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BellSouth Wants to Rig the Internet
PlayfullyClever writes "A senior telecommunications executive at BellSouth, said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates. Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer. William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc." Next up, well dressed men go door to door collecting their monthly "protection money". 'It sure would be tragic if your users started getting 1500ms ping times, wouldn't it mister dot com?'
Of all the low-down dirty extortionist ideas ever hatched. No one's stopping him from using QoS routing right now but what he's proposing is pure opportunistic greed. I suppose it doesn't matter to him--he makes enough money that he can afford to throw away an extra $200/mo. should policies like this ever become commonplace. As for the masses: Let them eat cake!
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
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If it's Tuesday, this must be
kthx
I for one welcome our new ISP Controlling Overlords
Would this not take away their status and the protections of common carrier status if they start playing with what/who goes through their system?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
At least you could have removed all the caps in the sentance "Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer" and fooled me... sheesh...
-everphilski-
the European Court of Justice would not allow such an arrangement, article 81 is very harsh on vertical arrangements like this.
...ah that's better.
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
While we're at it, why don't we just sell the internet to Microsoft or some other big corporation and be done with it?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I can imagine the new generation of Spam now. "M4K3 YUR S1T3 L04D F4S73R TH4N T3H C0MP371710N"
Read this articleg ename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&c id=1132960211791
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pa
Bell South is damaged. Adjust your routing tables accordingly.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Next up, well dressed men go door to door collecting their monthly "protection money". 'It sure would be tragic if your users started getting 1500ms ping times, wouldn't it mister dot com?'
Yeah, except that's not the same thing at all. ISPs are businesses that can set (almost) any conditions they want. If you don't want to do business with them, fine. The mob, on the other hand, does business with you regardless if you want to or not, and you don't come to them, they come to you.
This "new way of doing business" is bad as it is without you providing moronic strawmen, Taco. Simplistic "analysis" of that sort is almost always counterproductive, and never conductive to clear and reasoned discussion.
All this said, I think this sounds awful, and hope it doesn't ever come to pass, as it would no doubt only harm small business operators.
No longer will you have the mob boss's daughter being the beauty no one can touch, from now on it will be that sweet sweet oc96 pipe... oh if only : / but I do enjoy my legs working and my ram seated.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
As long as ISPs get penalized for every piece of SPAM they allow to float around, for every SPAMmer they allow to operate unhindered using their services, for every shady business or phishing site they allow to run unabated, and when Satan can skate on his swimming pool.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I pay the isp to access the net. I should get to pick and choose what I access without the ISP boasting some at the expense of others.
Dear Bell south you are looking a lot like Sony and SCO. Not a good thing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
For a brief time ca. 1998, during the "push" hype, some believed rather mistakenly that websites are "reaching computer users". Most of the time, it is the other way around.
I quickly become a non Bellsouth Customer. Granted right now, I'm using a BS reseller, as are most here in Mobile... but there ARE alternatives, especially when you're not using DSL.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
This would bring on a lot of abuse if implemented.
I called them and asked them why are some downloads (podcasts) being cut-off. They said they don't intentionally cut it off, but they did let me in on something they do. They said they give some packets priorities. They give priorities to email and website traffic.
The article is actually talking about high-bandwidth services such as streaming media and voice over IP ... services that BellSouth themselves could offer and feel that their infrastructure should give priority to BellSouth first (or possibly another provider willing to pay for some of the backbone cost).
... not that I agree with any of it but lets get this into the right context.
They don't seem to be talking about simple websites at all
FTS: "Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, "
As soon as they do this, then they should become legally responsible for all content that crosses their network.
Either ISPs are passive conduits, or they are not. If they can easily differentiate between packets from different sources, and filter those packets for different handling procedures, then they can take responsibility for not allowing 'illegal' packets on their network.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
how great would that be for hosting companies like rackspace. I doubt this would go through... I mean seriously, that proposal would cripple what 80% of the sites out there. This is a perfect example when non-technical people get in positions that require a strong understanding of technology. I'm sure the guy is a good businessman, but hasn't got a clue about technology.
On another note, historically, every time one of the bell's gets too big for their britches they get broken up... If any of you hold their stock I'd say its time to dump it!
If an ISP or backbone wants to give up all of its common-carrier rights, including immunity when some l33t haxxor plants death threats to the President or worse on Yahoo, then maybe.
Otherwise, no.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This would give Yahoo the leverage to say to BellSouth: if you want to have ANY major search engine/portal in your network, better provide unrestricted access to our domain.
Net result: Google owns their own 'Net, Yahoo pwns BellSouth.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
This shouldn't surprise anyone that has every worked with or for Bellsouth. This is a company that promotes morons as a rule of thumb. Honestly, the management there would have been lawyers but they aren't that intellegent.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
This Internet will never work. I'm going to start my own.
[sig]
BS already charges for different levels of ISP service. So now they want to charge a fee for the other end. They will use this to finger point the problem to the other end every time. :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I thought Will Smith was in show business. ;)
Web Design Tips
Where the hell is L0pht when you need 'em ??
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
It could work out for the ISP if there is no other ISP choice for the customers to get equivelent internet access from. Sadly, in many areas of the US, only one high speed provider exists and you are stuck with them no matter what. Given a choice? I don't think people would use an ISP that offered that type of "service".
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
ISPs who do this sort of thing will, undoubtedly, be replaced by ISPs which don't. Consumers simply won't tolerate it, nor will web services.
The only real danger is the growing monopolization of Internet access, through cable and DSL, but yet we watch as wifi-based Internet access spreads and their market crumbles beneith their feet.
More fuel on the fire, BellSouth, it'll only help speed your own destruction.
Yes, it should, and I think by current laws it does. They should be allowed to do it, but they should lose common carrier status for doing it.
Also, It's also good on account of the repercussions. Parties are going to start building out other ways to connect to avoid the slow areas.
For a long time I completely loathed cable companies, because the only choice consumers had was to have cable or not to have TV at all. This enabled cable companies to treat their customers like trash and laugh at the consumers. The advent of satellite TV dramatically changed how cable companies treat their customers, and I've been getting much better customer service from cable companies in recent years.
There's no way I'd use an ISP that artificially reduced access time for some sites while giving preferential treatment to others. But as long as there is a choice of ISP's I don't see this as a problem. But that lack of choice that consumers have in many situations is the primary reason for government regulation of utilities.
I hope that new technologies like Wi-Max will come to fruition fast enough to provide most consumers with the choices they need to have good service.
Fuck That.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
More importantly, are there any laws or government bodies that we can bring into effect on our side to make sure this kind of crap never happens?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.
I assume they would want to use some form of QoS to control traffic. However there would be a few problems that would arise from this. Let's say for instance Yahoo uses a seperate backbone from Google. Would this ISP then force Google traffic to slowdown? Or how about if Yahoo has more hops than Google? There are so many factors that affect Internet traffic that for an ISP to fully control them would be quite difficult. On most high-bandwidth ISPs where links hardly get clogged, one would certainly have to force low priority sites to slowdown.
If we are talking priority for streaming, I can see it. HOWEVER, there's a big problem with a supposedly-common carrier giving price breaks to itself or to its buddies.
If this comes to pass, it should be regulated. Everyone, even "internal" customers, should pay the same $ for the same level of service, and this service should be available to anyone willing to pay without regard to what other services they have with that ISP.
In other words, before you do this, the data-backhaul part of the company should be walled off as an arms-length subsidiary or better yet, independent company.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"..Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer.." Well, if consumers are aware that the internet they are provided with is weighted or influenced, a lack of such "modifications" could be attractive. I'd say if word of something like this got out, small ISP's would *benefit* from the wave of customers leaving the big corporations. How many Slashdotters would change ISP's if something like this went into effect?
I'm a signature virus. Copy me to your signature so I can replicate, and introduce your own mutations so I can evolve.
Hehe... just found myself nodding my head in agreement until I realise I misread that as Capitalism.
We can't get the powers that be to adopt IPv6 and this guy thinks he's going to be able to change routing protocols and charge for priority routes?
Find coupons in Greeley
This is not a troll or flame, I just want to be educated here. Okay, I'll be upfront about it, its a crappy decision to do. It will piss off a lot of people. Fundamentally though whats the problem with letting these ISP's do this? You are paying for their service, they got the right to do whatever they want. If they want to piss off their customers, thats their right. Just let me know upfront that is whats going on, and I'll pick someone who isn't doing this. Its no different than ISP's disconnecting customers for sending spam, they provide the uplink they make the rules, you dont like it leave. The government should stay out of it in the first place, let the customers decide. I already see many ISP's dropping VOIP transmissions all the time to sell their own products. Whats the difference?
A bouncer says you gotta wait outside the night club while he lets in 20 hot women and you stand out in the cold for a few hours. You cant sue the club right?
Okay, my gut reaction was, OMGWTFITMT?!?!?
Then I put a bit more thought in on it. I would be okay with this if it was constantly monitored and I could be absolutely sure that none of the "non-accelerated" site's performance was degraded. Hypothetical: if we get ~100ms pings from both Google and Yahoo now, then Yahoo buys the 'optimization' and Yahoo's ping drops to ~80ms and Google's stays at ~100ms, then I'm fine with this. But if Google's pings start suffering, to say ~110ms, then they are degrading their service, and the system has to go.
Also, how much performance improvement is available? I mean, at this point most of the lag I experience browsing the web is server side. Most game related lag is uplink side. And internet TV issues are usually a matter of pipe size.
And lastly, as someone else mentioned, would charging for faster service invalidate the companies standing as a common carrier?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Listen up BellSouth, I AM YOUR CUSTOMER, not Yahoo! or Google. If you can't give me good access to the sites I am interested in visiting then I switch to Cox's cable modem. And if they can't show me the speed I crave then I look for other options.
This is exactly what happens when governments grant monopolies. BellSouth has been taking their customers for granted since they spun away from the AT&T motnership, which also took us for granted. After all, where can we really go? Like most regions of the US with broadband, we have government monopoly A (BellSouth) or government monopoly B (Cox) and while they can be played off one another just a little, they co-own the Louisiana Public Service Commission that makes the rules and aren't above conspiring together to keep their cost down and the users downtrodden.
The baby bells must be broken again. They can keep the monpoly on the copper or fiber but must NOT be permitted to own or operate any of the higher level protocols or have any business entanglements with anyone who does. I'm serious, we need a seperate company that JUST owns and maintains the physical plant and leases space on a totally non-discrimnatory basis in the CO to as many companies that want to install voice switches, DSLAMS, etc. as can fit into the building.... and have rules so a carrier can even pay to make the building bigger.
Democrat delenda est
They'll just buy a new law that says whatever they want (e.g. we can block, prioritize, de-prioritize, spindle, fold, or mutilate your traffic, but we aren't liable for anything).
Everyone said for decades that phone companies "don't understand the Internet". They understand it all right - they just don't like it. So now we've got SBC saying they want to charge companies like Google to route their traffic, even if Google is already paying another company to which Google is directly connected. And BellSouth is saying they want to charge companies like Google more to carry their traffic according to the specifications. Verizon (rhymes with "NYNEX"), typically the most evil of the RBOCs, has yet to announce their vicious attack on Google's profits, but it surely will be greedy and based on some kind of preferential treatment - or threat of witholding it.
It's obvious that these telcos are jealous of Google and the big bucks connected with it. They want their cut, not by competing to provide better products, but by threatening to make their products worse unless their extortion money is paid. Back in the 1990s, they tried to force extra fees on dialup customers, on ISPs, based on lies about phone switch capacity. They tried selling ISDN from clueless salespeople for ripoff prices after unpredictable and interminable installation delays. Then they screwed up DSL deployment on a bigger scale. All along they succeeded in buying up and regulating out the competition, while everyone said they didn't understand the Internet. Which diverted investment to companies like Google, as well as the smart entrepreneurs. Now that they've consolidated American bandwidth into the bottlenecks that they monopolize, these old dinosaurs are moving in for the kill. If there's not enough competition to let Google and mom/pop choose an equitable Internet like the one we've built these last 10-20 years, we need to snap the neck of their new monopolies with legislation. There's no reason we have to let their loophole victories over past monopoly remedies and market corrections choke off the developments that have happened despite their vile presence in the landscape.
--
make install -not war
$sys$BellSouthEthics
...to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc."
So you if you want to know where the first google wireless service areas will be, you just have to find high concentrations of Bell-South customers.
IANAL.... But given the current FCC approach and the recent BrandX case, are ISP's like Bell South common carriers wrt their internet services? Or does this only apply to the wires themselves?
I.e. if I build a bridge and allow anyone who has a train to cross it for a nominal fee, but I also own a train that I use to cross it, does the common carrier status apply to the train too, the bridge, or neither?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
In reaction to the announcement today that BellSouth is working on plans to charge websites for equal bandwidth availability, 1337 HAXXORZ with heretofore unknown viruses have begun plans to charge BellSouth to remain operational.
Indeed BellSouth and Sony are exhibiting the worst of the worst corporate behavior. At least BellSouth announced their intention. (small comfort) The best solution would be to make the internet faster so butt-wipes like BellSouth don't get any more cockeyed ideas like this. That's just pure sinister. Indeed, corporations are becoming more and more oppressive. Luckily, we have a voice with our congressmen and we can always use our pocketbooks to try to persuade BellSouth otherwise. I'll be contacting my representatives right now and letting them know how my vote will go if he doesn't stand up to this highway robbery. We're in a free market and to have them cripple startups like that is unfathomable.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/competition/legislation/ treaties/ec/art81_en.html
This is exactly why we should IMMEDIATELY hand over control of teh internets to the UN!
Is your terror cell living in terror? Is your safe-house not so safe? If so, read the New York Times, the jihad journal.
This guy seems to have his notion of the customer backwards. Google isn't a BellSouth customer. BellSouth's customers are the users who buy their DSL lines. Duh. Anyway, the really big picture is this: Google could take over BellSouth with the spare change in their couch. Does anyone who pays attention to the stock market think that Google would have a hard time raising 50 billion dollars if they wanted it? I don't.
In this case, "doing business" means having a customer of theirs visit your website (or use some other internet service from you). Your website could appear slow as molasses if you don't have the "make my website go faster" package with the ISP of every single person who visits your website.
So no, you don't have a choice about "doing business" with that ISP.
Last post!
From what I've been reading on I, Cringley, google might just bury this with it's network. Granted, his opinion is that google wouldn't want to be an isp, but if BellSouth starts playing with them, I don't see any reason they couldn't hit back.
Bell South, A US company operating in the US should care why?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I think they should do it. Cut the bandwidth. 50% for the web, 50% for gopher.
Million Dollar Screenshot
That will just drive more competition that will offer better services and more bandwidth.
If I am getting screwed over then I just look for a new provider or create my own. The beauty of the internet is that its not just 1 network.
Thank god the Southeastern United States seceded back in 1987 and joined the EU. Whew, crisis averted!
Yeah, except that's not the same thing at all. ISPs are businesses that can set (almost) any conditions they want. If you don't want to do business with them, fine.
Within 100 miles of where I live, there are places where the ONLY high-speed, low-latency, affordable internet option is DSL. ALL DSL must go through the local phone company directly or indirectly.
In other words, the phone company has the "independent" DSL providers by the balls, which means they have you by the balls. If they get abusive a la the Mafia, you are stuck.
Unless of course you choose to go without high-speed internet at all. Even the Mafia would stop bothering small businessmen if they "chose" to close their businesses rather than pay the mob.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm moving to Japan, where people and technology are both appreciated.
Duck the Femocrats
So they can charge the users, or charge the corps.
Say they charge the users...you have to tell them at some point in order to charge them (probably after they sign a contract) and you'll have angry users and lawsuits and nonsense -- or people will just sign up with other ISPs who advertise unlimited full speed access to all sites.
So that's a non-starter.
Say they charge the corporations...the users don't have to know, so the corporations with the big bucks may very well pony up the cash, because they'll suffer if they don't. This will only work if the corps being extorted run advertising campaigns making users aware of the issue, and recommending they switch to other ISPs (and perhaps offer some cash or other prize to do so).
So that might happen.
Grr.
And Americans don't understand why the rest of the world doesn't want the USA to be running Internet.
I for one hope they do this. And I hope that companies who don't pay them money join together and launch a slime-ad in order to educate the masses of this shady practice.
Just because the Internet is the great worldwide forum, that doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be able to pay for whatever benefits they think they can get. Yes, it will be a service unavailable to small start-ups, but if they have content that isn't available on another website then getting to that content should be worth the wait. Remember the days of 56k dialup?
Also, I would be thrilled if Wikipedia took advantage of something like this. I'm tired of not being able to get through to my account because the page never loads!
I suppose the next thing he is going to suggest is that the federal government impose a 5-cent surcharge on each e-mail message delivered over the Internet.
Now ISPs (in the U.S.A, and really what other country would have spawned this money grubbing plan?) have a common carrier status, they just carry the data, but it isn't theirs and they aren't responsible for it. As soon as ISPs start saying that this data has priority over that data they can no longer claim that they have no responsibilty for how their service is used.
It is this type of thinking that gives capitalism a bad name. If a company wants better download rates then they need a bigger and faster connection for their infrastructure not some putz taking off the brakes that never should have been engaged.
Insert pithy comment here.
Nice to see the /. editors are doing their job. Not.
I mean, I expect to see some grammatical "idiosyncrasies" in most /. articles, but usually I'm able to decipher what it is they're really trying to say. In this case, I have no clue. I'm assuming it's a case of sloppy cut-and-paste. The least the editors could have done was to remove the totally incoherent parts...
IANAL, but... Am I the only one here that see this has the potential to be interfering with Interstate Commerce? If you thought the Sony DRM issue was ugly, that could make Sony's issue look like common shoplifting...
Starting next week, all passwords will be entered in Morse code
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
If I go to the airport, I can choose between a half-dozen different airlines for very similar levels of service.
The problem is that of monopoly. Recent law passed making excellent 3rd-party DSL providers like Speakeasy required to pay the phone companies like SBC for access into homes. If SBC chooses to charge a high fee, then I assume Speakeasy won't be able to compete with SBC as a DSL provider and will go out of business in that region.
Imagine going to an airport with only 1 available airline. The ticket prices will be outrageous due to lack of competition.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS?
Write a letter to SBC's CEO and VP of Marketing. Let them know you are now less inclined to use their service directly as a result of statements made by Mr. Smith. If enough of us do this, then it CAN and WILL make a difference.
Remember how the Slashdot crowd wrote emails, faxes, letters regarding the FCC and how we helped stopped undesirable action? We can do it again.
I for one welcome our new overlords. All hail BellSouth.
Like seating their ram. :D
They charge your for every little thing even though it costs them nothing. Just like thieves and the mafia who charge for bogus activities. It reminds me of prisoners in prison who, because of their stature, charge other inmates for usage of pay phones. I understand the infrstructure costs but these guys nickle and dime people to no end. Fortunately there's VOIP and these guys are dying out.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Bell South, A US company operating in the US should care why?
This *would*, not this *will*. A hypothetical situation to illustrate something.
It is we users that reach websites. We make HTTP requests, the
websites respond.
And we *already* pay for that traffic, it is covered in access fees.
But none of this matters, really. Bell doesn't have a monopoly
on backbone. Its the Internet afterall, they can be circumvented.
Furthermore, Google will have the last laugh. They can say, "How
about this: We won't serve any of your customers. Period."
Then we can watch Bell lose unprecedented amounts of business...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet) sent a deposition to the US Congress on this legislation. See:
o ut_on_internet_neutrality/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/vint_cerf_speaking_
Vint couldn't attend in person since he was recieving the Presidential Medal of Freedom that day for his DARPANET/Internet pioneering efforts.
This link was widely disseminated in the North American IPv6 Task Force and IPv6 Forum where I believe most members strongly support Vint's views.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
On the other hand I recently heard an argument here in the UK that said that one of the arguments against forcing ISPs to cache all email traffic for later inspection by law enforcement in the "war on terror" is that the volume of spam makes it uneconomic (and the bad guys are using untraceable untappable voip anyway).
It appears that the Internet remains a magnicifently untameable beast still, despite pointy headed attempts like this to control it.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
No telling what kind of shady deals they would try.
"Yeah the we gotta speed up access to this site. It belongs to the VP's loser son's Counterstrike server."
I would spend my money with anybody *but* them.
could never happen. MS makes a deal with provider. we get "extra" service (aka others get hosed) for our loyal customer. beside those linux dudes are hosting servers (gasp!)
nah, could never happen
So now instead of just charging their own customers to access their network, they want the charge the content producers, i.e., customers of other ISP's to access their network. It takes a real genius to come up with an unworkable plan like this.
Yous guys don'na want to go tos yahoos. Wes got'ta better search heres sal'ssearch. Yous wanna boobs? We got BOOBs. Yous wanna car, we can get yous a deal on dat car, betters than anyone, trust us. Yous wanna a doctor? Goes here, dis is Phils, Phils is the best doc anywhere plus no reading tests on his walls. Wheres you wanna goes today? Wes know a better place over heres.
BellSouth (and other baby bells) are upset that they only get paid for traffic on one end. They want to have a toll-booth status where (let's say) Google pays to get their traffic onto the BS network and have you pay them to get Google's traffic off of it.
;-)
I don't think this was a real big issue until VoIP providers started "stealing" their customers...at least the timing coincided. Suddenly it's not "fair" that the internet content providers (including Vonage and friends) are "leeching" off their IP network.
I think that's BS.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
We're talking about "slowing" the non-paying traffic. That's completely different, and most likely illegal. The FCC is going to eat their lunch.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The net is one of the few things that we all take part in. Now the
Baby Bells are back to rule what we have created. It is time for us to retire the Baby Bells. They no longer serve any purpose, but to stand in the way of progress. Lets create a wireless network that spans the country and cut the Bells from the equation.
This means that all the disadvantaged companies on the Internet relocate outside of the USA.
Jobs and technology follows them.
The 'outside world' slowly vanishes from the Internet radar of US citizens.
America gets left behind.
What's the problem ?
Here is a pretty good example of a bad hire. This guys is never going to get anywhere with these kinds of ideas. What a Loser!
God Bless the Internet!
Now it seems to me that they have already been given a huge bung in the form of common carrier status. Despite the fact that they control and supply a form of communication that can be used for everything from disaster relief to terrorism, they have to provide almost no monitoring of what goes on, No expensive prioritisation, and they have little to no responsibility for what goes on on their networks!.
If AT&T decide to drop Common carrier status, then thats up to them, however i doubt they could afford it. Nor is it desirable.
Basically, if they decide to take more control of what goes on their network, they need to be prepared to take the responsibility that that control puts in their hands, and that includes being responsible for everything that goes across their networks.
To use the example in the summary, Yahoo could pay SBC to colocate inside its network in key datacenters with large pipes. There you go, Yahoo pays to load faster than Google. This is a perfectly legitimate business offering and perfectly logical.
Would the difference be appreciable, perhaps it would be, perhaps not.
It almost sounds like SBC is suggesting it will either assign priority to certain packets or delay others. Both border on troublesome given SBC's common carrier status. Assigning priority sounds like their network is incapable of supporting the load requested so instead of upgrading to larger pipes they extort money from content providers who actually want to reach their clients. Delaying packets sounds a lot like the first step to blocking competing or "non-contributing" services such as Vonage and should be treated in a hostile manner by PUCs and the FCC.
The first ISP that tries this should be put out of business through a billion metaphorical "paper cuts." The rest of the world can simply refuse to reply to packets from their IP space. They'll lose customers at the speed of light when half the Internet goes voluntarily inaccessible to Bell South's IP addresses.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Vint Cerf (Co-Father of the Internet) wrote a deposition to Congress to speak out against the plan supported by Bellsouth. The text is posted here:o ut_on_internet_neutrality/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/vint_cerf_speaking_
Vint was not able to testify before Congress since he and Bob Kahn were busy that day recieving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House for their (DARPANET,TCP/IP,Internet) pioneering efforts. This link was widely distributed to the North American IPv6 Task Force and IPv6 Forum where I believe the majority of engineers strongly support Vint's Views.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
If you ARE going to prioritize traffic, prioritize according to:
1) how fast the bits have to get there
2) how tolerable a dropped/not-to-be-resent packet is
for #1, it's usually but not always:
*real-time infrastructure alarms or updates such as those that might be sent by an overloaded router or announcements of changes to routing tables.
*streaming applications like web-radio
*interactive applications like web browsing and chat
*urgent email and file transfers
*everything else
for #2, it's usually but not always
*Anything where one more dropped packet will cause the end result to go from "usuable" to "unusable" whatever that means for a given application. Example, streaming video may tolerate 1 lost packet if the previous n packets arrived safely and on time before the static becomes too annoying for the user.
*Anything sent over a reliable protocol, where delays will cause resends
*everything else
Note that some of these are "loosely defined" and hard to impliment in any meaningful way without industry standards. How will a router know what my personal tolerance for noise on a TV show is?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
An anonymous Slashdot moderator, whose name rhymes with "Sonk" was quoted as saying "We already have a SRAA (Slashdot RAID Article Array) that we have been testing for redundancy over the past couple of years. Step 5... Profit!"
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
Does this mean the newest photoshopped images of Jessica Simpson will take more than one second to load??? DAMN YOU BELL SOUTH!!!!
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
ISPs are like toll roads, and now they want to charge more depending who you are. That isn't going to work. Fortunately there are other roads and ISPs.
In the real world, if you create a good product or provide good information, you have the opportunity to make lots of money.
0 4&ext=mp3
If the Internet was similar to the real world, all Internet Providers would be paying content producers money for the information the Internet Provider's customers use.
Unfortuately, with the Internet - it is opposite. Say you have a really good site and you gather quite a bit of traffic, unfortunately you pay your Internet provider by the megabytes of traffic your visitors use. A good slashdotting could bankrupt you - all because your providing good information.
If you want to listen to an excellent interview of how the Internet came to be how it is today, Nerd TV's interview with Brester Kahle (Internet Archive Founder) is definately worth a listen.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/player/?show=0
Google and others should respond now by putting a warning on their websites if a customer is coming from a BS ip block. Something like:
Attention: You are connected to us using a BellSouth network. BellSouth may be deliberatly causing your connection to us to run slowly, if the connection seems to be slow you should consider moving to a different provider.
If several popular domains do this BS will run away screaming. Heck, Google could even maliciously counter-attack by randomly running a rate control to the BS ip blocks.
Sig is on vacation
...how dumb shits like this become CEOs or even executive management? I mean, I can't even comprehend anything so stupid.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Correct me if I'm wrong, but SBC is still a different company than BellSouth. As a BellSouth monopoly "customer" I can say that I do not like BellSouth.
So the middle-man trying to squeeze both sides. Charge the end user for the pipe, then charge the providers for putting stuff in the pipe. Nice work when you can get it.
Sounds more like the BellSouth CEO has been hitting the crack pipe. If he wasn't so high up the chain this would be a laugher, but this idiot is serious!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Can't say I'd miss them if that spamhole got blackholed.
Whether it be for egregious failing to handle abuse or for
this trick. Both would be ample.
in Linux Journal recently.
.. to the phrase "The Dirty South".
-- jimmycarter
How about instead of offering priority service, use the money you would save to provide support for your customers...
Smith said the ability to prioritize traffic would benefit consumers, such as with online services providing medical alerts.
Prioritizing medical alerts? Is he saying his ISP currently can't get a few kilobytes of HTML to its customers without prioritization? Did any of the "reporters" and "analysts" there call him on this? He's either lying or incompetent, and either way I'm glad I'm neither a customer or a shareholder of his company.
But even if you ignore the ridiculous example, isn't the doublespeak here obvious? He's trying to defend a system where he would be able to assign priorities to his customers' traffic, but because that's impossible he's instead pointing out how nice it would be if his customers could prioritize their own traffic. Sure, if the router at the other end of my 300kB/sec could keep track of what priority I've given network connections and could bump higher priority data ahead in the queue, that would be good. If the router at the other end of my dad's 5kB/sec could do the same, that would be fantastic. If either router instead kept track of what priority my ISPs think my network traffic should have, that would be horrible. All the old private computer networks from AOL to Compuserve to Prodigy learned painfully that their customers wanted a global internet, and now all the new big internet providers are having fantasies of turning our global internet back into their own private networks.
I'm not sure why Google, Amazon, and eBay are leading the fight on our side, though - are they actually worried that broadband connections will become so crippled that an HTML storefront or search engine might be noticeably impacted? This isn't about web traffic, this is about phone companies that want to sell you gigabytes of TV-over-IP for affordable prices, but without being forced to make generic packets cheap enough for kilobytes of voice-over-IP to take all their current revenues away.
If a major ISP ever did this, I don't think it would take long for popular sites to start filtering for their IP space and redirecting to an informative page about the lousy ISP.
Picturing the bedlam in the call center is making me smile.
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
That's why I get cable high-speed instead of Dial-up !!!!!!!!
Well, the US likes to lend its laws to Europe when it comes to IP and such, so we were just returning the favour. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This would be like the cable company accepting money from LifeTime to make HGTV have a snowy picture.
Or
The Phone company accepting money from Dominoes to make Pizza Huts phone line have a bunch of static on it.
Or
Mechanics accepting money from Chevy to make Fords only go 40 miles per hour.
sheesh
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
His analogies are irrelevant, becuase Bell South already does what he's talking about--you can pay for whatever speed pipe to your house or business that you want. Bell South *customers* already pay for service tiers, just like airline customers or shipping customers.
A proper analogy to what he is proposing is the airline or shipper charging destinations more for faster service. In other words unless Cleveland, OH paid up, your package is going to take 5 days to get there whether you paid for overnight service or not.
Frankly I have to believe that this treads over the line of breach of contract. Most business connectivity contracts do not specifically reserve the right of the carrier to make the type of service distinctions he's talking about. Introducing such distinctions seems to me to open a Pandora's box of liability.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
>...BellSouth could try, but then Google lights up all their dark fiber
>and take themselves OUT of BellSouth's market altogether, leaving
?BellSouth to explain to their customers why they should keep paying
>for a service that doesn't give them easy access to the most popular
>search engine on the net.
And what stops Google from pulling the same stuff?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Start suing BellSouth for network latency that muddles their own guarantees.
Yahoo: "In our random tests Google was reacheable before our own main page for 7% of Tuesday. I demand recompense -- RECOMPENSE!"
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Film at 11!
I've been a loyal bellsouth customer for several years. My landline costs me roughly $70 a month. I've also got their internet service. Sorry Bellsouth, but I'm not buying from you any more. You sound too much like Sony.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
Docs Searls of Linux Journal wrote an interesting piece a few weeks called Flushing the Net Down the Tube where he talks about this happening.
The providers don't want to be just the guys that rent the pipes because there's not enough money in it. They'd like to be able to control content and charge for extra services. Sprint's music downloads is an example where this is already happening. (You can get highspeed music downlads but only through their vendor lock-in service.)
According to Searls' article the providers have watched companies like ebay and google make fortunes on the Internet using their pipes. They feel left out and want to get in on the action. Expect more of this.
"Some say Small Firms Could Be Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer."
I guess Using More Capitalized Letters Could Help Balance the Internet Doctor.
Bell South is so evil, that we can not trust them to ever really withdraw this proposal.
I say boycott. Use Skype. More importantly, help develop a wireless mesh network that completely bypasses the phone company.
Now all we have to do is figure out how to get away from their copper all together.
Bellsouth already have some rather 'dubious' business practices. For instance, the City in which I live has proposed that our local (City owned) utility company will provide fiber in the home to all our residents. Bellsouth have been raising every type of spurious legal claim possible to try and block this measure, even though it was widely supported in a referendum (forced by Bellsouth!). Currently, Bellsouth provides DSL service in this area and Cox provides cable. It is a basic duopoly. Needless to say, the rates are much higher than elsewhere. Earthlink does provide cheaper service. However, one can only use Earthlink if one has local telephone service from...you guessed it,...Bellsouth. My phone service is provided by AT and T. They cannot provide DSL service, because it is blocked by...you guessed it, Bellsouth. I complained about this situation to the FCC. However, the day after I lodged my complaint, the FCC made a ruling saying it was just fine for Bellsouth to behave this way. So, these new 'ideas' from Bellsouth appear to be part of their on-going plans to hold on to their near monopoly situation. I think that it stinks. I cannot wait for the city fiber to arrive at my house.
Luckily, we have a voice with our congressmen and we can always use our pocketbooks to try to persuade BellSouth otherwise. I'll be contacting my representatives right now and letting them know how my vote will go if he doesn't stand up to this highway robbery.
Voice with our Congressmen? Unless your letter of heartfeat concern about this issue includes a $10,000 contribution to his or her "re-election fund", your opinion means less than squat to them.
Get this straight: BellSouth and Sony are not dumb. They are not even evil. They are simply after money, as much as they can get in any way they can get it. Yes, this attempt by BellSouth might fail, but what will it cost them to try? Nothing. And so they will try it and see if it works, because the cost/benefit analysis says it's a worthwhile shot. That cold and remorseless continuing attempt to get money is what drives them. Yes, our small little computer-knowledgable community will "punish" BellSouth by moving elsewhere, but we're not providing BellSouth with enough money to offset the potential gain if sites like Google, Yahoo, etc. did give it to this scheme.
This exec isn't a moron, he's just trying a win a completely different game than we're playing.
If Google or yahoo or some other big site wants to load faster it can simply buy connectivity from that ISP. Presto faster load times. Or am I missing something?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
This just reinforces an idea I had years ago. What the USA needs is to separate the network from the content. We need a monopoly to maintain and extend the existing wires and fiber optics. They would have to sell access to any ISP that wanted it, all ISPs would have to adhere to the same rate structure. No favoritism would be allowed.
ISPs would in turn provide content, anything from movies on demand to email to telephone. These ISP would have to be competitive.
This would end cases like my brother had with BellSouth. After a year of DLS service, he lost it. His ISP could not get BellSouth to restore the connection - they said he was too far from the CO. So he cancelled the service and went on vacation. When he came back he contracted with BellSouth to provide DSL, and had it up and running the next day. That vacation was miraculous - it shortend the distance between his house and the CO.
You can't allow the hardware owner to provide services. It's a clear conflict of interest.
Until we can wrest control of the last mile from greedy low-down snakes like BellSouth, we are never going to have true broadband access in the USA.
A traffic prioitization service already exists. It's Akamai's whole business model: They buy pipes to strategic locations with many service providers, cache servers near the customer and route requests to the best-choice server. You buy space on their servers and your data gets to the customer faster.
What Mr Smith wants to do is, well, asinine. He wants to allow the data pipes on his network to fill to 100% and then prioritize the traffic based on who pays. This suggests such a flawed understanding of the technology that as the chief technology officer, he should be fired.
See, here's the problem: For a router to make a priority-based switching decision between packets, it has to have more than one packet cached in memory waiting for free space in the outgoing pipe. But, if you havn't started transmitting the first packet by the time the second packet finishes arriving then you've already lost the speed game. Fast service means that you don't hold on to the packets. You send them out the next link as soon as you get them. Any other architecture would result in transmission speeds that are two to three times slower, even for the highest priority packets! Duh!
So if you don't want your network to suck rocks, you still have to keep the utilization below 80%, and if you keep the utilization down then except for rare bursts of traffic the prioritization function will never be used.
As a search engine, why on earth would I buy priority on your network knowing that either A) it almost never gets used or B) your network is piss slow either way? Answer: I wouldn't.
Fire Mr. Smith. He doesn't understand the technology he's charged with overseeing.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I may be slightly swimming against the mainstream opinion here, but I have absolutely no problem with simply prioritizing traffic. In the case of online gaming, for example, making sure that there are no latency spikes is something for which I, as a consumer, might be willing to pay a premium.
And let's be honest, the impact on websites would not be noticeable. There's generally more than plenty of bandwidth for ALL the traffic moving through major routers, and in the cases where a standard packet is delayed to let higher priority traffic pass, it would likely be for only a matter of milliseconds over whatever normal delay might exist due to the congestion. Even for VoIP this probably wouldn't be noticed.
HOWEVER, what would be totally unacceptable would be implementing false caps on "low priority" traffic, in essence forcing "undesirable" traffic to be slowed down for no technically justifiable reason. That would be very very very bad, and it could easily be used in all the sorts of anti-competitive ways that everyone else is talking about.
For those that don't approve of the ISP forcing QOS rules on you, do you also
disagree with them using it to aid VOIP traffic? They use it to enhance the
experince of their customers and ultimately their profits. They are a
business, when it comes down to it, they can do what they please. If people
actually did complain and jump ship, they would change it.
Even if they did use QOS to make Yahoo load quicker than Google, would any of
you truly notice? Would you really notice if Google took 1.2 seconds to load
instead of 1.0?
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
First off:
"If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."
I'm pretty sure that comparison isn't really the same. Obviously these services are more "consumer side" in which we decide whether we want to have faster shipping or better seats on a flight. I suppose you could draw a parallel by saying that the company could force you to do faster shipping or a better seat vs. no seat at all.
Secondly, this seems like the sort of thing that a free market economy fixes. First off ISP aren't exactly a pure monopoly by any means, I would venture to say very few areas have exclusively BellSouth as an ISP. This simply allows consumers to choose which service they would want to use; the only situation where this might not work is if all ISPs adopted such a plan, but even then there are laws against massive collusion for profit.
Let me get this right...
Yahoo and Google choose their web hosting services as they please - T3, dial-up or whatever. They pay for whatever bandwidth they want.
Now, I, as a potential accessor of both sites also pay for a certain capped bandwidth to the internet as a whole.
The only meaning that makes sense to what BellSouth is suggesting is that if they are MY ISP then they will deliberately selectively throttle my access to sites I am trying to access unless the target site has paid them what amounts to "protection money"?!!
I wonder why BellSouth think anyone would choose to use them as an ISP is that is the type of access they are planning to provide?!!
This sounds like a great idea. The moment they start looking at every packet that crosses their network, they will be responsible for every illegal activity. Every person that is on their network that gets a virus should sue them. Every piece of kiddie porn should warrant a case against them. If they are stupid enough to give up their Common Carrier status for a few bucks, they should be sued out of existance so that someone can come in that actually serves the customers, rather than screws them.
Learn to love Alaska
You should at least change the title:_ the_Internet
http://digg.com/technology/BellSouth_wants_to_rig
Unless of course PlayfullyClever is also known as briarpatch.
I'm not going to complain about stories constantly getting posted here after it was on digg days/hours ago, but seeing the exact same titles now is getting a bit ridiculous.
In this case, TFA is just talking about QoS and high-bandwidth RT feeds like streaming video. I'd fully expect a large ISP to peer with such folk. Helps everybody if there's enough traffic to justify the direct, dedicated connection.
I'm sure the Bells have been paid back many times over for their investments in building out the infrastructure, and for which they were given monopolies. Lets organize a law to create state agencies that get to take over and maintain the phone and cable lines and poles and conduits for a monthly utility fee, just like happens with highways or other city run utilities. If companies want to run their own fibre after that, great, let them.
It would need to be clear that this is a critical national infrastructure and was critical that it be maintained and upgraded. There would be grants from an appropriate Federal agency to assist with this, much like they assist with highway and other projects today.
This would even the playing field between providers of all types and remove all of the conflicts of interest. Heck, while we are at it, lets take back the power lines too, let the government be responsible for distribution of power and let power companies actually compete on supply and service.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
won't go sift through their country club buddy's garbage. What's the point of lobbying?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I am not connected to his network ...hehe :)
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
(continuing the shipping analogy kick) what BS is attempting to do is make it legal for certain shipping companies to violate traffic laws to arrive at destinations faster than the competition. Imagine the Fedex truck running the UPS truck off the road, cutting it off in heavy traffic, speeding, and getting pushed to the front of every line at a toll booth or stoplight, while the cops stand by and make sure that the UPS truck bends over and takes every disadvantage right up the tailpipe. This is what BellSouth is suggesting. It probably won't make much of a difference on roads that are wide and have speed limits that are near the maximum speed that the shipping trucks can travel at, but it makes a huge difference on crowded streets or sections of road with low speed limits.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. These big execs don't know right from wrong, and the SEC should be looking deeper at Bell right now. They should worry more at their survival then trying to dictate where we are going....VOIP rules
that about sums it up, fight the monolopy of the telcos once again
BellSouth wants to create demand where there was none before, and profit off it. While I had no problem with their plans if it would really put no site at a disadvantage by providing additional bandwidth for paying sites, the plan is merely to redistribute the existing bandwidth, which automatically means that some sites (the non-paying ones) will suffer compared to others, but the overall bandwidth will be the same. This means: A competetive advantage (no matter how big or small) for sites that have financial resources to blow, an equal disadvantage for smaller and non-profit sites, and in any case many happy network operators that win either way. Internet users that pay for a service might face rising fees, too (a shame, although it's mostly pr0n sites anyway).
All in all, it'd be just another small step to kill the Internet's function as a tool for (almost) free speech ('almost free' both as in beer and as in, uh, speech).
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
This is why the 'net' should have never, ever, been commercialized.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...I wonder why he doesn't try it on his phone systems first?
"Hello, Coca-Cola? Yeah, listen, I just wanted you to know that we just cut a new deal with Pepsi, that gives their phone calls priority on our systems. Yeah, it's an exclusive deal and all. Basically my engineers tell me that any call of yours routed through our systems will receive a 10% degredation in signal quality and experience approximately a 3 second delay in connection. I'm sure you understand, just the cost of doing business and all. If you're interested, perhaps I can tell you about our new Super Platinum plan, which would give your calls Level 2 High Priority, ensuring that....hello?"
Wow maybe they could do the same for telemarketers ... I'd pay good money to block telemarketing calls :-) Well may $3.00 a month :-)
I assume this is just as easy as blocking an IP address or not cache'n some URL.
Maybe you could go complain to the UN ...*ducks*
What about non-profit organizations Mr. Smith? Do you plan to exort from them as well?
Shameless greed by an ego run amok. Someone get this guy outta there.
No, Vern. They just let him in.
I don't think the BellSouth executive did a very good job of explaining what they're planning on doing. Think about it- a 1.5Mbit+ DSL user won't be able to tell the difference if Yahoo! is given priority over Google. Everything loads relatively fast, so shaving off a couple fractions of a second would almost certainly go unnoticed.
On the other hand, BellSouth has a big problem that plagues almost every other large telco/ISP -- dial-up users. Sooner or later, due to the high overhead associated with maintaining the service, the mass number of dial-up users that just-don't-care-enough to purchase DSL will be forced into it. It will probably be called "DSL Ultra-Lite" (or something like that), and will cost about the same as they were paying for their dial-up service.
Since DSL Ultra-Lite's downstream will undoubtedly be artificially capped somewhere between 56K and IDSL-speeds, there's potential for BellSouth to provide those users with bandwidth-on-demand by selectively "uncapping" their connections. I'm just guessing here, but if they could work out the technical details, companies like Yahoo! or Google could pay BellSouth to display their sites to DSL Ultra-Lite customers - at regular DSL speeds. That certainly *would* be noticed, and it's not really all that dirty.
Then again, I'm probably giving those wizards over at BellSouth a little too much credit. Those "technical details" I mentioned are not trivial, so I'd be surprised if BellSouth could even get something like that to work properly.
IANAL, but if memory serves, once they lose that common carrier distinction, they become liable for all the really bad stuff that happens on their network -- on of their customers illegally downloads an mp3 from Kazaa, and BellSouth can be sued too; some guy uses them to launch trojans, they can be sued; 'etc.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Lengthly but quite on topic:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673
The carriers are going to lobby for the laws and regulations they need, and they're going to do the deals they need to do. The new system will be theirs, not ours. The NEA principle--Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, Anybody can improve it--so familiar to the Free Software and Open Source communities will prove to be a temporary ideal, a geek conceit. Code is not Law. Culture is not Free. From the Big Boys' perspective, code and culture are stuff nobody cares about.
That's us: Nobody.
Welcome to reciprocal compensation for the Internet age. In the good old days, telcos received money for terminating a call, initiated outside their network, to one of their customers. The theory was that the carrier who originated the call is getting money from their subscriber for the call, but the carrier that terminates the call also incurs cost, so they need a cut of the money too.
The RBOCs (Baby Bells) loved this until CLECs (Competitve Local Exchange Carriers) came along and started terminating huge dialup Internet modem pools behind their switches. This meant that the Bells started having to pay the CLECs, and infact some CLECs entire business model was based on getting this recip. comp. from the Bells. The amount of recip. comp. given to CLECs because of dialup modems could be huge - millions of dollars a year. So for some reason, the Bells petitioned the FCC and the days for recip. comp. were numbered. I believe it is, or was, being phased out over a few years. (I no longer work in that industry, so I don't know for sure).
SBC apparently thinks that the Internet should work the same way.
Who says businesses can't learn by watching the RIAA and their tactics? Hell, I think everyone here realizes that - if the RIAA could get away with it - they would charge us for every time we have the privilige of *listening* to a song! As someone else pointed out, Bellsouth is obviously going to do whatever it takes to protect their phone business, and shut out VOIP (i.e. Sony-type tactics in a way)
Wow! QoS is magic. Guess that makes me the Harry Potter of Networking.
As far as I know the local cable ISP here (shaw.ca) QoS demotes torrent traffic. A very good thing if you ask me. Usenet > p2p
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
Edward Whitacre, the CEO of SBC, explicitly discussed the idea of charging Google for access, or blocking Vonage's audio packets; it's a consistent corporate message. I discussed Whitacre's statement at length back on 1 Nov -- see http://www.pebbleandavalanche.com/weblog/2005/11/0 1/blog-20051101T0531.
Then all the Small ISPs that don't do that crap will start taking their customers away because they're tired of paying the same price for slower and unreliable service....oh wait, they're doing that now. Guess that's why I've gown 15% in the past 6 months.
Welcome to Google. We appologize that this page loaded so slowly but that is because your Internet Service Provider, Bell South, has crippled your ability to quickly load this page. May we suggest that you call 1-800-tech-sup and open a trouble ticket or 1-800-cust-rel to file a complaint. You may also wish to inform your legislative representative about Bell South's attempt to cut you off from the content providers that you pay them to access. Your senator's and Representative's contact information is as follows: 1-800-xxx-xxxx
As a final solution the following companies provide unimpeeded high speed access in your area:
Co. A
Co. B
Co. C
Kind regards, Google Inc.
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
I was canceling my Bellsouth DSL in the next week or so due to other reasons. Any suggestions on how to do it in a manner that will get this idiots attention?
The sooner big providers start trying to filter IP packets and charge accordingly, the sooner massive distributed P2P anonymizer nets will take off, and even better the sooner free public wireless meshes will start interconnecting. It may cost the telco's millions of dollars per mile to lay fiber, but I know the actual cost of renting a ditchdigger and fiber per linear foot is no where that expensive, especially if it's a volunteer project. Crossing state lines might be iffy, but you can always use high speed wireless links if there are funny legal issues. There's really no point in subsidising huge bandwidth companies who do nothing but buy expensive routers and existing fiber and charge an arm and a leg for it.
Probably not, because they aren't disciminating based upon the content.
Sure they are, packets are packets but in the BS network now Yahoo packets are discrimiated for, which means others pushed to the side are discriminated against... content can just as easily be definded as being the metadata around a packet, like sender IP.
Or at least that's roughly the argument I'd use in the lawsuit. I look forward to the complete decimation of any carrier stupid enough to implement this plan.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see Crack is Making a come back.. It's the only valid reason for these insane comments. Hey bell south how about a blowme sandwich? OOps did i misspell bologna.
Of course, this madness would end quite suddenly, the moment that Earthstink starts running TV promos stating, "We offer you the full power of our Internet service no matter what site you visit."
What's that? I can switch providers and tell BellSouth where to shove their Intarweb? Sign me up!
Legislating otherwise "would be the same thing as saying to Google, 'I think we ought to have regulation on Google that says when I enter a search term, the top search result is always a random event,' " Smith said, claiming that Google allows clients to pay to influence the ranking of search results. In fact, Google does not allow payments to influence general search results, although advertisers pay for top billing on the lists that run on the right side of Google's pages.
My recollection of Internet History, is that once upon a time a company named Yahoo decided to let websites pay for higher rankings, not unlike a certain telephone company now wants to do. Yahoo might have similarly argued, that paid rankings are just a premium above normal rankings, but I'm sure the sites that got bumped to Page 2 of the search results listings didn't see it that way.
Then, another company named Google came along. Their theory was that paid rankings fundamentally undermined the concept of relevance and/or popularity-based searching, and that users wanted relevant sites, not commercials. So they didn't allow paid rankings. Similar to how other ISPs probably won't allow pay-for-performance internet traffic. Though there are many reasons Yahoo was overtaken by Google, the exclusion of paid rankings was unquestionably one of them.
If BellSouth truly wanted to look to Google as a historical example, the conclusion should be that pay-for-performance is a bad idea, not a good one. The market's DISTASTE for pay-for-ranking was one of the keys to Google's success.
There's another problem too, though. There's only a finite number of big-tier ISPs. If they ALL decided to switch to this pay-for-performance model, there would be almost nothing the market could do about it. By contrast, the fundamental reason that nobody really complained about Yahoo's paid rankings, was because Yahoo's actions didn't impede consumer choice. An INFINITE number of search engine websites can be started up on the Internet, so if there's a market desire for non-paid rankings, someone is always free to seize on that. And that's exactly what Google did. If all the top-tier ISPs decide to do pay-for-performance (presumably in a legal, non-collusive way), who's going to challenge them? Starting up a Tier-1 ISP is a little different than starting up a website.
However, although it's probably bad for the Internet, that's not to say BellSouth is stupid for considering this. They're betting on whether the money from sites paying for better performance will offset the money lost from customers ditching them for network-neutral ISPs. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that gamble pays off.
ISP's already do this sort of thing, if I download files from the wrong server my ISP throttles my service. Same thing... this isn't new it is just getting worse.
This is already being done.
Want a faster site get 3 T3's Hooked up. I think that might be faster then the low cost T1.
I think you're falling into the trap of seeing everything in black and white generalizations.
Try this:
A Most business' main goal is to maximize profit for its shareholders, [snip]
I think it is possible for profit to be the priority, and yet have ethics inform ones path to profits. If your code of business was taken to the extreme, then we'd see Steve Balmer literarily put hits on Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Think Moscow just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
If a publicly held company states their commitment to ethics and what exactly those ethics are on it's prospectus, there really need not be a conflict.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I'll agree that deliberately holding back some packets is bad. But, there is a problem here: real-time services, such as VoIP and IP TV & so on rely on quality of service -- if your phone call packets arrive sufficiently delayed or out-of-order, then it sounds horrible.
There's already a pretty good technical solution for this: using the TOS/Diffserv bits in the packet header to mark what should be prioritized. The problem is that the priorities only matter if there's somebody out there who isn't prioritized.
So, VoIP providers mark their packets with the appropriate bits and the ISPs deal with it appropriately. But, if there's no gatekeeper -- i.e. no agreement between the ISP and the VoIP provider -- then what keeps every web site from doing it? And, if everybody does that, then it's useless.
You can argue "Well, you can engineer around that -- RTP [the protocol underlying most streaming media] packets are pretty easy to detect." But, if you're BellSouth or TimeWarner and doing so will help your competitors with no benefit to you, why would you do it? Wouldn't you at least want your customers to pay more for that service?
If the agreement is "Pay me money and I'll pay attention to your Diffserv bits," to me that's ok. But, if the agreement is "Pay me money or I'll hold your packets for random long lengths of time," though, that's a problem as it interferes with the subscriber's ability to use the services he/she wants.
BellSouth wants to prioritize network traffic over their own network in response to customer demand and willingness to pay more for better bandwidth consistency and latency, also allowing them to sell the remaining bandwidth at a lower, more competitive rate if necessary.
as long as you're giving end users internet service for free. They've gotta be crazy if they think I'm gonna pay $35 a month for a crippled internet service, though.
Like, I've got this way totally cool site, and you really should come over and...s..e....e.....i.....t.................!@#llk g953ynw5iywu58-hn4-g83h`2t- LOST CARRIER
;-)
Me: Hello, customer service? I just got a "lost carrier" message.
Hypothetical BellSouth guys: "Lost carrier" message? Oh, right! That means that you need to fork over more $$$ if you want to run your own site and take advantage of your First Amendment rights.
Me: So basically you're saying that I can't use my right to free speech unless I pay for it?
Hypothetical BellSouth guys: Pretty much, yeah. That. Right...
No wonder their initials are BS
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
They actually talk to big providers and put cache engines in their datacentres. I work for a large university and they did that with us. The deal was they'd provide us with the servers and a switch, at no cost. We'd put them in our datacentre at no cost. We'd then set up routing so all Akamai requests went to those servers and they'd manage the servers.
Both parties win. We are happy because it knocked a few mbps off our usage, they are happy because they don't pay anything to have them there.
Now if they were willing to do that for us, with about 70,000 customers or so, I imagine they do it for most large ISPs.
If taken to its logical next step:
What happens when Yahoo pays ISP A to prioritize its packets, and those packets travel through transit provider B which has a contract to prioritze Google packets?
Who sues whom?
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
In large unnamed Eastern European country, you throttle bandwidth. In Corporate America, bandwidth throttle YOU!
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
If Google, Yahoo and other major providers simply all agreed among themselves not to pay, that would significantly weaken BellSouth's position. If they reduce everyone's ping times, then they are degrading the service and increase the liklihood of customers abandoning their DSL service.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Jerks. Pure corporate jealousy.
This is the oldest business case conflict since com-priv newsgroup of the early 90's bantied it about. The Bells always fight to restore their golden metered usage oligopoly while entrepeneurs see "value-add" revenue opportunities from the commons model of the marketplace with equal access creating a free market.
What we are seeing is hybridization of the infrastructure resources with multiple pricing and access schemes where users will have to choose the model that best suites their situation. Its capitalism, progress and the free market in action.
It's sounds like an another corperate scandel.
"Network operators can identify the digital "packets" of content moving through their wires from sites and services and can block some or put others at the head of the stream."
CENSORSHIP
"Rather, he said, a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy."
I wonder if this dickhead would want his service restricted. If he wants to bring it on, on BellSouth then let him - I'm sure his shareholders will get kinda miffed when they lose subscribers hand-over-foot.
WTF is it with these guys?Have they been smoking soooo much dope that they've become paranoid about the responses to their businesses? Sooner (hopefully) rather than later) these pricks will understand that the net has become a utility and we, the humble users, will stand up for our rights and shoot these f**kers down.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
Honestly, I'm sure someone could write a program to manage the QOS based on provisioning or just general "peering" agreements beyond the whole Internet BGP-Peering that companies have to get reliable, fast routing on the internet. The thing is, from an ISP's perspective it would be quite hard to manage reliably and if they failed in any way they would likely be subject to significant liquidated damages.
It doesn't seem like a smart task to attempt. Much like VoIP in general - networks historically have been "best effort" while telco's hard lines have been 5, 9's regulated. IP is a best effort protocol designed to operate on a plane of existance dependant upon the wires and devices operating correctly. Over time it has become more resilient but it is still best effort; a very socialist protocol not particularly designed to adjust to the whims of its capitalistic users or their monopolisticly competitive organizations.
Didn't an Executive at SBC say something about something like this a couple of weeks ago?
These guys heads are too big to fit through most doors I imagine.
Thanksgiving saw me across the table from some high-level Comcast executives. Comcast is very excited about their consolidation of services, including VOIP. Personally, I'm not in their territory, get my TV from Dish, and my broadband from a local ISP. But knowing that Comcast is politically fairly far to the selfish end of the spectrum (e.g., union busting), I asked, "So, will you be blocking 3rd-party VOIP offerrings?" I was assured the Comcast fully understands that from a public relations standpoint they can't do anything to block or shape traffic, regardless of any legal implications.
I'm sure Comcast is quite ready and able to take Bell South's business away from them over much of their territory. I was also assured they see their future growth at the various phone companies' expense.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
For years the ILECs have been telling analysts that they can use QOS to degrade competitor packets, especially for things like VOIP. The dickhead at Bell South is just a little more public about these things, but there's nothing new here.
Notice, by the way, that probably half or more of the Internet traffic in the US travels on wires owned by Verizon or SBC, now that AT&T is digested. It will be hard to tell these guys they can't do what they want.
Between the re-emerging of Ma Bell, the RIAA, MPAA, SCO, and other various unscrupulous companies and wealthy individuals, it's getting hard for the consumer, the person who should be able to make a lot of these things go into effect (or not), to actually do anything.
/. regularly are indeed informed of things, and usually boycott or act on the information we find here.
/. leans more towards America than other countries) doesn't visit Slashdot, or most of the other sites that would alert us towards the devil working in a company. Hell, even when such news hits the main media, most of the populace shrug and continue buying their Sony music CDs, then suddenly wonder why their computer is running so slow.
Oh, yes, informed citizens can make a difference. Those of us who read
However, for better or for worse, most of the American nation (seeing as how
What we need is a counter-company. Some business (or even someone) with enough clout, money, and lawyers that they can fight for the interests of the consumer, while probably also working things to benefit them as well. (Since they'll be benefiting us, it's not bad if they profit from the play, as long as they don't do anything evil.)
Not many companies exist that aren't seen as "evil" that would be able to achieve this kind of thing. A few companies spring in to mind, but the hard part would be making them see the value of fighting for the consumers, even when a bill that some bought-and-paid-for senator is proposing would help their business in some manner. I think a main thing to push would be the customer loyalty they would obtain in return for their help. Word of mouth is the best advertising anyone can ask for and no one can really pay for.
I'm sure one company popped up in most minds as they read this.
"Thank you for calling Google, you've reached the Defender of the People Department. How may I direct your concern?"
I have a telco background so I'm understandably biased when it comes to defending them -- but no matter how much people hate the phone company I wish they would stop rooting for it's downfall.
So do I. I wish they'd just make it happen and get it over with.
Actually, it's not so much that I wish they'd make it happen, as I wish they'd make it very clear they they can make it happen, and will do so, if policies become too unreasonable.
Notice any gas shortages lately? I find it disturbing that the oil companies where touting a shortage of supply as the reason that prices where climbing as high as they did. Suddently, after reporting record profits for the latest quarter, the "shortage" somehow magically disappeared. Absent any reasonable explanation, I believe it was a true case of market manipulation, that had people paying out the ASS so that Big Oil could line its own pockets.
Unfortunately, I'm willing to bet that everyone went right back to their pre-ripoff purchasing habits after the price decrease.
Yes, you can pay for better flight plans (including less transfers which may take less time), and other stuff. But that's the consumer. He's proposing the producer to be able to pay for something better? How is this good for the consumer?
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Interesting thing is, my city government thought of this decades ago. Every time I hear some local politician on the radio, he's saying that if we want ALL the potholes filled or ALL the trash picked up, that's going to cost us extra.
... to survive a nuclear attack. But it appears to have no protection against greed.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more.
So how about a level playing field?
The only way to level the playing field is to have multiple ISPs and a single infrastructure company which provides the lines. The infrastructure company is not alowed to sell to the customer directly nor compete with the ISPs.
Or to sum it up...
The person who owns the lines can't sell directly to the consumer, however anyone else can act as an intermediary.
Otherwise we'd just have what we have now... Those who own the lines hold a monopoly on the service.
Secondly, since the line owner cannot provide direct sales to the consumer the ISPs will have to provide the email servers and IP address.
It is kind of what Earthlink does now except they still compete with the telco's and cable companies indirectly with broad band. However, most telco's and cable co's actually like and would prefer customers would actually go with earthlink on occasion because Earthlink is paying for support of the customer, modem, and emails servers.
Believe me... Email servers to end user's are pain and a huge cost to maintain.
Earthlink pays the telco's/cable co's directly and they pocket pure profit. (Unless of course Earthlink keeps calling out telco trucks to check the NID on people's houses and then Bellsouth gets rather pissy)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
and mr. Bell South Bigwig should have a little visit from one of Washington's finest.
particularly if his little plan interferes with DHS/FBI/m-o-u-s-e plans to get in line first and look over everything else that moves by. that little project never seems to go away, and always seems to have priority over what the moneygrubbers want to do....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The telephone industry (one of the four main "Dinosaur Industries (c), TM, inc., whatever") seems to still believe they still have the power to dictate our free will with ad nausium. What they don't get is that their days are numbered. The days of telemarketing, vaccuum cleaner salesmen, and snake oil are over.
People are starting to get that the American dream is nothing more than a Rich Man's Big Rock Candy Mountain and Joe Blows Nightmare.
Joe Blow is not going to sit there and let the Phone Company turn the Internet into Television.
Joe Blow doesn't watch television anymore because it sucks.
Joe Blow refuses to be dragged back to his seditative state, constant FUD, and mindless consumerism.
The Internet has put the Dinosaur Industries in check, but they refuse to be driven to extinction.
If Ma' Bell wants to strangle you with the phone cord, strangle her with the Cable.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The analogy of "I can buy a first class ticket" applies to him as a consumer, not to a company trying to shoulder barge its way infront of other companies.
Heres a worse idea (for us poor consumers): Try selling priority access to certain users. Pay more, get faster access times to websites. Pay less/basic rate, you'll have to wait for everyone else's traffic first. That'd make playing network FPS games a nightmare, or a maybe godsend for gamers who can pay more. I'm sure that'd sort of be easier to prioritise in a network.
John Titor, is that you?
Sites like Amazon setup routing agreements with US ISPs such that any end user is only one or two hops away from their network, this has been documented in a few networking magazines. What is the difference with what BellSouth is mentioning?
I don't know much about control of network bandwidth so I have a question rather than a comment. It seems to me that there are some situations at least in which it is legitimate to assure certain users of the bandwidth that they need, to the possible (presumably temporary) detriment of other users. Let's say that a specialized surgeon is doing remote robotic surgery over the network. I would want her connection to have very high priority - her packets are more important than somebody's porn download or Slashdot reading. Is it possible to arrange this at present, or would it require the sort of discriminatory service that BellSouth is proposing?
Before you try to fuck anything else up.
A giant zombie network wanting to dictate how the Internet should operate according to who rewards them the most for their unmonitored and unregulated giant shit ass network.
Bastards.
Or Google, Ebay and yahoo could decide not to service bell south's customers. That should give them an idea who wears the pants.
Speakeasy naked DSL (also called Onelink) to the home (without telephone
service!). Then run VoIP from them. Works like a charm ^_^
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Glad to see some one bring up the limited use charges. Just remember the FCC ruling from not long ago. Bellsouth no longer has to share the copper. Download everything you can now. Dailup is on its way back. AOL and Compuserv will again have huge modems banks and bend you over when you log in.
Now, I wonder what other netowrk providers will do. Perhaps limit the bandwidth to domains on Bellsouth's netowrk?? hummmmm
Bell South sees a window of opportunity. Competition for DVD rentals, I suppose.
The catch is the movie download has to have priority over everything else being downloaded (well, not everything else. Everything else except online poker).I imagine their idea is to cut a deal with the movie companies like Directv does, have movies available a few months after the DVD comes out.
My question is, isn't the analog TV bandwidth going to be freed up in a few years anyway, to be used for the this purpose?But they are clearly missing that they can suffer from the same effect too. Imagine this:
Web sites could even take adds: tired of slow access via Bell South? Switch to Earthlink for faster searching!
I bet it looks like less of a moneymaker if they consider that.
much of any other department.
I had Ver(min)izon handling my phone in my condo.
They never showed up to my condo and the never fixed the cabling in there. There were NO PHONE LINEs in the condo. (They were all ripped out.) They just threw a switch somewhere and figured that if they never got a call to complain, they were okay.
End result, I never got a phone installed.
Good thing I gave out my cell phone number to all my friends and business asociates because there WAS NEVER A LAND LINE!
And they've been bugging my ass for three years about the fucking bill.
My response is: "Yeah. Then call me!"
Verizon is a lazy bunch of schmucks. What they know about service I could engrave on the head of a pin with a ball-peen hammer and a cold chisel.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
By Doc Searls on Wed, 2005-11-16 02:00, Linux Journal
We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths. [read complete essay here]
(it's too bad that hundreds of people have posted in this thread and still there's not one mention of this fine essay; guess it has a ways to go before reaching the audience that needs to hear it)
One simple rule for its versus it's
I don't get it. Websites already pay a premium to have their content load faster than other sites. It's called an Optical-Carrier or T-Carrier line and get this: The more you pay the more of this crazy "bandwidth" thing you get and the more "priority" you have in reaching people who are requesting data from your site over a competitor who purchased a smaller carrier line.
Bellsouth can try this if they want, but if I were somebody like Slashdot, CNN, or Google I would tell them to screw themselves. The already well established websites won't have to do a thing because the thousands of Bellsouth ISP customers who want to reach those sites on a regular basis will leave in droves for another ISP.
I imagine companies would have to pay ISP's as much (or more) to get decent access than they currently have to pay Google to get decent ad space. My wife recently set up her own e-commerce site selling fair trade gifts for children (noblepiglet.com), and the Google ad site recommended that she start off spending $43,000 per month on Google ads to get her site noticed. She set up a less expensive pay-per-click scheme. Google has been charging her $30-$80 per month, and she can't find her own site on Google unless she searches directly for the terms "noble" and "piglet".
;-)
There are no "good" and "evil" companies. There are only "private" and "public" companies. A public company is required by law to screw everyone else to the benefit of their shareholders. A private company can screw just about anyone they want, but they are not required by law to screw anyone.
"William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc."
Anonymus Coward, at Slashdot told reporters and analysts that customers, such as himself should be able, for example to ditch immediately BellSouth Corp. as service provider for the insanity to have them load some sites slower than others and have their CTO declare as incompetent.
You're not quite right, though (as far as I can tell -- I'm a mathematician, not a lawyer). It is the legal requirement of a publicly traded company to maximize shareholder profit. Here is a very nice summary of the legal basis for this, with several case studies: http://www.caseplace.org/collections/collections_s how.htm?doc_id=306896.
If it is a privately held company, on the other hand, this is not the case. It's your money more or less, and you can do whatever you want with it (donate company profits to charity, for example).
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
This is why I oppose QoS in all its forms. The network is supposed to be stupid for a reason, and one of those reasons is to prevent shenanigans like this.
-- Cerebus
Since everybody nowadays is talking about globalization, and the need to have free trade to spur global trade, then perhaps we need to have Free Traffic Agreements to make sure traffic will flow freely. Then we can have the WTO sort out complaints; in this case it would be the World Traffic Organization.
Seriously though, whats up with these telcos? Some time ago Sprints CEO was bitching about the fact that companies like Google and Yahoo are making money of his pipes. Now, I dont know what he smoked earlier, but his company was already charging the customer for internet access; if they were to start charging Google/Yahoo/etc, then they would in turn pass those expenses onto the customer free web searches and email? No more of that buddy. And online shopping on Amazon? Better not hit the refresh button too many times, since it will be added to your bill upon checkout.
Yep, thats a capital idea lets kill e-commerce, and all the productivity and savings that came with it. With the internet gone, companies will resort to mass mailings of catalogs again, so there go several forests. Cool were gonna be traveling back in time.
The person who owns the lines can't sell directly to the consumer, however anyone else can act as an intermediary.
That's a good theory on paper -- but they tried something similar with utilities and it has been a miserable failure in my humble opinion.
In NYS when they deregulated the electric industry they forced all of the utilities to sell off their generators and to become "distributors" of electricity. The net result you ask? All of the power plants were bought up by out of state interests and now they have the public and the distribution utilities by the balls.
In a telecommunications scenario I fail to see how having a single monopoly that owns the fiber/copper but doesn't deal directly with consumers would be any better then having a regulated utility that owns the fiber and deals with the consumer. I know a lot of people don't like regulation because it doesn't mesh with their idea of the "free market" but I don't see any other choice for a life essential service -- unless new technology charges the paradigm.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah, this is definitely a bad idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that RICO laws or whatever they're called should be invoked, and that the shareholders, directors, officers, and employees of this BellSouth should be arrested and put in federal prison for some fifty years or so. Because you know what? As a user of the Internet, I deserve better than to have my pages load too slowly because some equinehole (that is, a hole in a donkey) in some fscking phone company figured it would line his already fat wallet for his convenience at the expense and detriment of others and without providing any kind of benefit to others whatsoever. In fact, BellSouth should go to the same place as the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft... That hot place that rhymes with Dell.
In fact, Google has become the 20th most valuable company in the world in the last few weeks.
I'm not sure who has money to buy them. Google's now worth 50% more than Time Warner, including its AOL division. Google's worth over twice as much as Disney and Viacom (individually).
GE (owner of NBC) is still well in front of Google in market value
Whether Google will become a media firm: They're more becoming like a cable company. They don't produce much media, but instead they make it easy to access it. Yahoo's much more of a media firm.
my blog
Who should I send it to? My Congress Critter or Bellsouth? I know one of those already owes me money.
Someone hates these cans.
BellSouth
William L. Smith
President, Interconnection Services and
Chief Technology Officer
675 West Peachtree, Suite 4515
Atlanta, GA 30375
Bill.Smith@BellSouth.com
Voice: 404-927-1900
Fax: 404-529-0014
Give him a call & let him know what you think
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
so it will be up top
BellSouth
William L. Smith
President, Interconnection Services and
Chief Technology Officer
675 West Peachtree, Suite 4515
Atlanta, GA 30375
Bill.Smith@BellSouth.com
Voice: 404-927-1900
Fax: 404-529-0014
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
It's been about a year now with no complaints.
m.
A fine touch.
1)Paying for an extra bandiwdth bump for certain sites will lead to cripiling of the "default" bandwidth. My 3+ Meg will drop down to 1+ meg with an option to buy specific site access at my old 3+ meg. Or something like that. 2)It Must Not have any effect on search engines. 3)Just throw up your own proxy server and have it keep a cache of the sites you like if that's what you're going for.
That's from a french queen, I think it was Marie Antoinette of France. She was born in Austria, so the saying was originally in German.
She was saying that if the masses don't have Bread to eat ("Brot"), they should eat cake ("Kuchen"). However, this is a mistranslation from German to... German. Many dishes have different names in Austria and in Germany, although in both countries, German is spoken. In Austria at the time "Kuchen" was a kind of very simple, cheap bread. No delicacy, but enough to keep you going. In Germany, "Kuchen" was (and still is) a cake, although one with not too much cream. Cream-based cakes are called "Torte".
It's easier for the average German today to read the menu in a chinese restaurant than in a restaurant in Vienna, trust me.
Do I sound like a know-it-all? Hell, this is a site for geeks, right?
First off IP already has a priority field, 3 bits offering 8 levels. Net control packets have the highest priority other levels go pretty much unused, but the option is offered.
It is an easy thing to implement, you place incoming packets into eight different queues, when you come to select the next packet you look at the highest priority queue first.
Be aware that when you order FIOS there will be severe pressure for you to get your Internet and POTS on the same fiber. If you allow them to do this then two things will happen:
1) They will cut your copper -- permanently! And, not just for you but for anyone who buys your home later. Verizon does not want to share infrastructure ever again.
2) You get to replace the battery backup at your expense in perpetuity.
Only if you scream bloody murder that you will not accept FIOS if they cut your copper will the give up this strong arm tactic.
I personally will keep at least one copper analog line for the forseeable future for backup purposes.
Google is planning to build their own internet and bypass the telecom industy's pipes.
Now if only some decent wireless technology would be rolled out that would allow me to connect to my non-Bell ISP without going over the Bell copper (or fiber) to my house.
yeh we're geeks. and i like linux, and unix. whats this lunix you speak of?
What kind of idiot is this guy? they already do charge more for better connections. You pay more for faster lines, what more money does he want? I don't think it's feasable to say, "Sure, we'll sell you a T3 line, but if you want T3 speeds , well, then you'll have to pay for it again." I'm not sure how many companies will go quietly along with this plan.
Sounds like somebody's just asking to have their proverbial car put on blocks by the black hats.
Do you have an idea how much it costs to maintain their army of consultants and developers? These http://www.bearingpoint.com/guys, these http://www.accenture.com/guys, these http://www.eds.com/guys and last but not least your little ant army of Indians http://www.wipro.com/. Remember that they travel a lot, have to stay in hotels, eat, etc. This is not cheap. Viva la Outsourcing! Don't work there, but know someone who does. And it's chaotic. Thank God I don't have Bellsouth DSL.
the future is but past forgotten
N_Woodruff(despam)@bellsouth.net
If this goes through, I will drop them so fast for comcast cable.
Nathan
I covered the essay here, mainly in an attempt to clarify the issues.
A key question is how much competition BellSouth and the like face in the end-user ISP market. Judging from the situation here in the UK, no ISP could restrict the service on offer this way and hold on to market share - the market would go elsewhere. But that would not necessarily be the case in the absence of Local Loop Unbundling, which is a regulatory requirement on BT.
There's also a possibility that ISPs could creep this sort of thing in very gradually, but I can't really see it - in order to get any value, it has to be obvious enough to give the ISP leverage on service providers, and if it is that obvious it will put off consumers.
This is not a proposal to make some web sites slower, in fact it appears they will actually be providing a basic performance guarantee that doesn't even exist today. This is an opportunity to have applications and websites that want/need better performance to provide the investment necessary to improve the network with a guaranteed higher quality of service. This is great news for applications and services hat dont work well today because of core bottlenecks such as VoIP and IPTV.
The prefix em- means to "put into". Therefore to "emplane" means to "put into a plane". Deplaning? Sorry I just can't bring myself to use that word. Disemplane, maybe...
www.clarke.ca
If you're paying extra for inside-wire coverage, which here in California PacBell territory is something like 85 cents a month, it's a different deal. A few years ago, during the rainy season, my phone line suddenly got really really noisy, and they found that it was a problem in the walls somewhere between two of the bedrooms. They didn't have the quality of electrician working for them to actually fix the problem (:-), but they at least isolated it and disconnected the bad section from the rest of the house, and I stuck a cordless phone in the isolated bedroom. (Really fixing it would require lots of carpentry or else external wire, which they charge real by-the-hour rates for, and I'd have had to move all my junk out of the junk-storage bedroom where the problem was.)
Back when there were competing local-access providers, somebody cross-connected my PacBell line with my neighbor's MCI line. Took forever to get it fixed, because MCI wouldn't talk to me (I wasn't their customer), and PacBell thought the line was working (electrically fine connection to nothing.) Eventually PacBell came and fixed it. We think the problem was really caused by the subcontractor installing Sprint local service in another neighbor's unit.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It sounds to me like Bell South realised that there are unethical business people out there willing to pay hackers to DoS a competitor, and decided they need to get into the action.
ISPs who do this sort of thing will, undoubtedly, be replaced by ISPs which don't. Consumers simply won't tolerate it, nor will web services.
You're forgetting the FCC rulings releasing telecoms from the requirement to share their bandwidth with others. Consumers can't vote with their wallet if there's no other candidate to cast their vote to.