The Doc Searls Weblog : Sunday, January 22, 2006

Sunday, January 22, 2006

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Sunday, January 22, 2006
started 1/22/2006; 8:16:58 PM - last post 1/23/2006; 6:53:29 AM

Doc Searls - Sunday, January 22, 2006

1/23/2006; 12:16:58 AM (reads: 6956, responses: 3)

Call it Gissel

Lessig: The Anti-Lessig Reader Wiki. I've created a wiki for work critical of my own work. It's here.

[Later...] I just corrected the original (mis)spelling of the headline, thanks to alert reader Markus Pirchner.

Google to BellSouth: Go Tier Yourself a New One

Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing:

Google has rebuffed to an outrageous demand by BellSouth, in which the phone company proposed to charge Google for access to its customers. Bill Smith of Bell South told reporters that he wanted "to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc." Google has responded with an unequivocal no -- a flat refusal to pay blood-money to carriers to keep them from discriminating against its services. Honestly, what the hell is BellSouth thinking? The whole point of an ISP is that it delivers the same packets as every other ISP; anything else is substandard.

BellSouth wasn't thinking. They were doing what big carriers usually do, which is look for ways to make big money with tiered service to big customers. Dumb, perhaps, in this case; but predictable.

Cory's linked source was Preston Gralla's Google: We Won't Pay Broadband Cyberextortion in Networking Pipeline. Preston wrote,

Google told Networking Pipeline's Paul Kapustka in no uncertain terms that it won't give in to the cyberextortion. And despite reports to the contrary, Google says, it isn't talking with any carriers about the issue.

Google's Barry Schnitt told Paul in an email: "Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations."

Also from Preston at Networking Pipeline, Broadband Users: Feds Should Ban Cyberextortion:

Hard on the heels of Google saying it won't pay cyberextortion to BellSouth, Verizon, SBC and others, comes a survey that says consumers are worried that Internet providers may block access to Net services -- and the feds should take action.

The survey, released by a coalition of consumer groups including the Consumer Federation of America, FreePress, and Consumers Union, found that more than 75 percent of Internet users polled worry that they won't be able to freely choose an Internet service provider or fear they will have to pay twice for some Internet services.

Some 70 percent fear that Internet providers may block or impair access to Internet services or sites, such as VoIP. And fifty-four percent want Congress to take action to ban Internet providers from engaging in the practices.

My only quibble, as always, is with the term "consumer", which is nearly always a degraded form of "customer".

We don't just consume broadband. We use it. We pay for it (meaning we're customers) More importantly, we now also produce on it. All of blogging is production, not consumption. So is everything you see on the Web.

As I've often said before, there's plenty of money in helping the millions, even billions, of producers out there. Far more than in extorting a few extra bux, along with a few extra lawsuits, out of Google and Yahoo.

And no, I'm not playing word policeman when I bust people for using the word "consumer". I'm plaing economist.

The most important economic fact about the Net, is that it allows billions of people to produce as well as consume, and to participate in countless markets, in ways and to degrees that were never before possible.

There's money in helping that along. Lots of it.

That's where the carriers should be looking for the future. Not in pissing off those same people, along with the large producers already doing a good job of serving this new market environment.

[Later...] Tim Bray just pointed me to The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet, in the Washington Post. The writer says the issue is "a matter of heated debate on obscure blogs and among analysts like me".

If this guy is an analyst, why is he saying this?

Whether or not you agree with Whitacre, you can understand his frustration. Companies like Google and Yahoo pay some fees to connect to their servers to the Internet, but AT&T will collect little if any additional revenue when Yahoo starts offering new features that take up lots of bandwidth on the Internet. When Yahoo's millions of customers download huge blocks of video or play complex video games, AT&T ends up carrying that increased digital traffic without additional financial compensation.

If Yahoo and Google need more bandwith, they pay for it. Simple as that.

[Still later...] Washington Post screws up, by Tim Bray, who writes,

While the details of the deals by which the big boys buy bandwidth are closely-guarded secrets, the notion that any of them can dramatically increase their net traffic without paying for it, that notion is just wacko. I've sent Christopher Stern, the author, an email, but this silliness is already on the streets of Washington in a few hundred thousand dead-tree instances. The difference between blogs and the mainstream media is that when we screw up, we can mostly repair the damage.

discuss

nickh - Re: Sunday, January 22, 2006

1/23/2006; 8:57:27 AM (reads: 1222, responses: 1)

One of the things that bothers me about this argument is that Bell South and Verizon, AREN'T EVEN TEIR 1 internet providers. That means their connectivity is not relevant to the running of the internet as a whole. They aren't doing any of the real internet traffic heavy lifting (OC-192, DWDM carrier to carrier type stuff). Take a handy look at this list of backbone providers:

http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx?Login=Y&Username=public&Password=public

These are the companies who's peering (traffic exchange agreements) in the US drive the internet. When Verizon, or Bell South say they are going to meter access, they mean meter / degrade it to their end points, i.e... the customers who are already paying for DSL service. Which in fact means that the pipe has ALREADY been paid for. I can't stress this enough: The only traffic that Bell South and Verizon carry from Google, Yahoo, et all... IS TRAFFIC THAT IS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED BY PAYING CUSTOMERS.

Frankly AT&T / SBC is the only one that we need to be concerned about on this list, however, peering with AT&T is such a nightmare to pure traffic players, they might be content not having to deal with them.

Google and company should get together, and blackhole the Verizon, Bell South IP blocks for a day or two... We'll see how quickly the telcos change their minds then.

discuss

Hamish MacEwan - Re: Sunday, January 22, 2006

1/23/2006; 10:53:29 AM (reads: 1240, responses: 0)

This is a "pipes" dream from BellSouth. They assert that Google, Yahoo et al, "deliver" their goods over BellSouth's pipes, and thus must pay.

So far so good.

Of course, as everyone not a Telco knows, things are not delivered to Internet customers, they are *requested* by the customer who pays for that service from BellSouth (substitute your Telco of choice, we have a microcosm of this debacle in NZ at present). Google, or any other website, server, etc. is irrelevant, they make their own arrangements independent of other users of the Internet.

It is this decoupling, and the autonomous networks structure of the Internet that is one of its critical advantages. If the customer wants better performance, they pay for it.

How was Bellsouth proposing to impair the performance of Yahoo! vs Google anyway? Kneecapping packets as they entered Bellsouth's portion of the Internet?

As for that analyst, I agree with your assessment, after all the more bandwidth consuming applications Google and Yahoo! create, the better reason BellSouth's *actual* customers will have to buy/pay more. You'd almost expect BellSouth to encourage producers, but with so much going wrong for the incumbents, you could almost feel sorry for them, almost.

Old bloated incumbents in any number of distribution industries are circling the wagons, spinning, and invoking the power of the State to protect their business plans, or in the specific case of legacy "last mile" delivery monopolies, using their market dominance to extort payment from both halves of the transaction, even when one half *isn't* their customer.

The other perjorative term I would use for this behaviour is "defection" and the organisations that do it, "defective." They are defecting from the co-operative underpinning of the Internet that supports the competitive efforts of thousands, not a few who benefit from being around for a long time...

discuss

Doc Searls - Re: Sunday, January 22, 2006

1/23/2006; 10:12:57 PM (reads: 889, responses: 0)

This is really interesting.

Can you tell us, however, exactly how peering with AT&T is a nightmare? What's different about them?

I've got to learn more about this whole business. Same with the rest of us. The stakes are so high we can't afford not to.

Thanks!

discuss

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