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Saturday, February 3, 2007
Fighting terror with your fingertips 
| | Steve Safran: The Boston bomb scare could have been averted with a keyboard. Also, The Boston bomb scare was a one-way story. The police and media told Boston what was going on. If it had been a conversation, a two-way discussion online, the audience could have told Boston what was happening instead. |
Speaking of DC,
Thread drift
| | The unrelenting growth in Internet traffic in 2007 may overwhelm the Internet's backbone; the terabit-cable pipes connecting continents will reach capacity and ISPs will not be prepared to pay for extra bandwidth because consumers will be unwilling to pay increased costs. |
| | The threat to available capacity will be driven by the number of Internet users continuing to grow, and the exponential increase in the transmission of video files. This threat could raise questions about the long-term commercial viability of broadband provision, unless a satisfactory solution can be found to the issues of monetizing the growing usage to fund future growth, without disenfranchising customers. |
| | While this is probably not going to come to a head in 2007, these issues loom on the horizon because the investment in core infrastructure is not keeping pace with the usage and demand, said Openshaw. The growth in demand for video delivered over the Internet in particular, one of Deloitte's other predictions, as well as IPTV, will be a major contributor to excess capacity being absorbed. |
| | Uncertainty over potential network neutrality requirements is one of the major factors delaying necessary network upgrades. The proponents of such regulations are back on the offensive, heartened by sympathetic new Democratic majorities and the concession made by AT&T ...in its BellSouth ... acquisition. The Google/MoveOn.org coalition fighting for network neutrality mandates calls itself "Save the Internet." But the Internet doesn't need to be saved--it needs to be improved, expanded and bulked up. An attempt to "save" the Internet in its current state would be something akin to saving the telegraph from the telephone. |
| | "We're proud to join with other leading free market and faith-based organizations to ensure that the Internet remains driven by the free market, not by Washington bureaucrats and politicians," said Jason Wright, president of the Institute for Liberty and IFC co-director... |
| | What the users like MoveOn want is the so-called net neutrality legislation, which would require all Web sites to continue to be treated equally. |
| | While that may appear to many to be a desirable move, the conservative groups warn that it would open the door to U.S. government regulation of the Internet, allowing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use this likely popular issue to sink its claws into the currently unfettered Internet. |
| | As Karl notes at Broadband Reports, Deloitte & Touche's actual capacity prediction can be found here, but they make no mention of network neutrality law fears as the primary reason for the crunch -- instead stating companies aren't increasing capacity "because consumers will be unwilling to pay increased costs."* |
| | Nothing wrong with pro-market, pro-freedom, pro-business groups (or anybody) fighting Net Neutrality legislation. But there's plenty wrong with the blind eyes these groups are casting toward the regulatory situation as it already exists. |
| | Fact is, the FCC's claws are already sunk to their knuckes in the Internet, the carriers have fettered the Net's "last mile" from the beginning (even as they have increased capacity), and the markets for both transport and services have never been free from Washington bureaucrats or politicians. |
| | And plenty of capacity is being added anyway. |
| | That's what I gathered yesterday morning in a meeting with folks from Cox Communications, our primary local cable TV and Internet carrier. Joining the meeting by teleconference were two top technical officials from Cox's headquarters in Atlanta. The company shared with us its plans to roll out additional capacity, nationwide and in communities such as ours, in constant anticipation of market demand. They talked about the billions they have spent and will continue to spend upgrading capacities from backbones to back yards. They spoke enthusiastically about the future and their plans to do well with it. The term "Network Neutrality" was not mentioned once. Nor was there talk of customers' unwillingness to pay for more capacity. Nor of any regulatory constrainst on their ability to innovate. |
| | We should all working toward a regulatory environment that opens both the transport and services markets to more competition. We need that environment to respect the market's need for pure Internet connectivity that isn't subordinated to TV and telephony. We need to encourage Net infrastructure investment at the local as well as national levels. We need to see past "triple play" (phone, video, Net) and "quad play" (phone, video, Net, mobile) to "plays" for millions of new businesses that can only grow on sturdy and widespread high-capacity Net infrastructure. How do we develop that vision? |
| | Not by following the customary partisan playbooks, that's for sure. |
| | The web page you link to isn't the full D & T Telecom Report, it's a summary. If you read the full report, you'll find two pages on net neutrality including this: "Balancing the two sides of [the network neutrality] debate is likely to remain challenging. Both sides have merit; both have their flaws. Clearly, something has to change in the economics of Internet access such that network operators and ISPs can continue to invest in new infrastructure and maintain service quality, and consumers can continue to enjoy the Internet as they know it today. (page 7, section titled The Network Neutrality Debate Needs Resolution.) |
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