Saturday, December 03, 2005
BellSouth: Priority Service is not Discrimination
Fresh on the heels of SBC/AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre's comment that Google, MSN and Vonage want to, "use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them . . . these people who use these pipes [have] to pay," BellSouth has copped a similar attitude. The Washington Post reports that BellSouth CTO William L. Smith thinks that BellSouth
Discrimination is discrimination! Both SBC and BellSouth have announced they will discriminate! This is a wake-up call. Any Freedom to Connect language in the next telecom act WILL NEED TEETH.
. . . should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.Illustrating how generic Network Neutrality language might be is-ised out of existence, Smith
. . . was quick to say that Internet service providers should not be able to block or discriminate against Web content or services by degrading their performance . . . Rather, he said, a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy.This is simply marketing language. Companies implementing price discrimination find that if they frame it as boosting prices, customers (and reporters) react negatively. But if they talk about a sale, everybody loves them. So Smith speaks of boosting performance rather than degrading it.
Discrimination is discrimination! Both SBC and BellSouth have announced they will discriminate! This is a wake-up call. Any Freedom to Connect language in the next telecom act WILL NEED TEETH.
Technorati Tags: F2C, ILEC, NetworkNeutrality, OpenAccess, Regulatorium
Comments:
David
Spent some time over the weekend gathering a few "Google Threads" or links.
Might "Cringely" have some interesting points ?
I posted a few at :
http://google-stuff.blogspot.com/2005/12/google-gameplan.html
Way behind on many tasks here, trying to keep up.
Keep up the good work(s)
Ciao
Chip
Spent some time over the weekend gathering a few "Google Threads" or links.
Might "Cringely" have some interesting points ?
I posted a few at :
http://google-stuff.blogspot.com/2005/12/google-gameplan.html
Way behind on many tasks here, trying to keep up.
Keep up the good work(s)
Ciao
Chip
It seems to me that ISPs have been offering this sort of pay-to-play prioritization for years, ever since Akamai et al started putting servers right in their networks to give better performance to Akamai customers than to others.
The real difference is extending this to IP QoS, rather than redirecting to a nearby server. But I'm not at all surprised, nor as appalled as you -- I suppose I see this sort of thing as inevitable.
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The real difference is extending this to IP QoS, rather than redirecting to a nearby server. But I'm not at all surprised, nor as appalled as you -- I suppose I see this sort of thing as inevitable.
