It's the Architecture, Stupid

Thanks to Lawrence Lessig for sending us a filing that he and Mark Lemley have put before the FCC. The filing, also in PDF, deals with open access as well as principles of network design. It's a long piece, but well worth reading.Thanks to Lawrence for another link.

Comments

Re:Private property doesn't seem to count

[jd]

Actually, no they don't. They have a right to do with their cable what they please WITHIN THE LAW. Those last three words are -very- important, and ones that Microsoft apparently neglected.

Then, there is another point you need to consider. A service exists to serve. It has no other purpose. Nor should it have. Every service that puts short-term profits, or the whims of it's shareholders, above it's customers and products has invariably collapsed.

This, in itself, wouldn't be an issue if it existed in a vaccuum. But nothing in life does. If something the size of AT&T destroys itself, in an orgy of profiteering, it's liable to destroy the larger percentage of the telecommunications services in the US, on which modern lives are very dependent. (The emergency services depend on these facilities, for example, as do many hospitals, research facilities, etc.)

Last, but not least, Slashdot does not have an attitude. Slashdot is a collection of bytes in a computer's memory. Slashdot's admins may have their own attitudes and opinions, but each will have their own. The same is true of the readers. We are ALL individuals, and ALL different, in our views, political persuasions, religious beliefs, ethical and moral values, etc. To blanket everyone as this mysterious "THEM" with the "Attitude" is to do a terrible disservice to the diverse, multicultural segment of humanity that comprise the people who inhabit the Slashdot news service.

Were the "Net Libertarians" Born Yesterday?

[the red pen]

The Internet was developed over several decades by the government using public funds. As Lessig points out in his paper (which, by the speed of the first few responses, I doubt many have read), there have been other publicaly-accessable WANs that did not grow so rapidly.

Remember Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL before they were ISPs? Where are they now? They promised "e-shopping" and "online information" in the early 80's. Instead, nothing happened until the Internet opened up in the mid-90's (and yes, you should thank Al Gore). The Internet developed as a free (libre) network because its public funding allowed it that agenda.

What I see today is a lot of people saying,"Thanks, Uncle Sam for making this great network... now get the hell out of it so we can strangle it to death in the name of the almighty dollar." I can't believe that the so-called "voices of freedom" are demanding that corporate interests be allowed to achieve levels of control that would be dangerous to said freedom. AOL already controls more media time than prime-time television. Good for them, but doesn't that make any of you a little nervous that they might begin to abuse that power?

Microsoft is not the only company that practices "embrace and extend."

Is your site AOL approved?

Re:So?

[jd]

Actually, the Internet is heavily regulated, doubly so now that it's in the private sector.

• Internet connections cannot cross State lines without a long-distance carrier licence. (Research labs, Universities and the Military could all get round this, one way or another.)
• Internet backbone providers must use FCC-approved equiptment, and be licenced to connect to telecommunications equiptment.
• Internet cables and junctions must meet FCC standards and regulations. (You don't think local telecos -like- the 56K limit, do you?)
• Wireless Internet connections must meet FCC requirements, and operators must have the appropriate licence, where necessary.

  And then, there are the internally-imposed regulations that the Internet has:

  1. To be a part of the Internet, per se, a system must be capable of supporting at least IPv4 traffic, and all appropriate inter-router gateway protocols.
  2. All appropriate RFC's must be natively supported. Otherwise, the connection is deemed a gateway to a non-Internet network.
  3. The network must be connected to the Internet via a recognised and registered node.

  Then, there are the Ethernet packets. Formally specified. Deviate, and your device is not capable of connection to an Ethernet network. Same with ATM (Asynch Transfer Mode, to Americans who might confuse this with their bank machine).

  Sprint's takeover of some of the NSFNET resulted in a 2 week collapse of all transatlantic services, so I'd think ==VERY== carefully before citing them as a good example of deregulation.

Re:So?

[adimarco]

Pardom my libertarianism

Done :) Please pardon mine...

but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation. It was conceived as an open model, developed as such, and still tends to exist as such to a wide extent. So why all the fuss?

In principle, I agree with you. I'm only about half way through reading the paper, but from what I've gathered so far, I think they would agree with you too.

What they seem to be saying is that this merger (in a way they haven't explained yet) threatens the open nature of the net as we currently know it, and that a little bit of regulation now may be a far preferable alternative to a lot of regulation later.

It seems to me that so long as the protocols and the underlying network architecture are not controlled by one source (remember, the network was originally designed to withstand a nuclear attack...), things should go more or less okay.

Time to finish reading it...

Anthony

^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Infrastructure vs. ISP's

[Robin Hood]

Let me try to explain the terminology... Infrastructure is the physical wires going into your computer, whether they be connected to a POTS modem, a cable "modem", or a DSL "modem". Presumably you would pay a monthly fee for the maintenance of those, just like you pay the local phone company extra for a second phone line into your house. An ISP uses the existing physical network to deliver Internet traffic: you get an IP address from your ISP, not your infrastructure provider. ISP's pay the infrastucture providers for the cost of using their networks, and pass on that cost to you in your monthly ISP fee -- want more bandwidth, pay a higher fee. If you're dissatisfied with your ISP's service, well, there are several others with local POP's (Points of Presence) near you, so you can easily switch.

The concern here is that AT&T, an infrastructure provider, is merging with MediaOne, an ISP to provide a bundled infrastructure + IP address commercial package. Sounds fine, right? Well, stop to think about it.

Say your ISP blocks port 6667 (the most common IRC port) for some reason -- say liability concerns about the legality of IRC activity. Or say they don't want you connecting to any USENET servers but their own, so they block port 119 (the NNTP port) connections to all servers except theirs. You'd soon ditch them and move to another ISP, wouldn't you? And you'd stop paying the first ISP, because you weren't using their services anymore.

And there's the rub.

If AT&T is allowed to bundle its infrastructure service with MediaOne's ISP service, you'll be paying for MediaOne whether you use it or not. It would be like bundling an OS with your new computer so that you paid for the OS whether you wanted it or not (<sarcasm>which I'm sure has never happened...</sarcasm>). Say MediaOne starts blocking the ports used for IP telephony -- after all, that's a direct competitor to AT&T's primary business. Suddenly, millions of MediaOne customers are forced either to switch to another ISP or give up using IP telephony. And if they switch to another ISP, they're still paying for MediaOne! Don't want to pay for MediaOne? Sorry -- it comes with your DSL connection; if you don't want MediaOne, you're going to have to find another DSL service. What? There aren't any other DSL providers in your area? That's just too bad. At least with the Wintel hardware/OS bundling, you had other choices -- you could buy a Mac, or an Amiga, or a Sparc, or... But with this situation, you'll be forced to pay for MediaOne -- and how many people will choose to pay *extra* for another ISP? Very few -- most, in the scenario I describe, would choose instead to give up IP telephony.

And that's what the concern is. If AT&T is allowed to bundle ISP services with infrastructure services, it can kill any use of the network it doesn't like, by doing things like I just described. That's why this paper is important, and why infrastructure needs to be kept separate from Internet access.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:

Re:Infrastructure vs. ISP's

[Paul Carver]

Disclaimer: I work for AT&T, but I am not speaking for them.

I agree with you in principle, but you overlooked on point even though it was in your post. ISPs currently pay for their use of the POTS or ISDN infrastructure. The issue here is that AOL and others want free (as in beer) access to the new, faster infrastructure.

AT&T's primary goal is to be a carrier, not a content provider that's why AT&T sold DirectTV a while back. AT&T acquired TCI to get infrastructure (in the form of wires as well as trucks, vans, equipment, and employees). Since TCI owned content as well that came along for the ride, although much of the content production trades separately on the stock market as Liberty Media.

AT&T has repeatedly stated that it is willing to sell capacity on the cable infrastructure to content providers (i.e. ISPs) that want it. The only issue is that TCI had signed a contract with @Home giving them exclusive rights to provide ISP service over TCI's cable. As part of the acquisition of TCI, AT&T became bound by this contract. Since this contract has been found to be legal and binding, AT&T would be open to a lawsuit from @Home if they allow other ISPs to use their cable lines within the period of the contract (a couple more years I think)

If there were a legal way out of this contract AT&T would gladly let other ISPs deliver service over their cable lines since more content leads to more demand. AT&T markets phone service in partnership with a variety of other companies and organizations and would be glad to have dozens or even hundreds of special interest ISPs doing targeted marketing and paying AT&T for the infrastructure.

What AT&T is not willing to do is grant "open" (as in free) to anyone who petitions the government. Much of TCI's cable was crap and is being upgraded by AT&T. This costs money. If AOL or anyone else wants to send their traffic over the lines that AT&T is paying to upgrade they should be willing to pay a fair share. The whole "open access" debate is simply a ploy to get the government give away the infrastructure that AT&T is paying for.

Re:Infrastructure vs. ISP's

[overshoot]

Robin Hood wrote:
Say MediaOne starts blocking the ports used for IP telephony -- after all, that's a direct competitor to AT&T's primary business. Suddenly, millions of MediaOne customers are forced either to switch to another ISP or give up using IP telephony. And if they switch to another ISP, they're still paying for MediaOne! Don't want to pay for MediaOne? Sorry -- it comes with your DSL connection; if you don't want MediaOne, you're going to have to find another DSL service.

Much more to the point, you still have port 119 blocked. Your access to YAISP is through MediaOne, not around them. Their Terms of Service still apply, and so does their firewalling of port 119.

This isn't hypothetical; I tried to get Cox/@Home to connect me, and was even willing to pay extra for access to my old ISP. No such luck; their TOS forbids having any servers attached and I use NFS for the home machinery.

Re:Infrastructure vs. ISP's

[overshoot]

Paul Carver writes:
If there were a legal way out of this contract AT&T would gladly let other ISPs deliver service over their cable lines since more content leads to more demand. AT&T markets phone service in partnership with a variety of other companies and organizations and would be glad to have dozens or even hundreds of special interest ISPs doing targeted marketing and paying AT&T for the infrastructure.

Help me here. If AT&T is so unhappy to be bound by the MediaOne contract, howcome they're fighting so hard against regulations that would free them from it? After all, contractual obligations are always subordinated and superceded by legislative and regulatory ones.

Re:So?

[otis wildflower]

Pardom my libertarianism, but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation.

Er, most people access the internet via dialup modem lines, and ISPs use leased lines to aggregate packets off to their NAPs.. How much more $$$ would it cost to access the internet in this country if we hadn't had Ma Bell deconstructed?

Look at countries outside the US: where the telco is a monopoly (state or otherwise) adoption of the internet is much slower and more expensive..

Any way you slice it, you can't argue with the results.

And I tend to be a realist, not a libertarian. Government is useful if it can be trusted, and it could be, if we weren't so fucking complacent and apathetic... (in a Democracy, you should get the government you demand, but in the days of 30% voter turnout, you get the government you deserve... And there's nothing in the Constitution delineating only 2 parties...)

Your Working Boy,

Letter contradicts itself

[cfulmer]

So, toward the beginning of the letter, the authors make the statement that having an "end-to-end" architecture (ie intelligence on the edge), with generic protocols in the network and applications running on clients is one of the strengths of the internet. Then, it goes on to say that ISPs can provide intelligence in the network, through things like web-page cacheing, and that you should be able to choose an ISP that does that.

This entire argument seems hokey to me. At most, it seems to me that AT&T should allow users to say "I don't want to use AT&T's web servers or usenet servers or mail servers. Please take $15 off my monthly bill." The user could then configure their software to point to somebody else's servers.

This repeatedly goes back to my point (made in this space before) that ISPs are an anachronism caused by trying to route a packet-based network over a switched network: You have to have gateways that convert from one to the other. This, currently, is the main function of ISPs. In a world where you don't need the gateway -- ie where the packet-based network extends all the way to the machines that want to see it (as is the case with packet-over-cable), then the main purpose of the ISP goes away.

Now, I would argue that if Mindspring & AOL want to stay relevant, they need to transform themselves into "ASPs" -- Application Service Providers. At the low end, this means running the same servers that the ISPs ran before -- mail, usenet, web, &c. But, there's a lot of opportunity beyond that -- PC backup services, video servers, network file storage and so on. These are the logical place for the ISPs to move into. But, they're so entrenched in what they've been doing that they can't see to move beyond it.

Wrong

[igjeff]

>the Internet has done just fine without any regulation.

That statement is patently false.

The Internet has benefited *greatly* from regulation. Read the whole filing, it actually details it quite well. If it hadn't been for the regulatory actions of breaking up AT&T/Ma Bell, the Internet likely would not have existed in anywhere near the form it does today. Why? Because AT&T would have restricted, and was restricting, use of *their* network for uses which they didn't like.

Open Access in telco's set up a very competitive environment where ISP's were able to vigorously compete. ISP's are not allowed to vigorously compete in broadband access at this point (primarily because most broadband access is on cable modems, secondarily because the telco's are fighting much the same way...just not as publicly, and with less regulatory justification, and with somewhat less success).

Jeff

Re:Private property doesn't seem to count

[jd]

Cause and effect is a tricky one, as it's a very simplistic view of complex inter-dependencies. It's useful in science, where you want to look at each component in turn, but scientists recognise that those -are- just components, and that to understand in full, you must then take those components and assemble them to see the big picture.

Who is providing the service? The supplier. In this case, companies such as AT&T.
Who should benefit from providing the service? The consumer. First, last and always.

This may sound "utopian", but it isn't. It's practical recognition of symbiotic relationships. No customers, no company. No company, no consumers. Each lives off the products of the other. (Money from the consumer, the service from the company.)

But for a symbiotic relationship to remain stable and survive, each must focus on what they're giving, not on what they're getting. Otherwise, the relationship becomes unstable, and can collapse completely, in mutual mistrust and suspicion.

(By the by, this is why 99% of all relationships between people fail. They're too busy focussing on what they're getting - or not - that they've no time left to give.)

Re:So?

[jd]

Because FCC regulations prohibit any kind of commercial data line crossing State lines without such a licence. Look it up yourself, before deciding it's so clear.

Re:So?

[Saige]

And I tend to be a realist, not a libertarian. Government is useful if it can be trusted, and it could be, if we weren't so fucking complacent and apathetic... (in a Democracy, you should get the government you demand, but in the days of 30% voter turnout, you get the government you deserve... And there's nothing in the Constitution delineating only 2 parties...)

Thank you... I'm glad someone said this.

There is no reason why the government in a democracy has to be such a mess. Sure, the US gov't is somewhat of one, but that's because of the lack of people voting, and the lack of paying attention to what the politicans are really doing.

They'd stop being "bought" by corporations if the public made it clear that doing so meant they never were back into office. They'd serve the people if the people made it worthwhile.

I see libertarianism as a means of allowing corporations to control the public instead of the government - and we won;t get a vote in that aspect. I know that's not the intentions, but I think it will be the resulting effect.

A little bit of regulation now, a little slap on the hand saying "don't do that", will keep us from having to carve everything apart later and look at a means of bring innovation back to the internet.

When your only option for getting the access is through a company that strictly regulates what you can use it for, then there's not going to be much incentive to try new things.

Would you use a provider that tells you "you can only use e-mail, the web, and irc" through your cable connection, and your other choice is a 28.8 modem, what good is that?
---

Summary, And Some Choice Bits

[adimarco]

This whole thing is basically about broadband access. "Our sole concern is the architecture that AT&T and MediaOne propose for broadband access."

The model proposed apparently does not allow the user to select an ISP, and the authors argue that this may unfairly (to consumers) limit the types of services available in the future, and possibly allow the AT&T/MediaOne merger to create a monopoly on services they feel ISPs should be providing.

"By bundling ISP service with access, and by not permitting users to select another ISP, the architecture removes ISP competition within the residential broadband cable market. By removing this competition, the architecture removes an important threat to any strategic behavior that AT&T might engage in once a merger is complete."

They go on to explain how this represents a threat to the very kind of open-ness that has made the internet great so far.

Interesting to note that they don't seem like the type who would actually ask for regulation. They seem to consider it as a necessary evil at this stage of the development of the net. I tend to agree, letting things get out of control (if they're right) would only mean even more regulation later.

Look, they gave us props:

35. This is not to say that the government created the innovation that the Internet has enjoyed. Nor is it to endorse government, rather than private, development of Internet-related technologies. Obviously, the extraordinary innovation of the Internet arises from the creativity of private actors from around the world. Some of these actors work within corporations. Some of the most important have been associated with the Free Software, and Open Source Software Movements. And some have been entrepreneurs operating outside of any specific structure. But the creativity that these innovators have produced would not have been enabled but for the opening of the communications network. Our only point is that the government had a significant role in that opening.

Anthony

^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Re:Well gee

[otis wildflower]

Did it ever occur to you that cable is so lame precisely because it is so heavily regulated by the gov't?

...

The answer is usually more competition, not more regulation.

Your logic here is schizophrenic. Cable being lame is not the case because it's so heavily regulated by the government, it's lame because CABLE COMPANIES HAVE MONOPOLIES ON CABLE SERVICE IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES!!! If anything, there should be a refocus of regulation to emphasize competition and common-access to cable infrastructure. Eminent domain it if all else fails..

The answer truly is more competition, and whenever necessary the FedGov should force it so states and local communities can't get all cozy with local and regional monopolistic cable franchises.. The FedGov should in fact force competition in every non-competitive area of life now! Utilities, Professional sports, Software, CPUs, Currency printing, everything... Open it all up!

I'm a free market realist, meaning that I want a free market, by hook or by crook... Because I'm a smart and greedy consumer, who wants to be able to research as many options as possible before selecting the best price/performance on anything I need...

Your Working Boy,

Aaron still doesn't get it ;)

[igjeff]

I'm certainly no fan of AOL, and I will admit a background that would contribute to bias (I work for an ISP)

>-- The existing cable infrastructure is obsolete and needs serious upgrades to make it work with high speed data.

(rest deleted for brevity)

This argument would have some merit, *except*, I've never heard *anyone* express the idea that ISPs and others should be able to have access to the cable network (or DSL access) without compensation to the company that owns the infrastructure. I wholeheartedly support compensation for Insight (where I live) for the ISP that I work for providing cable modem service over their lines.

If they've computed in their excel spreadsheets to cover the costs of their infrastructure build-out by the revenues of their ISP's, then they're dumb. :) I have no problem with the concept that the cost of Insight (formerly Intermedia, formerly TKR, formerly...formerly...) to build out their cable plant should be covered by subscription fees. That concept does not imply that the customer has to be tied to an ISP though.

The ISP that I work for is providing DSL service in a city with GTE as the telco...its going quite well. The structure works that the end-customer calls GTE to get DSL service (comparable to calling Insight to get cable modem service), then they call us to get the Internet/ISP service. The customer is billed by GTE for the DSL service, and they're billed by us for the Internet/ISP service. Everyone is happy, DSL is going great guns in that city. There is no reason that the same couldn't work with cable modems. The customer calls Insight (or whoever) to get the cable modem access...chooses their ISP and calls that ISP to get the Internet/ISP access, the customer is then billed by the cable company for the cable modem access (to cover the cost of the infrastructure buildout), and then pays the ISP for the Internet/ISP access.

Jeff

Maybe it's just me

[Otto]

I fail to see the problem. ISP's are dead anyway, in terms of service.

All I want is an IP Address. That's it. Everything else, I can deal with:
E-mail? Hook up a copy of sendmail.
Web? Run Apache if I want to serve pages.

There's no service out there i need that I cannot get, all I need is an address on the network. That, IMHO, is the primary function of the ISP. Everything else is just nice to have.

If you're buying high speed connection, usually you get an IP along with that, right? What do I need any of their servers for, except for possibly DNS? (since having a massive database sitting around doesn't appeal to me)

Provide me an address and a way to look up other addresses. I'm happy then. Unless there's something else I don't know about (which is probably true).

---

Re:Maybe it's just me

[overshoot]

Otto asked:
Provide me an address and a way to look up other addresses. I'm happy then. Unless there's something else I don't know about (which is probably true).

If you want NNTP, you're going to need an NNTP host. If you want DNS, you need a DNS service. Most small nodes benefit from SMTP hosting on redundant server farms; it's more reliable. Even large companies with fat pipes and server farms of their own are finding it beneficial to use external webhosting services. Hey, even NTP is best run with some structure.

The list goes on. Are these necessary services? Some, yes. Other, maybe. Many, probably not. So shop around. The diversity of Internet Service providers allows the market to sort these issues out rather than having them decided by one suit in New Jersey.

Re:The Risk/Reward Argument

[Saige]

The government built the roads, so they make the rules. And if you wanna drive on them, you've got to let anyone who wants to park in your garage and sleep in your house. That's about what your "logic" boils to.

Not nearly that at all. Try again.

If we want to make the analogy correct, then the government built the roads, so they make the rules. If you want to drive them, you follow them - you drive the speed limit, get a license plate, etc. If the government decides that anyone who drives also needs to let anyone who wants park in your garage and sleep in your house, then you need to follow that - but at this point they haven't decided that.

The regulation is to prevent a corporation from buying up a large chunk of the roads, and then telling you that you can only carry certain things in your car, that you can only have so many people inside it, and you can only drive it a certain amount. And they own enough of the roads so that you don't have the option of driving only on competitor's roads, so you don't have a choice.
---

Re:So?

[jd]

Then you almost certainly lease the lines from a company that is, which is my point.

Re:So?

[PD]

You're the phone company? You ran your own wires? You own the fiber and all the backhoes you need to lay it?

Or, did you pay someone *who has a license* to let you use their fiber optic cable?

Re:So?

[otis wildflower]

I see libertarianism as a means of allowing corporations to control the public instead of the government - and we won;t get a vote in that aspect. I know that's not the intentions, but I think it will be the resulting effect.

We actually would end up with:

• Voting with consumer $$$
  
• Voting with common-stock shares
  
• Voting with feet
  

I don't think we should surrender our system to big business, because they don't even have to pay lip-service towards the goals of improving the lives of citizenry: the avowed goal of modern corporations is to maximize shareholder value. Not to improve the lives of corporate employees, not to improve the character of the nations in which the corporation does business, but to (and let me emphasize this again) maximize shareholder value. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but certainly not the way I want my government to behave..

Your Working Boy,

Time for an econ lesson....

[itachi]

Businesses such as telco, gas, electric, etc are called natural monopolies, because it is inefficient and stupid for competing firms to lay redundant power/gas/telco lines through an area. Think about it - five different gas pipelines running under a given street, all maintained by different people. One day, there's a leak. You call all five, and they each say there's no trouble on their line, must be the other utility. Or phone poles with lines for all 43 local telcos? The way that natural monopolies are dealt with in free market economies is heavy govt. regulations or govt ownership. Look at your local utility companies, if you live in such a nation. The only way around natural monoploies that makes sense is requiring companies to lease out infrastructure for a fair price. So let's get some examples:
*Montgomery County, MD gas utility - (DC suburbs) gas is provided by one utility. There is no competition. However, the local govt. has pricing and quality of service restrictions on the utility to ensure that the monopoly power that they have granted the utility isn't abused.
*Cell Phones - Cell companies build cell infrastructure, and that isn't a natural monopoly. However, most local telcos are, so when you make a call on a cell phone to a local landline, what's happening is that the cell co. uses up some bandwidth that it has leased from the local telco. (this is assuming that the local telco is a natural monopoly)
*Long distance telco - no monoplies anymore, but the flexible infrastructure is very important and used in the same manner. Joe Bob and Peggy Sue start their lond distance service, but have no infrastructure. They lease a portion of some AT&T lines. AT&T wants to oversubscribe the lines, so it's in their interest, Joe Bob and Peggy Sue get some infrastructure space, and there's another long distance provider trying to bring lower prices to the market than its competition.

The reason these professors are rightly concerned is very clear. I would suggest that anyone who doesn't get their point should re-read the article, the whole way through. If one company controls the infrastructure, has no competiton, and goes unregulated, the consumer gets screwed. The FCC should NEVER hand a firm unregulated monoploy power. Would anyone here suggest that MS should have been handed its monoploy power by an agency of the federal govt?

itachi

Re:Time for an econ lesson....

[itachi]

No, the market does nothing to monoploies. It can't, because by definition, a monopoly has monopoly power. By definition, monopoly power keeps a firm in a dominant role by way of the machanisms of the market. If a firm naturally loses dominance of the market, it wasn't a monopoly. Monopoly power includes the high cost of entry, making it prohibitive for other firms to enter the market, and the ability to dump goods below cost to drive other firms out of the market.
You mention that quality of service and price can only be determined by the market. This is true, after a fashion. However, in a monopoly situation, QOS falls, price rises, and quantity available falls. In a natural monoploy, the govt. assigns quotas to prevent the firm from exercising it's monopoly power. Again, look at local utilities. Call up your gas co. and ask them if they set the rates completely independantly, or if there are locl govt. regulations on rates.
You are correct about telcos, they are not as much of a natural monoploy anymore. I should have been more specific - local landlines are a natural monopoly. Now you can choose to go all cellular if you don't like the local landline provider, however, the cost of cellular does still restrict who can consume that market - local landlines are still much cheaper, at least in the US.
Finally, it is expected that the govt should hand off some monopolies - they have few other reasonable choices when it comes to natural monopolies. This is where regulation comes into play. One of the solutions that the authors imply is that AT&T should only be allowed to combine ISP and infrastructure and build this monopoly if they are regulated by the govt. until they are willing to open the infrastructure to other ISPs. This is exactly what i was arguing in my previous post, and it seems to be what you are looking for.


itachi

as always, feel free to email me and tell me I'm wrong...

So!

[itachi]

There is a difference between stupid, un-needed regulation that screws with the way the market works and regulation that prevents a compnay from becoming a natural monopoly. The authors are suggesting that the FCC maintain competition and nothing more.


itachi

Re:Private property doesn't seem to count

[mtngrown]

Actually, since they get to lay a big chunck of this cable under emininent domain, I believe the tax-payers have every right to set some ground rules. What right does ATT or any other utility have to clutter up my skyline with their ugly poles? Seems fair to me. ATT gets to use "public property", that is, easements taken under eminent domain, and maintained at taxpayer expense, for a non-monopoly share of infrastructure running open standards. Why is this so difficult to understand?

If ATT wants to use a private property argument, they should purchase all their own easements.

Re:Well gee

[otis wildflower]

Cable companies do not have monopolies in most areas today.

Not in Westchester, NY.. We suffer under the pricing yoke of Cablevision (and only Cablevision) ever since they bought out TCI's franchise in our area. IIRC NYC has some kind of thing where cable companies don't cross into each other's territory.

Cable companies have competition in all areas. Look at the millions of DBS dishes sold recently. Once the (gov't imposed) restrictions on carrying local channels is lift, I expect that market to explode.

The legislation to permit DBS providers to carry local stations was passed in the house in the anti-cybersquatting bill.. The senate may ratify it this week (before going on break until January) and pass it up to the Prez quite quickly..

Don't forget that there are lots of lobbyists for both the DBS and Cable (and Telco, and Tobacco, and Automakers, and $oftware, etc. etc.) who sway representatives on many issues which are unfriendly to driving costs for consumers down.

If we consumers could get our head out of our ass and find or form some non-partisan group whose only mission was to drive down prices for consumers, and use that to combat profiteering interests.. Or hell, if we could bother to get off our ass and vote.. Or if we could pressure our parties to nominate people who weren't complete chowderheads...

You can do one of two things: work within the system to improve it, or smash the system and build a new one. I happen to think that (based on my knowledge of the founding documents of this nation) this system is fundamentally oriented towards good, so rather than smash the system it would pay to 'overhaul' it.. But none of this will happen if instead of reading the newspaper and giving a shit, you just sit there fragging demons in Quake or watching Ally McBeal... Whatever your political and/or personal persuasion, please whatever you do, don't be another 'ignorant American' statistic...

Your Working Boy,

This Just In: /. has an anti Microsoft bias

[copito]

Film at 11.
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ATT is at risk regardless

[A nonymous Coward]

How does AOL paying ATT give more risk to ATT? Either ATT does it all, and takes all the risk, or they take money from AOL, and have exactly the same risk -- but at reduced cost. How is this a problem, exactly?

How does AOL drop out nad make the risk bigger than if AOL had never dropped in at all?

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There's no theft; it's all paid for

[A nonymous Coward]

Suppose ATT charges $40/month for combined access. Suppose the split into wire and ISP is $20 + $20, or $10 + $30, or $30 + $10. It doesn't matter. Unless they are gouging you on the ISP cost (ATT? Never!), when you don't go thru them but use any old ISP instead, there's 5MB of disk, email storage, DNS, etc that ATT no longer has to maintain. Someone else does, and that's who you pay instead of ATT.

Where exactly is the theft here? What exactly is the problem with this scenario?

Like the judge in Portland said, ATT is either a cable company, in which case regulation is what the FCC has ordered, or they are a telecommunications company, in which case the FCC and state PUCs have said stop bundling and open up. You and ATT can't have it both ways.

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And you thought MS overused "innovation"

[copito]

23.
End-to-end design does not only promote innovation by creating the opportunity
for innovators to offer services to the network. In our view, the effect comes as well from the
expectation that innovation will not be countered by strategic actors who might control the flow
of commerce. The potential of an actor in the distributional network to act strategically is a cost
to innovation. The expectation that an actor can act strategically is an expected cost to
innovation. Thus to the extent an actor is structurally capable of acting strategically, the rational
innovator will reckon that capacity as a cost of innovation. Compromising End-to-End will, then,
tend to undermine innovation.[emphasis added]

Overall I found this brief to be clear and understandable, but I can't make sense of third sentence on in the above paragraph. Anyone care to translate?

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How do you open a cable loop?

[copito]

DSL works well with competitive ISP's because the ISP can either colocate equipment in the CO to service the loop directly or pay the phone company to service the loop and feed a frame relay or other digital link to the ISP. In either case the IP address for the end user comes from the ISP's pool and the phone company is only responsible for maintaining the hardware and virtual circuit. Since the DSL loop is dedicated, the ISP can reserve enough bandwidth to service it's customer at the maximum rate, regardless of the activities of other subscribers hosted by the phone company. (That's not to say that ISP's actually reserve this bandwidth, but they could).

In the case of a cable loop, all the subscribers are effectively sharing an ethernet segment. An individual subscriber does not get dedicated bandwidth and gets his IP address from the cable provider. While clearly you could have competitive services such as mail, web, news, and DNS servers without much trouble, it would seem to be difficult to offer competitive ISP service on equitable terms when a number of subscribers share the same local loop. I'd be interested in learning more about how those who propose opening cable (a good idea, all else being equal) plan to do so.
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A lesson in capitalism

[copito]

The US is not completetely socialist,
By the same token we're not completely capitalist either. Otherwise how do you explain social security, environmental regulations, zoning requirements, or anti-trust restrictions. The laws of this country state that you can't use a monopoly in restraint of trade. In practice this means that most companies seeking monopolies are acting in an illegal manner. In the case of cable companies, they have a natural monopoly (it is impractical to have too many wires to the home), and in exchange for their monopoly powers, they exist under regulations.

As we have seen with the "deregulation" (really just different regulation) of long distance and local telephone operations, the society gets the most benefit when businesses are allowed to compete in a free-market capitalist manner on every piece of the network other than the small piece that is a natural monopoly.
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Re:Natural monopolies are a farce

[itachi]

Provide some examples. Again, it is a far more efficient use of resources for there to be a single natural monopoly, or at the very least, a single owner of infrastructure that leases use of the infrastructure to it's competition, but that requires govt. regulations. So we get back to the situation we are at today. I would maintain that there are situations where it really is a natural monopoly. Look at gas utilities. How feasible is it for one utility to build infrastructure for gas feed and then share it with others?


itachi