or, alternatively, if permitted to charge QoS fees, could the cable companies charge QoS fees that were so high that no one could pay for them? As a result, wouldn’t broadcast video be available on the cable network only from the cable companies? Who would pay for jittery IPTV when you can get clean HD from the cable company?
Similarly, if the telecoms are permitted to charge QoS fees, could they charge QoS fees for IPTV that were so high that no one could pay for them, leaving the telecoms’ broadcast video services as the only real option on the telecom network?
If we are left with broadcast video services from only the cable companies or the telecoms, who–other than maybe the cable companies and telecoms–will invest in IPTV? No one else would be able to broadcast video effectively. Won’t that conduct slow innovation down and restrict broadcast video options for consumers?
It seems to me that IPTV could revolutionize broadcast video, but that revolution could be put squashed by the telecoms and cable companies. And waiting for corrective government action while that happens could be painful… (However, our affinity for Tivo, DVRs and Video On Demand could mean that we care less about live broadcast and are happy to transition to a world where we download video files.)
The Shaw Communications example where they are offering enhanced QoS for VoIP is an interesting development that might suggest that my concerns above are merely concerns. It seems that Shaw can offer QoS or not offer it. Offering QoS gives consumers another option that they did not have before. In fact, the availability of QoS probably makes independent VoIP providers more competitive because some consumers, who would use VoIP only with enhanced QoS, will start using independent VoIP instead of Shaw’s voice services. (This assumes that the QoS fees are not so high as to price VoIP with QoS out of the market.)
Thoughts?
I’m not sure what you’re asking/suggesting.
Theoretically, this is a possibility, However it’s not very practical eg, the bandwidth requirements for video are clearly defined in MPEG standards.
It’s also worth noting that IPTV, in order to scale effectively and handle oversubscription
will require an extensive multicast infrastructure, something that doesn’t exist on the Internet beyond research projects.
Your assuming that QoS is the only thing keeping someone back from starting their own IPTV network to compete with the Telecos. Lets turn the tables and ask What if the Teleco’s content provider (usually another company or consortium altogether) required exclusive rights to a Teleco’s customer base? These agreements usually work both ways, and Telco’s don’t own the content.
QoS, right now, is only sucessfully manageable with on net traffic. (Eg, where one entity controls or manages the network from end to end.) Combined with any multicast restrictions, This would mean that any IPTV offering, if not from the Telco’s themselves, would also need to be a customer of that telco.
QoS fees, as they are applied to business Internet and IP traffic, are not unreasonable. Regulators have access to this information, and can pretty easily determine when your service provider is being unreasonable or engaging in predatory pricing.
This is obviously one distribution system that looks reasonable from a technology and networking perspective. However, Content providers probably won’t go for it for legal and regulatory reasons (Issues with “rebroadcasting”, DRM, etc.) If you think the MPAA , RIAA et. al. are insane when they freak out about simply being able to copy DVDs, imagine what sort of problems they’ll have with this distribution system.
Basically, the Telco’s aren’t the problem at this point, the Content Companies are. It’s the same reason you’ll never see a Network DVR in the USA anytime soon.