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

Great

[krisp]

Good, hopefully AOL will make a decent cross-platform video/audio instant message system.

Re:Great

[bjb]

Mac version is just fine.. its called iChat, and it comes with OS X.

Re:Great

[Teese]

AFAIK you still need an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN

Actually you can get a .Mac ID, even though you haven't subscribed to .Mac, and use that instead of an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN. See Apple for more details

They also give you 6 months free .Mac trial membership, but the iChat name will last past that.

Re:What about the advantage MSN Messenger has?

[God'sAwayOnBusiness]

The reason for the original ban was that AOLTM could use its marketshare and its regional cable monopoly. It was conceivable that AOLTM might find ways to throttle competing AV chat clients, forcing users onto AIM's AV chat.

Re:Video/Audio in its infancy

[cantabrigian]

But what makes it the best? IM systems consist of three basic components: the protocols, the service, and the participants. If we look at the protocols, AIM is fundamentally not awesome. I'll use some IM protocols from the 1980s -- years before AIM -- as a basis for comparison. IRC offers much greater flexibility, especially for multi-user chat. Zephyr offers hooks to an out-of-band authentication system (Kerberos) which allows for the possibility that a user can authenticate to the server in a way that is actually somewhat secure. (To my knowledge, AIM does not do this.) Other more recent protocols like Jabber do, however, and how many people are using those?

Next, the service. AOL servers that speak the AIM protocol have this nasty habit of randomly kicking users from time to time. Maybe this is supposed to be "normal", but the two 1980s protocols I mentioned above don't seem to have this problem.

Finally, we have the participants. This is where AOL wins, hands down. Everyone and her mother and her dog use AIM, and thus, if I must choose only one IM protocol, then this must be the one. Many people are effectively faced with this choice... not everyone uses Gaim or Trillian or whatever IM multiplexers there are out there. It seems that if AOL is better, this is the reason, and, I might add, it's not really a good thing.

Re:I dont follow...

[Kircle]

The restriction was that AOL needed to make their instant messaging network interoperable BEFORE they could begin including video conferencing technology into AIM. It was suppose to be an incentive for them to open up their monopoly on instant messaging.

its a bout time...

[The Lynxpro]

The FCC restrictions were bogus. AOL NEVER restricted its own userbase from downloading other IM clients. They had just as much right to try to block out others illegally hacking into their network (hint hint--> Microsoft) as any ISP has over blocking out spam. Microsoft complained the loudest over AOL's potential monopoly (isn't that irony for you?) and then contributed a substantial amount of money for campaign contributions. Now let's look at Microsoft with its closed Xbox system (which I own one). Do you think for a moment they'll allow AOL or Yahoo to port their instant messaging to the Xbox(or Mozilla Firebird as a browser)? No way. Incidentally, Sony sought out AOL to provide the Playstation2 with IM capabilities once Sony gets serious about online playing with the release of the PS2 hard drive. To stick these restrictions on AOL for the past three years while failing to break up Microsoft's OS and Office productivity packages screamed of hypocricy. AOL should be complaining to Justice, the FTC, and the FCC about how all the other cable companies have blocked AOL from offering AOL Broadband directly to their customers... BYOA is not the answer, it should be single-source billing...