FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits

TypoNAM writes "'The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to lift restrictions that have barred AOL Time Warner from offering advanced instant messaging services including videoconferencing, according to a source familiar with the decision.'" A couple of years ago, the FCC made a big fuss about how it was watching out for the public interest in approving the AOL/TW merger.

Comments

Is this going to matter?

[fiftyvolts]

Will having the FCC permission to add video capabilities to their clients really going to effect users for the worse? I personally am of the opinion that it will not matter too much. iChatAV already has the capability in it. If AOL's is similar I think this might be a great thing.

Excuse grammer/spelling I am in a rush.

Re:Doesn't AOL already offer services like this?

[citizen6350]

No, this is not what they're talking about. They mean not having to rely on 3rd party Video Conferencing. ICQ and AOL both have the option to initiate '3rd party services' such as netmeeting and Quake1 already.

Re:Encryption?

[sukottoX]

Aim has encryption now! Check out AIM Encrypt for a crude (everyone shares the same key) method of AIM encryption. For a more sure method, grab a free key from Thawte and use that instead. It works (I tried it), and will give you a unique keypair. (It gives you a padlock next to your screen name in AIM).

Gaim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you try gaim?

Details of the Dissenting Opinion

[nsda's_deviant]

One of the key players in the persuading the FCC to let AOLIM be kept is William P. Rogerson, former FCC chair and economist at Northwestern. I couldn't find his paper but the dissenting opinions of Gerald R. Faulhaber and David J. Farber; both UPenn Econmics professors give a great opinion on why AOL has been behaving badlly (All gentlemen have held high ranking positions on the FCC). Its in PDF but their criticisms of Rogerson's draft are striking,

"AOL Time Warner's strategic behavior has not changed, and that is perhaps the most compelling evidence that they believe they can eventually tip the market by refusing to interoperate. Such strategic behavior only makes sense if the market leader expects the market to tip in its favor; otherwise, interoperation is their best strategy. But the Petition and the Affidavit are strangely and tellingly silent on this key piece of evidence.

We also note that AOL Time Warner failed to exploit its newly acquired cable assets to deploy an AOL Broadband service. Since the firm had no Broadband service, it had little reason to care about advanced IM services such as two-way video that are not feasible on dial-up connections. However, AOL Time Warner has just recently begun marketing AOL Broadband, apparently now trying to capitalize on its cable assets. It should not come as a surprise that as AOL Time Warner rolls out its new broadband offering, it wishes to be relieved of the requirement to interoperate if it offers an IM-based high-speed service. Their behavior suggests that they may well have such a service ready to roll out soon as a feature of their AOL Broadband, and wish to keep their network effects proprietary. In fact, it is precisely this case that the Merger Order anticipated when it imposed the IM condition.

We urge the FCC to proceed cautiously. While conditions have evolved since the Merger Order that suggest network effects and tipping are not as urgent today, other evidence suggests that it is perhaps even more urgent. The FCC needs to recall that AOL Time Warner has in its own hands the ability to offer advanced IM-based highspeed services without let or hindrance: it need only interoperate with its competitors, as it promised the world it would do two years ago, to the benefit of all customers."

Re:Great

[lordDallan]

But AFAIK you still need an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN (You can chat with anyone on your LAN through the magic of Rendezvous - which is really nice for a small business, free internal chat client) . However, you do get an AOLIM account if you subscribe to Apple's .mac service.

Re:iChat AV

[Anonymous Coward]

iChat is using H.263 for its video. However, I believe it's using MPEG-4/AAC for audio. This would require AOL to license the codec....right? In this case, AOL is faced with licensing something that isn't natively available under Win32, and they may not go for that.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong :-)

Re:IM on Unix in Workplace

[Aliencow]

The answer to it all:

SSH, irssi, screen and bitlbee

Bitlbee runs a lil' IRC deamon on your box, you connect to it, and then, in the #bitlbee channel you can have your ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN contacts..

You just write
Theirnick: message
and it's automagically sent to them...

BitlBee

Re:Great

[zephc]

iChat: i use it as my AIM client now... it's not the same as Fire and Adium, as it uses the real oscar protocols rather than the older TOC which has far fewer features. I have an iSight, and it love it, it's the best webcam I've ever seen. I've only done the video conferencing in iChat once, with a friend who also has a firewire cam and DSL.

Yahoo: I use my cam with this most of the time, but yahoo limits your frame rates big time usually to no more than 2 or 3 fps tops. Not having voice really sucks too.