Media mogul, sports team owner, film producer and HDnet honcho Mark Cuban posted this item yesterday titled “Hey baby Bells and Cable, we need multiple tiers of service.” Cuban argues in favor of the much-debated two-tiered Internet model being pushed by broadband providers (the telcos in particular…cable operators are wisely taking a low-profile on this issue), saying in essence that there’s only so much bandwidth to go around and not all Internet applications are created equal.
Cuban pulls out that old analogy of the Internet as a highway and says that without prioritization, traffic jams will inevitably occur.
standard definition video, high definition video, home movies in DV and eventually HDV, multiple megabit photos the more bandwidth we consume. The more PCs and servers we backup online, the more Web2.0 applications we use , the more new database applications come online, the more bandwidth we consume. The more bandwidth we consume, the more internet traffic jams we have. The more internet traffic jams we have, the worse our internet applications perform.
To make his case he uses telemedicine as an example — ensuring that health-related Internet transmissions flow uninterrupted is more important than delivering video entertainment.
I would rather have little Johnnys grandma getting priority for her video checkup with the doctor at the hospital over little Johnny getting his bandwidth to upload the video of the prank he pulled on his buddy..
Cuban’s out-and-out embrace of a tiered Internet has sparked a lot of commentary, most of it critical of Cuban. My favorite line is from Jeff Pulver:
Maybe, there are multiple-tiers of Mark Cuban, and maybe this blog posting came from one of the lower tiers.
The reality, however, is that Cuban is absolutely right. No matter how much we would like for broadband networks to have limitless capacity and totally unhindered transmissions, there is no denying the fact that sooner or later with all the video and file-sharing and advanced applications rising on the web, traffic jams will occur. What’s causing all the polarization on this issue is the undeniable fact that it is in the best interest of broadband providers to advocate a tiered Internet.
Creating different classes of Internet transmissions — and charging third-parties extra for certain types of content and delivery — will no doubt give phone companies and cable operators the ability to act as gatekeepers and extract duopoly profits, all the while discriminating in favor of their own services and applications. This undesirable outcome, however, does not negate the unavoidable engineering reality that Cuban underscores.
Opponents of a tiered Internet model can’t simply deny reality and wish away network limitations by adopting an inflexible “no way” posture. By doing so, they are playing into the hands of cable operators and phone companies, who are far craftier and more powerful, and on this question have the added advantage of being right. Some system of prioritization is inevitable. The real question is not if a tiered Internet model occurs, but how it is implemented. Network neutrality proponents had better have a seat at the table when that system is being devised.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:09 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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