Paul Kapustka strips the Network Neutrality issue down it its real core:
The RBOCs and cable will use all their firepower to try to keep video captive, to make money off it the way they did off voice.
Americans love TV. They even had to invent the TiVo to extract the 0.1% precious metal from the toxic sludge. Just as Lessig lamented his Grokster framing as being too abstract, maybe this neutrality issue is getting too academic. OK, you and I know it’s really about applications not yet invented. The 2040 fridge DNA sensor that takes a quick peek at the week-old chicken, sequences the genomes on its surface and refers the whole lot back in real-time to biohazard central for an opinion, or whatever.
For now, it’s all about TV. Will the goggle box become the Google box, or not?
Why not call a spade a manual trench digging utensil and point out that the “triple” play involves telcos selling captive video over duopoly lines, which is direct competition to alternative Internet-based suppliers whom they would like to cut out of the picture (pun intended). (Of course, “triple” play is itself an idea caught in legacy telco-think, in that there isn’t a total unbundling of all the stages of consumption, and fragmentation into a zillion aggregators, filters, distributors, etc. enabled by the uber-flexible Stupid Network.)
Couch potatoes of the world unite! You’ve nothing to lose but your peanut-shaped remotes!
Full disclosure: I went cold-turkey on the medium in 1989, don’t own a TV, so I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:27 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/666.
Unless backbone networks are engineered for multicast, it really doesn't matter much what happens in the last mile networks. Even if they were all upgraded to 100 Mbps, Internet-based IPTV (that includes real-time HD transmissions) is a pipedream. (And what consumer will pay for 100 Mbps connections that can't provide real-time HD? They'd still have to get cable or the equivalent from the RBOC for that capability.)
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 04:29 PMExcept...
File tranfser, not streaming, in increasingly the dominant network use mode.
P2P distribution over fast local links works OK for a large subset of the content. Get one copy on the MAN, and you're off. Particularly pre-recorded material where you can just send the decryption key at "broadcast" time.
Multicast only becomes an issue if lots of people want to real-time stream the same thing at once. But we've already got technologies to do that (satellite, terrestrial broadcast TV), with very flat cost scaling curves. We don't need to solve the whole problem with one "pipe".
So whilst multicast appears essential, in reality it's not a feature that anyone will miss very much.
I want 100Mbps symmetric so I can be at my parents house and still share all the home videos of the grandchildren that are stored on my home server.
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 04:41 PMNon-real-time video does seem like a potential sweet spot. But mass market use of P2P to replace a significant portion of couch-potato TV viewing raises a different issue. The current U.S. model of flat-rated consumer bandwidth pricing will be challenged if, for a significant fraction of customers, usage increases to the level needed to enable transmission of four hours worth of video daily for each couch potato. With P2P no one's "paying for" the incremental transit across the backbone associated with all these file transfers (of course everyone is in their flat-rated connection fees).
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 05:34 PMWhat major backbones *aren't* engineered for multicast? Most of the big players have supported multicast (and done multicast peering) at least since 2001.
http://www.multicasttech.com/status/mbgp.sum
The list includes Qwest (AS 209), MCI (AS 704, though not 703), Sprint (AS 1239, 1789), Verio (AS 2914), Level 3 (AS 3356), Global Crossing (AS 3549), and AT&T (AS 7018).
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 05:58 PMFortunately, we can solve the P2P problem by a relatively simple pricing and product change -- make "local" bandwidth cheaper/uncapped. Get the prices to reflect the costs, in other words. Exchanging hundreds of megabits per second between people attached to the same DSLAM is pretty close to "free".
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 06:08 PMJim, thanks for the multicast info. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people complain about this. Another urban legend I guess.
Posted by: at February 21, 2006 06:24 PMFrom firsthand experience: yes, the battle in broadband is and has always been about TV. And the preparations have been going on longer than most people think. Cable companies buying content rights, using the monopoly granted by copyright law to authors to extend that monopoly way beyond its original intention. HDCP, a pact where Intel has a stake: get everybody hooked on HD quality and control the content distribution by hardware copyprotection built in every device (flawed but they are trying). Increase the possibilities to scare the shit out of everybody with litigation based on copyright/DRM laws.
Etcetera.
Telco's are losing their cashcow very quickly (voice), cable companies see that their core cashcow (video broadcast) can last much longer if they reduce or cripple acces to content over IP.
This is a clash of worlds. Controlled metering of content to RGU's ("Revenue Generating Units") versus customer driven delivery.
Live TV is dead, as I've been saying for a while. Martin gets it spot on when he points out what a red herring multicast is.
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_epeus_archive.html#113657665445571085
Posted by: at February 22, 2006 12:04 AMWhen I look at the amount of money consumers are spending to get large flat screen TVs and all the supporting services associated with them, I see consumers unconcerned with local area or other connections. (I also don't see anyone really caring whether something is live TV or not-- except for the rare viewing occasion, like the Superbowl.)
When it comes to video, it sure looks like the couch potatoes have won the battle and the war-- and they are willing to pay someone (from the MAN or WAN) so they can be mesmerized lying back on the couch.
So, who really wants any of your picture sharing moments that you need 100 Mbps for? When do you think you will get 100 Mbps of service? And do you think the masses will want to pay for 100Mbps without couch potato services?
Know thy enemy, turn your TV back on!
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/8336/#117601
Google have got some brilliant strategists working there in addition to some of the best talent in the Valley. Thus far they've retained the aggressiveness and vision of a 1990s startup, while becoming a Big Corporation with the $$$ it takes to make things actually happen. That's a difficult balancing act that even Apple failed to achieve. Having Rubin's IP on board might be the final piece to the Google puzzle:
- The best search engine
- Free email
- Wireless web portal
- Unused fiberoptic lines and bargain basement backbone access
- Location-tracking (gotta love the potential for abuse of something like that World Tracker service http://www.world-tracker.com/). Pretty soon someone will hack the tracking service to become like this: http://locatecell.com/
- Dodgeball (friend-locating service)
- Google Maps/Google Earth
- Android (to provide a cellphone OS + more)
"Free" location-specific ad-driven web access, email, GPS, friend location + cellphone service? Can't miss. The cellphone carriers are going to be hurting big time next year if Google gets the recipe right. They already have the right price figured out (free). The nagging question I have is: "Is this another dot bomb deck of cards?" Is there an adequate revenue stream to support such a grandiose mobile connectivity dream. If Google fails, it will go down as the most spectacular dot bomb the Valley has ever seen.
[Not to mention] Google's numerous other assets like SMS, Froogle and their newsgroup service. I think free Internet access and cellphone service would leverage Google onto enough eyeballs to lock up the advertising market. The wildcard would be whether or not Google can (or would be allowed to) use that infrastructure to broadcast content to its captive audience. Turning their raison d'etre from a "pull" to a "push" provider would be a HUGE paradigm shift - one I don't think the FCC has yet thought through. Sprint already has its MobiTV (proof of concept) service running and MobiTV is bravely trying to expand (before it - inevitably - gets decimated by either Google or roll-your-own Slingbox-type packages). MobiTV may be crude, but Pandora's Box is now open. Could the FCC then turn around and stop Google from broadcasting Internet Generation TV stations or radio stations? I doubt it. And I'm guessing Google's lawyers are saying the same thing.
If Google (or anyone else, for that matter) were to launch a service providing 50 "Internet TV" stations and 100 "Internet radio" stations, who are they accountable to? What if the service is "broadcast" from some unnamed Eastern European country that has a "creative" view on the validity of copyright restrictions? If I buy a DVD, can I stream it to myself (Slingbox-style)? How about to 5 people in my family? How about to my 5000 closest "friends"? If I buy 1000 DVDs and 10,000 CDs can I stream these too? How about if I have a database of 100,000 MP3 and code an app that can steam songs on demand, in response to a request sent over the Internet? Is such a user-programmable radio station legal? The technology to do all this is either already here or coming Real Soon Now. The laws aren't strong enough to get all of these tools back into Pandora's Box.
Who would turn down "free" Internet and cellphone/MP3 player/portable TV/SMS/GPS/friend location? I want no part of the Google Kool-Aid, but I suspect the Joe Sixpacks of the world (especially those cretinous, squawking Nextel users!) would be lining up for a chug of Google's Grog™:
GooglePort™ = the handheld device for the masses, serving up GoogleNet™, the location-specific ad-sponsored Internet with all the Google-flavored plug-ins you can think of...
The times they are achangin'
TVoR
Copyright, 2006.