Fat cat telcos are killing the net

The reality is that all the necessary control can be realised from the periphery of the net. It really does not require a huge centralised control system with billing added on top for good measure.


Peter Cochrane's Blog: Fat cat telcos are killing the net
Published: Friday 7 July 2006

I feel as though we are standing on the edge of a very dangerous precipice...

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The reality is that the internet protocol (IP) was never designed or intended for real-time anything! In order to achieve any reasonable QoS level it is necessary to nail down routings on a call-by-call, session-by-session basis. Ironically the internet then starts to look like a circuit-switched system à la the old telephone network.

The net neutrality debate gives the old school the opportunity to resume control, to create a two-tier net, to grab more of the money and to restore their fortunes. And in phase one they would like to groom the traffic carried to increase the efficiency and the earnings per packet. But it gets worse fast!

The telcos et al see an opportunity to regulate the whole net and control the packet flow so they can extract more revenues by creating tiers of usage for individuals and websites by volume and speed. This would create, at least, two classes - one faster internet for those with lots of money and one slower one for those without. And I have to say, this also means goodbye to the freedom and uniform utility we currently enjoy.

The reality is that all the necessary control can be realised from the periphery of the net. It really does not require a huge centralised control system with billing added on top for good measure. Is there an existence theorem for this alternative approach? Yes! Just take a look at Japan and Korea. They are streets ahead with populations already watching TV and listening to the radio over fibre to the home using IP.

In my view this is a pure money play by the dark side, who, if they succeed politically, will catapult us back to a time when they controlled connectivity and information flow. And if it happens in the US, which would be wonderfully ironic as that is the country that created the internet, we might see the EU network operators queuing up with their wallets open ready to skim off more money than they are actually due by exactly the same mechanisms.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We have two basic choices. To go for a world of increasing complexity, as we try to squeeze more and more out of a given amount of transmission bandwidth and routing capacity, or to throw more and more bandwidth at the problem to achieve a greater simplicity at the expense of efficiency.

As bandwidth now (effectively) costs nothing, I vote for increasing simplicity (relatively speaking) as have Japan and Korea.

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