The Wall Street Journal has a piece today on how phone and cable companies are reining in customers’ Internet usage, with the not-so-coincidental byproduct of blocking IP-based competitive activities such as VoIP and video file-sharing. The article, penned by Peter Grant and Jesse Drucker, hones in on the central conundrum of the Web 2.0 era: unfettered use of bandwidth can chew up network resources but limiting that use can block competition.
Vodafone and Verizon Wireless have provisions in their contracts that customers can’t use their high-speed wireless networks for VoIP services, ostensibly because the two partners fear bandwidth crippling. “We don’t want people clogging up the network,” Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace says in the article.
Cable R&D consortium CableLabs contends that 18% of all traffic on cable high-speed networks comes from file-sharing service BitTorrent.
But phone and cable companies, the main broadband conduits in the home, have the power to cut off promising new competitive voice and video services by mickeying with bandwidth usage or by simply out and out barring alternative service usage. And some of the seemingly “neutral” solutions — charging customers more for more bandwidth-intensive services or giving these high-bandwidth competitors lower packet priority — don’t seem much better.
Time Warner Cable is considering several ways of controlling the traffic on its network, Mr. Lajoie says. The operator might simply give video file-sharing traffic a lower priority than other traffic so that it slows down first during periods of peak usage. Or it might restrict the flow of bits to a particular user’s computer if the usage is too heavy. Time Warner Cable may also charge heavy users more if they want preferred treatment. “Revenue opportunities…definitely exist,” Mr. Lajoie says.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:05 AM|Comments(1)
It grieves me to say that the Central American nation of Belize has just joined the ranks of those nationalized telephone service providers that are blocking even private pc2phone services. In their greed, they have cut communication from thousands of people who, with an average annual income of $3,600, cannot afford to pay these greedy despots several dollars per minute to call their loved ones in another country.
Then they have the nerve to either steal the revenue or sell the now-protected monopoly to private companies for pennies on the dollar and pocket a kickback.
The internet (and for that matter the wires and air it travels along) belongs to the people and it is quietly being stolen, piece by piece.
How many new ways can the tyrants think of to injure the poor of Central America. My prayer is that some outraged techie will help us take VOIP back.
In His Service
A Missionary
Posted by: jim coons at August 31, 2006 7:50 PM
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