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Google Won't Pay Bell South
grandgator writes "Google has offered
a clear response to Bell
South's proposal to charge content providers an additional fee for access
to their network: They won't pay. In an email, Google's Barry Schnitt told the
folks at networkingpipeline:
'Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with
any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access
to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have
the freedom to use this connection without limitations'"
I commend Google for standing up to the Dark Lord for us.
Free Beer!
I was wondering when someone was going to get a clue. Looks like Google is going to force the hands of providers' to keep billing for structure and not content. The Bells wished they could have done this with VoIP. Their loss; everyone else's gain.
There has been talk about applying extra fees for "higher quality network" for a long time. In the beginning it sounded like a great idea: data that needs to be transported in realtime (phone calls, stock ticker) would be charged more then data where in time or even in order delivery would be unimportant (ftp transfers etc.)
But something else happened: transfer and bandwidth exploded. I think I remember predictions that by 2008 (????) the average internet user will transfer about 600MB per day. At the same time the bandwidth needed for voice transfer (and even video conferencing) is decreasing. So even if the carriers would charge ten times more for a high "Quality of Service", the data transfered for these services is neglectable and would not justify the extra cost for providing networks with different levels of QoS or even the extra cost for billing it.
So if you want to maintain the idea of "extra charges", you have to look for important data services with "high importance", maybe not being just in time, but being always accessible. There was an outcry a couple of days ago, when (I think) del.icio.us wasn't accessible for some time, the same would be true for ebay or amazon. So the idea is economically right, if you still believe in QoS.
But in reality bandwidth the amount of bandwidth made reserving part of it for special purposes less necessary, other problems can be solved by technology, like caching for video streaming. And since those all work on raw IP networks, there is no big challenge to make a better offer than the bells, once they increase their operating costs by adding technology to enable delivery of QoS network transfers and their billing. I'm sure the carriers know that, so this will never happen. I think it is more PR and demanding "protection" from the market. Usually followed by lobbying to change some law to protect the poor companies from the non existing harm they just created themself.
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The summary: Give us more money, and we won't throttle traffic to your site. In response, Google tells them to [results filtered by safe search].
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Between this and resisting turning over search data, it looks like Google is really trying to "do no evil". I was beginning to wonder about them from some of the more recent stories, but this helps restore my confidence in Google.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
What might make more sense would be a pay-per-use plan, where you pay a flat rate for X amount of bandwidth or whatever and more if you use more. But of course if customers don't like the complication, they will choose another ISP.
What I fear more than anything else in this whole "tiering" push is the following:
BS eventually implements a tiered QOS policy. Google responds by saying, "fine. You charge us for the pipes, we'll charge you for the content that makes them useful." Cue the lawyers, who huddle up, then spit out a cross-licensing agreement such that BS pays Google exactly what they charge Google for the pipes. Google goes away happy; nothing has effectively changed. BS goes away not particularly happy with Google, but in a position where they absolutely can demand a net positive cash flow from content providers with less market clout than Google.
Consider VOIP: there are enough players in the VOIP game, and it's a small enough market, that no one company has the market leverage to demand much from BS. At the same time, a fairly small change in BS' service (a little bit of lag here, a little bit of jitter introduced over there) will result in completely destroying the VOIP company's ability to serve customers.
It'll end up being the same thing as the way large companies wield their patent portfolios. It means everything goes on just fine for the big players, but the little guys get screwed in the process.
I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Google doesn't cave on this, even if BS offers up a cross-licensing agreement. Here's hoping "don't be evil" covers this.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
SBC/AT&T, Bell South, and soon others will be at Congress's heels to get the concept changed.
The mentality of the telcos, now that their monopolies are being rapidly deregulated, is to get as much revenue as possible from their infrastructure. Now that voice is virtualized and becoming removed from their revenue models, they feel they have to make money some way to compete with cable, BPL, fiber, and other broadband providers to survive.
They won't be shaken easily, and a pooh-pooh from Google won't slow them down an inch. These are guys that go into Congressional offices armed with a dozen lawyers-- per visit-- every visit. Do not mistake their resolve.
This is just the first salvo, folks. Get you umbrellas.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"One rule to ring them all!" No, wait...
:D
"One Bell to web them all!" Hmm...
"And in the darkness Bell them" No, something's not right...
"Ma' Bell to sue them all!"
THERE!
We have given your proposal the attention that it deserves, and offer the following counterproposal:
We will allow you to continue to offer our service to your customers, at no additional charge to you, and you will save the immense amount of money that it would cost you to explain to all of your customers whey they can no longer get through to Google, and why they shouldn't switch to another internet provider that does offer Google access.
We've already established in the last article about Bell South that ISPs generally don't have common carrier status.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well yes there is a ton of dark fiber out there. But let me explain about how cheap it is. I work for a cable installation company. We plow in new phone/power/cable tv systems. If you have a fiber in the ground and we come along, then you have to mark it so that we can cross it without cutting it. Minnesota one call laws and others states as well define the liabilty on this pretty well. If it's not marked we aren't liable. So even if the fiber is dark(not in use) it causes expense, someone has to pay the locator. If it gets cut it's lost inventory unless fixed(a typical, say 4 fiber, cut is around 20 grand to splice now). so the cost is still there on dark fiber even though there is no revenue being generated. The fiber in question remains dark for a reason. Generally it's due to one of three things. The Company that owns the fiber has no current need for it. The fiber doesn't go to an area where it is needed. Or the usual scenario is that it is simply surplus. We often place 96 fiber through an area. Only 10 of those are needed, so the other 86 are dark. This is what MOST of the dark fiber out there is. Dark fiber then becomes somewhat of an urban myth. So yes broadband costs go up due to what seems like basic reasons, but which are actually far more complicated. If we only placed the 10 fibers that we needed now, and then found that 10 more were needed in say 2 years, we actually cause more expense. How? Well, now we need to locate the existing fiber($), buy new fiber to place($), pay someone to place it($$), and maintain it($). So in essence references to "dark fiber" are misleading at best. Just 2 cents from someone on the inside of the construction part of the scene.