David Hatch has an interesting piece in the National Journal’s Tech Daily about last-minute efforts by the incumbent telcos to rescue a provision in pending House legislation that would permit broadband providers to impose fees on content and applications providers who want high-quality Internet service through-put. Even though the draft language by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans contains network neutrality requirements, those requirements don’t apply to “premium” tiers of high-speed service.
Therefore, if a content or application provider wants higher-speed, higher quality delivery to the customer, some kind of access payment would apply. What’s interesting is not this issue — it’s been widely reported — but a statement by an AT&T spokesman, one which hints at a possible new tack by the telcos in resolving to their favor the net neutrality fight.
“Our IP [Internet protocol] video service is not the same thing as the Internet,” AT&T spokesman Mike Balmoris said. He said AT&T would permit unfettered access on the Internet portion of its network.
This distinction between “the Internet” and IP video could be the next nuance in the broadband providers’ fight for the right to pick and choose among IP-based applications. By dubbing video-based services as “not the Internet,” or by creating different tiers on the network (i.e. the Internet tier, the IP video tier, maybe, even, the VoIP tier), broadband providers have a better chance of crafting network neutrality rules that nonetheless ensure their abilities to discriminate among the most problematic new IP-based services, namely those that entail video.
My favorite quote, though, comes from lobbyist Herschel Abbott:
“If Google wants to make an investment in the network, they can jolly well make an investment,” added Herschel Abbott, a lobbyist with BellSouth.
Cynthia Brumfield at 9:22 AM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
