Re: [ga] All future names should be sponsored

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Forwarded from the ISOC-NY list:

Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster
Internet
Major site owners oppose 2-tier system

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff  |  December 13, 2005

AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol
Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet,
where the telecom carriers' own Internet services
would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than
those of their competitors.

The proposal is certain to provoke a major fight with
Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc., and
Microsoft Corp., the powerful owners of popular
Internet sites. The companies fear such a move would
give telecommunications companies too much control
over a fast-growing part of the Internet.

The battle is largely over video services. Several
major telecom 
companies are working on ways to deliver
broadcast-quality television over the Internet.
Currently, online video can be slow to download and
choppy to watch, even with higher-speed Internet
services.

The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would
allow 
telecommunications carriers to offer their own
advanced Internet video services to their customers,
while rival firms' online video offerings would be
transmitted at lower speed and with poorer image
quality.

AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a
premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet.
The companies could also charge websites a premium to
offer their video to consumers on the higher-speed
Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo
might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to
AT&T subscribers.

The prospect of a tiered Internet with ''regular" and
''premium" 
broadband services is spawning fierce debate as
Congress takes up a major overhaul of telecom
regulations. The House of Representatives last month
held hearings on a preliminary draft by two GOP
congressmen, Joe Barton of Texas and Fred Upton of
Michigan, that would give the telecom companies the
freedom to establish premium broadband services. The
telecom bill is due for action early next year.

A change along these lines would be different from the
way the Internet has operated. ''The Internet model
has been that carriers cannot interfere with the
choices that consumers make," said Alan Davidson,
Google's Washington policy counsel.

Google is fighting the proposal, along with other
large Internet 
companies including Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. They
fear they may have to pay telecoms millions of dollars
to gain access to customers who use the premium
Internet services. In addition, they argue, many small
Internet start-ups would be unable to pay the fees,
which could reduce consumer choice.

''Some of the most valuable new services won't be
competitive," 
Davidson said.

The telecom companies said that since they are
spending billions of dollars to build new fiber-optic
networks that can carry more data, they are entitled
to give their own offerings the bulk of Internet
bandwidth, and to charge others for higher-speed
access.

''When costs are being driven into an equation, they
have to be 
recovered somewhere," said Bill Smith, chief
technology officer of BellSouth. ''Why do fundamental
business economics not apply to the Internet?"

Bill McCluskey , director of media relations for
BellSouth, said the premium plan would boost profits
and encourage higher-speed broadband network
deployment. ''The more we are able to make, the faster
we will be able to roll out high-speed Internet to 100
percent of our customers," he said.

Verizon Communications Inc., one of the biggest
Boston-area Internet service providers, did not return
calls seeking comment.

Telecom companies like AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon
use a technology called DSL to provide high-speed
Internet access to about 16 million US subscribers --
mostly homes and small businesses. Cable TV companies
like Comcast Corp. have invaded the telecoms' main
business, telephone service. The telecoms want to
strike back by offering Internet-based television.
They want to offer all the programs now available on
cable, as well as movie and game trailers, and
full-length films.

But standard Internet service is ill-suited to TV
distribution. Video signals have to arrive in a steady
stream, but all Internet messages are made up of tiny
data packets that travel over the network, and are
reassembled at their destinations. Often these packets
arrive out of order, or are delayed by a few seconds.
This doesn't matter with e-mail or Web pages, but
would ruin a TV broadcast or degrade the quality of an
Internet phone call.

The solution is to tag the TV or telephone packets
with codes that give them a higher priority on the
network. These packets would be delivered more
quickly, ensuring a sharp picture and clear sound. The
telecoms must build additional network capacity to
handle these large, tagged files.

Most content providers want equal access to the
premium, higher-speed bandwidth, while telecom
carriers want the right to treat this premium pipeline
as a private Internet. In addition to exclusive voice
and video services, telecom carriers could also use it
to offer their own Internet services like search and
e-mail, delivering them more quickly and with richer
features than rival services that could only use the
''regular" Internet.

This could mean big trouble for today's major online
information 
providers. Google doesn't object to broadband
providers' efforts to charge consumers more for faster
service but wants all content providers to get equal
access.

''The consumer's paying for 20 megabits coming into
their home," 
Davidson said. ''They should be able to use that 20
megabits to use whatever services they want."

Davidson has an ally in US Representative Edward J.
Markey, Democrat of Malden. ''I don't understand why
we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly
successful," Markey said.

Markey said he's engaged in ''intense private
negotiations" with 
telecom companies and congressional colleagues in
search of a compromise.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxxx 


--- Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Danny Younger wrote:
> 
> > With regard to selection criteria, the Business
> > Constituency has argued that "all future names
> should
> > be sponsored".
> 
> > Comments?
> 
> Yes, I'll accept "sponsored-only" TLDs when the
> bussiness "constituency" 
> accepts that no new business may be started and no
> new product or service 
> be released until a sponsoring organization is
> created that has to apply 
> for permission from the "New Businesses, Products,
> and Services 
> Corporation", pay a heafty application fee, and
> undergo extensive 
> inquiries into the color, shape, and usibility by
> dingos.
> 
>  		--karl--
> 
> 


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