IP Democracy: Is the Set-Top the Next Net Neutrality Battleground?

(New Orleans, LA) The issue of net neutrality is once again red hot but the debate might jump to an entirely new, more complicated level once cable operators implement an interactive TV technology called Tru2Way. The advent of Tru2Way, which envisions, among other things, the adoption of Internet-connected TV set-top devices called DOCSIS set-top gateways (or DSGs), could spark questions about whether the principles of an open Internet apply to TV sets as much as they do to network-connected PCs.

During a session focused on Tru2Way here today, moderator Leslie Ellis asked a panel of top cable technologists whether consumers would be free to download their own set-top applications (she specifically mentioned an interactive electronic programming guide) from the Internet once the DSGs are in place. All of the operators on the panel said that customers might be able to run their own, Internet-downloaded applications via the DSGs, but one thing's for sure: it's not clear when that would happen or to what extent that would happen.

"At the end of the day…it’s about doing what’s best for our customers," said James Kelso, VP of Video Engineering at Cox Communications. "How can we make the experience for our customers be the richest it can be? I think we have to make it available so that they can go to what’s adjacent to what we have to offer," Sherisse Hawkins, VP of Software Engineering at Time Warner Cable said.

"If there is a better [program guide] that makes sense for our customers, we want to give them access to it," Sree Kotay, Chief Software Architect at Comcast said. "We’re going to let people go out [on the open Internet] but probably not initially," he added.

The only non-cable operator on the panel was a lot stronger in asserting that sooner or later the set-top would give consumers unfettered access to Internet applications for their TV set. "The skills that people need to be able to move into things that that aren’t just handed to them on a platter in a walled garden" is what Tru2Way is all about, Bill Sheppard, Chief Digital Media Officer at Sun Microsystems said. "At some point having the ability to access a richer palate of applications is going to be important to the operator."

Later, however, Comcast's Kotay clarified that at least initially, the DSGs won't give consumers access to the Internet. For one thing, the Tru2Way device won't have a generic browser, he said. Approved set-top applications could have the ability to go out on the Internet, but individual customers wouldn't be able to surf the web or download non-approved applications.

To allow open Internet connectivity on the Tru2Way devices invites problems for the network. "The biggest thing we've worried about is what this [Tru2Way] does to the [network] environment." Applications will be hand picked until enough time has passed so that cable feels comfortable that the network won't be harmed. "We would probably allow only certain things until we get comfortable with it," he said.

Hackers won't be able to devise their own means of installing browsers on the new boxes because network management policies will prohibit this kind of modification. Customer-downloaded browsers are "a little trickier than that because there's still network management in the middle of that [between the Internet and the set-top.]

Even later, in a second interview with Kotay and a group of Comcast executives, Kotay said that consumer access to the Internet via Tru2Way devices is really a moot point in the early stages of the technology's deployment because initially the connections will be capped at 256 kbps due to system bandwidth constraints. Moreover, DSG technology was never designed to deliver consumer-level Internet connectivity, Dick Green, CEO of industry R&D consortium CableLabs told me. "It's a different kind of channel than you would use for the Internet," Green said.

Still, "all applications on the box have to signed by the MSOs," Kotay said, signalling that during the earliest stages of Internet-connected cable TV services, the closed approach will reign, something that could spark the ire of pro-network neutrality advocates down the road. Kotay likened the Tru2Way platform to Apple's iPhone architecture, which initially was closed to all third-party applications and even today bars any browser aside from the Safari platform that Apple has sanctioned.

Over time, perhaps in five or so years, the situation could change. (Most cable operators plan to start deploying Tru2Way by the end of 2008, with company-wide rollouts in 2009.) The mobile phone industry in the U.S. is just now coming to grips with the need for openness, and cable is about ten years behind the mobile business, Kotay said.

In any event, the development of the Internet is still unpredictable and it's too soon to say much of anything about even plain-old Internet access much less the TV-connected kind. "It's way too early to project what the Interent will look like," Kotay said.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 18, 2008 4:34 PM to IP Democracy