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| Tuesday, April 17, 2007 |
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There's a pattern here 
What Net do we want?
| | I don't know for sure, but I suspect the answer may well lie in an extension of last week's column about net neutrality. In that column I explained that the big broadband ISPs were apparently preparing to offer tiered levels of service and at this point it is a matter of flipping a switch, with the result that Comcast's VoIP might suddenly work a LOT better than Vonage's VoIP, which is to say my fax line. |
| | Well it turns out that I may have, in this case, actually understated the problem. Readers claim that some -- who knows, maybe ALL -- big broadband ISPs are ALREADY running tiered services. |
| | "I used to work at Time-Warner Cable's Road Runner High Speed HQ," wrote one reader, "and as of 2005, TWC marked all VoIP packets with the TOS bit turned to 1. TWC has 5 levels of priority, VoIP having the highest, router tables second, commercial services 3rd, Road Runner consumer 4th and everything else is classified as 'best effort'." |
| | In the strictest sense, this is perfectly in keeping with my point from last week that having a native VoIP service changes the rules of the game when it comes to net neutrality because VoIP in this case is a PHONE service, not an INTERNET service and is therefore not restricted from QoS prioritization. But what about those other service levels? They generally have to do with Internet services and so ought to come under the net neutrality rules. |
| | THERE ARE NO NET NEUTRALITY RULES. |
| | I went to one of my smartest, best-informed, and most cynical friends who has a long career making these networks work and he wrote, "Well, there are no Net Neutrality rules/laws in place (yet). Correct? So, they can do anything they want, right? Besides, your point about why your fax doesn't work on Vonage may be explained..." |
| | I have a lot to say about this, but not a lot of time. |
| | The short of it is this: As long as we understand the Net as what Jay Sulzberger calls "some bundle of services delivered by the Telephone Company and/or the Cable Company", we'll not only never have Net Neutrality, but not even a conclusive conversation about it. |
| | We also can't have a productive conversation about it if we start with a regulatory conclusion and work our way back to businees from there. |
| | Here's a frame that may help: The Net is the best platform for free enterprise ever created. How do we help get that built out for everybody? I suggest that we've barely started, and that what Cringely gets from Comcast (and what most of us get from whatever company provides it) is still just an early prototype. |
| | [Later...] By the way, given the way fax works (modulating data on an analog phone line) and the way VoIP works (compressing voice on a data connection), I'm not sure what's being attempted here is workable at all, whether or not the last-mile carrier is being "neutral". |
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