Re: [ga] All future names should be sponsored

["kidsearch" <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thats not surprising. They have the whole world believing that a long
distance phone call costs more to make than a local call.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: [ga] All future names should be sponsored


> 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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