Cable Staying Mum on Telco QoS Debate 'We're watching them take a little bit of heat' CNET points to a reg required article at multichannel news that explores the cable industry's stance on net neutrality (basically not to comment), and charging sites and service more for better performance. "Privately, some operators say they are content to let the telcos bear the brunt of the criticism" (for making noises about premium content carriage charges)," reports Multichannel. "We're watching them take a little bit of heat," says an anonymous cable exec. "We are studiously avoiding this issue for now."
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 Jonbo298
join:2004-01-12
Council Bluffs, IA | They know its not... worth the time to fight for it yet. They see criticism so why join it for something thats not even certain to exist.
Maybe the cable companies will use it in their commercials eventually if the Telco's get their ways. Makes for an easy campaign why to choose Cable over DSL or anything else the Telco's use. | |
|  |  Old_GrouchDon't just sit there silly DO somethingPremium
join:2004-05-26
Greenwood, IN
kudos:1 | Re: They know its not... The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Cable wants the same thing and has the same opponents as telcos. Therefore, in this instance, telco is their friend.
Let the telcos fight the early battle with their money. Win and cable wins too. Lose and cable wins because they have a marketing edge for not being the bad guy. | |
| |  ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4
1 edit |  Cable don't have same issues as telcos
But the cable companies all have big pipes and are already delivering TV content without problem. At least for now, they see no need to soak the content providers to upgrade their infrastructure.
But you can bet your life that if the telcos get away with charging the content providers, the cable companies will take advantage of that in their new contracts with content providers.
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| | | PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR | Cable has been doing it for years ... I bet they're keeping quiet, lest it be noticed that they've been doing this for years. They have a big pipe; they use most of it for delivering high-value content (TV), that they charge an arm and a leg for.
You can bet you'll never get 20+ Mbps, hi-QoS, basic internet access from an MSO. They're not gonna let you bypass them and, say, go directly to HBO.COM for your content. Heck, that would put HBO outta business; you'd go right to the movie producers' sites themselves. | |
| | | |  kamm
join:2001-02-14
Brooklyn, NY | Re: Cable has been doing it for years ... said by PDXPLT:I bet they're keeping quiet, lest it be noticed that they've been doing this for years. They have a big pipe; they use most of it for delivering high-value content (TV), that they charge an arm and a leg for. You can bet you'll never get 20+ Mbps, hi-QoS, basic internet access from an MSO. They're not gonna let you bypass them and, say, go directly to HBO.COM for your content. Heck, that would put HBO outta business; you'd go right to the movie producers' sites themselves. Well, it's not the case with HBO: they DO produce lot of their own content and they DO score homeruns time by time: Sopranos, Sex and The City, Rome or Angels in America or Bill Maher and let's not forget HBO's EXCELLENT documentaries or stand up comedians... HBO would be on the winner side if they could get rid of the middlemen.:) | |
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| | | Re: They know its not... What the cable companies are doing is saving their lobbying money.
Let the telcos battle this out and if they win, the cable companies can jump on the bandwagon for minimal costs. If they lose, nothing spent. Simple really. | |
| | | | said by Jonbo298:They see criticism so why join it for something thats not even certain to exist. If cable is using QOS to prioritize voice traffic over the last mile for their VoIP offering, while third party VoIP slugs it out with data traffic without any similar assistance, doesn't it exist already? | |
| | | RadioDoc58ef2c0Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11 | Re: They know its not... Yes they do, and yes it does. They're whistling past the graveyard hoping nobody notices.
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Toolmaster of La Grange. | |
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| | Actions Speak Louder than Words Cablecos already DO some of these QOS dividing, stir-frying, and tiered data service. Just by different names:
1. Cablemodem capping/throttling (pet peeve)
2. Upstream limiting/throttling
3. Node saturations (by design)
4. Taking unfair advantage of peering relationships on internet backbone providers (cogeco comes to mind)
5. 10, 15, 30 megabit plans emerging due to fios (not much else in telco land as far as upgrades are concerned to be worried about by cablecos)
6. Site and application packet shaping (namely p2p and usenet stuff mostly), some have tried to ban apps such as bittorrent and napster clones) Thus, eroding the value of the connection to begin with I might add-- why do people pay you money? to go to sites you approve of only?
BTW, despite announements of 50 & 100mbit services by cablevision, they've yet to materialize. And if they do, Verizon will have something to do/say about it! | |
| |  NY TelPremium
join:2004-04-09
Smithtown, NY
kudos:3 | Re: Actions Speak Louder than Words Well said. Nothing let's you send a message to the cable companies and telcos like voting with your wallet.
Competition is a great thing. | |
| | | | | Re: Actions Speak Louder than Words said by NY Tel:Well said. Nothing let's you send a message to the cable companies and telcos like voting with your wallet. Competition is a great thing. Fortunate for them consumer laziness is a lot more prolific, especially when enhanced with consumer ignorance.  | |
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|  DanTrailer Park SupervisorPremium
join:2002-12-17
Eh? | Sure that was Cogeco? Sure it wasn't Cogent? (Cogeco is a Cable ISP in Canada)
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| | | | said by actionsspeeak :
4. Taking unfair advantage of peering relationships on internet backbone providers (cogeco comes to mind)
I don't know of any Cable companies that have peering agreements with backbone providers with which they can take any kind of advantage. Cable companies have transit agreements with backbone providers, which they PAY for. Can't be unfair when you're paying for the bandwidth.
You must be thinking about Cogent, a backbone provider that had a peering dispute with Level(3). | |
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RayWPremium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
kudos:1 | Keep mum and see what happens Since the cable companies have their backbones and partnerships with others, I can see that they are hoping that this becomes the rule. Especially since there have been many posts on certain cable companies throttling certain types of data.
Ahhh...the commercialization of the net. Wonder what would have happened had the US government held on to the control instead of 'privatizing' it?
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
| | ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4 | Re: Keep mum and see what happens said by RayW:Ahhh...the commercialization of the net. Wonder what would have happened had the US government held on to the control instead of 'privatizing' it? We would still be using dial-up and the big internet players would be AOL and Prodigy. And the content providers would be libraries, universities, museums, and government. And the multimedia content available today would not exist.
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| | | RayWPremium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
kudos:1 | Re: Keep mum and see what happens said by ThrowDemsOut:said by RayW:Ahhh...the commercialization of the net. Wonder what would have happened had the US government held on to the control instead of 'privatizing' it? We would still be using dial-up and the big internet players would be AOL and Prodigy. And the content providers would be libraries, universities, museums, and government. And the multimedia content available today would not exist. Who knows. If it were not for the universities and government much of the net would not be there, and if they were still in full charge it would probably be more robust than now but less pervasive. However, part of the success of the net today is the getting away from the original concept of a nuclear hardened system and into one that is a money maker.
Oh well, we can always point fingers at "What May Have Been", but the reality is, today the net (in the US) is mainly a bunch of commercial concerns with commercial entities concentrating on more wealth and power for the owners/big wigs. No concept of enlightened self interest and taking care of the customer there.
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
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| | | You would probably have had to fill out a three page form (in triplicate) in order to start a website. Want interactivity on your website (e.g. a forum)? No problem. Just fill out form WT-A-F3R-7, pay your $50 application fee and, once it's approved (probably a 4 week wait), you can add the feature. Of course, corporations would be able to do this with minimal fuss because their lobbyists would have structured the laws to allow them to have multiple requests rubber-stamped while individuals need to wade through bureaucracy. (All the better to keep potential web sites critical of the corporations from springing up.)
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| | | RayWPremium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
kudos:1 | Re: Keep mum and see what happens said by Jason Levine:You would probably have had to fill out a three page form (in triplicate) in order to start a website. Want interactivity on your website (e.g. a forum)? No problem. Just fill out form WT-A-F3R-7, pay your $50 application fee and, once it's approved (probably a 4 week wait), you can add the feature. Of course, corporations would be able to do this with minimal fuss because their lobbyists would have structured the laws to allow them to have multiple requests rubber-stamped while individuals need to wade through bureaucracy. (All the better to keep potential web sites critical of the corporations from springing up.) Could be coming, since the government has apparently given up much of the control. At least it looks like a few coporations have started takeing the first steps. No more robust system, just little corporate domains with different ideas of what should be priority.
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
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| | Can someone explain network neutrality? I am having a difficult time getting a good understanding of the issue at hand. Are the telephone and or cable companies suggesting that if content and or service entities like Google do not pay them money that they will affect a change to their subscribers on the local loop, the upstream (backbone), or just the feed they have control over for those they host?
Its interesting to think that anyone would affect a change for the QoS to a new yet lower state, because this would mean they would either have to go out of their way to make worse access to a certain IP block (e.g. those used by Google, for instance), by routing them through less than stellar routes.
But, wouldn't this depend (if only in part) on the ISP's DNS? So, how does this affect subscribers using someone else's DNS? Also, I am surprised that the topic hasn't reached feverish pitch as yet with threatened entities publishing this on their main webpages.
Now, if the intent is to make a better QoS than what is already in place, this is another matter. For instance, let's say the telephone and cable companies have the means to implemented limited CBR (Constant Bit Rate) for up to 256Kbps, and thus make VoIP to third parties more appealing to their customers.
But, it is no surprise, and shouldn't be, that a network provider will do everything within their abilities to protect their stockholders, no? I would imagine this would include making the competition's life difficult while offering similar content and or services with better results.
And its all about choice. | |
| | | | Re: Can someone explain network neutrality? "Are the telephone and or cable companies suggesting that if content and or service entities like Google do not pay them money that they will affect a change to their subscribers on the local loop"
What the telcos are proposing, in plain english, is very simple to understand.
1: You, the customer, pay for a 10mb connection to 'the internet thingy'. It promises that you can download at 10mb/sec
2: Google, which provides stuff you want to download, also pays their ISP for a 10,000mb/sec link. It lets them send stuff to you as fast as you can recieve it (i.e. 10mb)
3: Greedy telco's want google to pay more for using 'their' wires. The wires that YOU paid for. So, the greedy telcos limit googles ability to send to you at 56kb/sec. So instead of your being able to download movies at 10mb/sec from google (the speed you AND google paid for), you can only download from google at 56kb/sec (modem speed).
Where's the problem with this? The problem is that Verizon is NO LONGER THE INTERNET. Period. The internet has WELL DEFINED RULES as to how something should work. This has NOTHING to do with QOS. The #1 tenet of the internet is that ALL packets make a 'best effort' to get there. QOS is the equivlant of a private toll road, where it's NO FASTER than regular, it just doesn't have to deal with congestion. What the telcos are proposing, is that they take their 10mb/sec highway (10 lanes), and make it 9 lanes of QOS (extra money toll roads) and 1 lane of 'public' traffic. So in effect, they ARE NOT selling you 10mb/sec, they are selling you 1mb/sec + 9mb/sec 'extra fee' access. This is a violation of the tenets of the internet, called 'net neutrality', which states that ALL TRAFFIC must be given best effort. It's greed, and an attempt to define the internet the way the telcos want it. Guess what, like Al Gore, the telco's didn't 'invent' the internet, nor did they 'build' the internet.
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Sure the internet has lots of porn and piracy, but I'm sure there's a downside to it. | |
| | | | | Re: Can someone explain network neutrality? I just hope that major players like google don't take this bent over. I mean we have corporations servicing corporations that's got to amount to some kind of tension. If the telcos get this passed and it has a serious effect on what the consumer does with their connection there will be uproar either that or the cableco just found themselves the key to competing with a better infastracture than their own. So far TW roadrunner has been great about no caps nor port blocks and I will gladly stay with them over even Verizon fios if Verizon implements this donkey shit. This corporate America crap has gotten ridiculuous in the last 10 years, I mean I'm all for capitalism and the free market, but it's going backwards... | |
| | | |  calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
 ·Comcast Formerl..
| Re: Can someone explain network neutrality? As Jason Levine does a good job of pointing out below, the large content providers might even like this type of arrangement--it results in a world where payments "under the table" set up a world of the big players who make payments to each other, thereby raising the barriers to competition from smaller players--in both the content and ISP sectors.
Without net neutrality, we could see a day where breaking into either the content or ISP businesses would be as difficult as entering a Japanese business dominated by keiretsu.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
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| | | | A minor detail in #3. I don't think the telecos are suggesting slowing down websites. (At least not publicly suggesting that though they may be thinking it.)
What it basically boils down to is that they're putting some "next generation" bandwidth technology in place. Using just the existing bandwidth, Joe Surfer would have a 5Mbps connection. But add in the new technology and he would get a much faster connection. For the sake of argument, let's call it 50Mbps. The telecos are saying that if websites (Google, Yahoo, BBR), don't pay them then they just go along the existing bandwidth and don't get to take advantage of the new bandwidth.
The problem here is that large sites would be able to pay each and every ISP for the fast bandwidth. Meanwhile, small sites would find it hard to pay and would wind up in the "slow lane" of the Internet. As more large sites paid for "fast access", customers would come to expect such speeds and would feel that sites operating on the 5Mbps segment were "slow." This would lead to smaller websites losing visitors and possibly going under (or being bought out by larger websites).
This could also lead to "exclusivity deals" where a company pays a teleco to be its "Official XYZ." (For example, Yahoo might pay extra to become the "Official Search Engine of BellSouth.") Then, if any other competing company tried to pay for "fast lane access", they would be turned down and forced to operate on the slow lane. Google, for example, might be forced to operate at 5Mbps because Yahoo paid the ISP first.
IMO, ISPs should act as "dumb pipes." They should receive traffic from the upstream and send it on down to the user. I might allow them some leeway to take actions to preserve network integrity (e.g. selectively blocking ports if a client is found to be sending out spam e-mails or blocking worms from spreading). But these actions shouldn't take into account what company the user is contacting. (All VoIP connection attempts should operate at the same speed whether it's from Vonage or the teleco's own VoIP service.)
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-Jason Levine
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