Monday, June 12, 2006

Feld: Why COPE's net neutrality provisions stink


Harold Feld explains why COPE is next-to-worthless when it comes to enforcing net neutrality:

COPE contains a “network neutrality” provision that takes the FCC's existing “four principles” (“consumers” (i.e., us) have freedom to access legal content, run legal applications, attach any legal device to the network that won't harm the network, and are generally entitled to competition) and makes them law. So far so good. But COPE then goes on to strip the FCC of any ability to protect these freedoms by rules. Rather, COPE limits the FCC to adjudicating any claims of violation of the principles.

I think COPE's approach sucks for two reasons. First, prophylactic rules have worked for 30 years to prevent network operators from building all kinds of crap into their networks for the purpose of messing with content. The occasional attempt by cable or telco operators to block websites or rival services have been easy to address because the existing Computer Proceeding rules imposing network neutrality made these efforts stick out like sore thumbs. Shifting from a clear rule to a system that encourages network providers to push the limits until someone catches them, goes through the expense of an adjudication, and finally wins, seems to me an invitation to network operators to be as abusive as possible until they get pulled back. By that time, of course, the damage is done and what was once poo-pooed by opponents of regulation as “scare tactics” and “unsupported speculation” has become the new status quo. After all, why should the internet be any different from any other communications medium?

Second, anyone familiar with the FCC would laugh themselves silly over the notion that the FCC works efficiently by adjudication. To take a few examples, Senator McCain filed a complaint under the “sponsorship identification” rules relating to attack ads against him in the 2000 Republican Primary. The FCC has yet to rule on the complaint. Hopefully, they will get to it by 2008. The Commission also has pending before it a complaint filed in 2001 alleging that, contrary to the terms of the AOL-Time Warner Merger conditions, Time Warner cable has not negotiated in good faith to provide access to competing broadand providers. The Commission has before it an “emergency” complaint from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, filed at the beginning of last year's baseball season, that Comcast has illegally demanded a share of ownership rights in exchange for carriage of Nationals games. A second baseball season has now started, with the FCC staff still sitting in the complaint.

As you can imagine, this track record hardly inspires confidence that the FCC will protect my “four freedoms” as COPE supporters maintain.

Read the whole thing™.

Yet another technological innovation for the telcos


The rollout of AT&T's IPTV over DSL appears to going swimmingly, just like their deployments of ISDN and last-mile fiber to the home.

...industry analysts are skeptical about [AT&T's] network, dubbed Project LightSpeed, and the TV service, called U-verse.

"This is a complicated product launch on a scale that is pretty much unprecedented," said analyst Adi Kishore of the Yankee Group research firm in Boston. "They're going to have problems, especially given the relatively tight time frame to get things done."

Experts question the wisdom of creating a network that's likely to be technologically out of date by the time it's complete. LightSpeed is designed to send data at an average of 25 megabits per second by extending high-capacity fiber optic lines to within 3,000 feet of homes. To cover the remaining distance, AT&T plans to rely on new DSL gear to send data humming over existing copper lines...

And these are the blokes that want to control the keys to the Internet.

SaveAccess: AT&T's Project Lightspeed

Net Neutrality All-Star: Rep. Ed Markey


From his testimony in Congress:

CONGRESSMAN MARKEY: Let me just make this point once again. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the development of the World Wide Web. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the browser and its development. In fact, AT&T was asked if they wanted to build the Internet, the packet-switched network in 1966. They turned the contract down when the government went to them. And so a company named BB&N, Bolt, Beranek, & Newman got the contract, a very small company - not AT&T. They had nothing to do with the development of the Internet, but now, at this late date, they want to come in and to create these bottleneck control points that allow them to extract Internet taxes, Internet fees from companies and individuals who have been using the Internet for a generation. It is this absence of non-discriminatory language in the Manager’s Amendment and in the bill to which I object.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Net Neutrality: Slashdot reacts to the COPE Act


The readers over at /. had some pretty interesting -- and diverse -- reactions to the passage of the COPE Act. Here are some highlights:

Regulate the Market

If there was perfect competition in the ISP market, then fine, let market forces rule! However, the 1st tier ISP market today is far more oligopolistic than [the] free market. You can bet that if there was perfect competition, this idea would not even have the slightest chance of gaining traction...

Historical perspective

...Ever since the development of Strowger's automated (as opposed to operator-driven) call switching, an underlying principle of telecommunications (long since codified into law) was the ideal that the switching system should not make routing decisions based on the content of the call. (It's considered fair-play for a carrier to, for example, route a over a satellite circuit vs. an undersea cable based on whether it is a FAX/DATA call, but not based on wether it's a business vs. personal call.) This is the fundamental basis behind the concept of network neutrality.

One could argue that without some concept of network neutrality, we can't really say we even have a telecommunication system. I'm not sure there's a good example of a system akin to what the Republicans are proposing here, which is a system where public rights-of-way are privatized into a handful of companies with monopoly control. The closest I can come-up with off-hand would be what was done in the era of the railroad tycoons. Not a perfect match, since in that age the railroads did not lead into every home, nor was the economy as dependent on them as ours is today in the Internet...

* The Carriers are dependent on public rights-of-way to build their networks, so it's not really fair for them to benefit more from that right-of-way than I do simply because they are in a position to use more of it than I. If we are in support of private ownership, I should be able to sell my private citizens portion of that right-of-way to the highest bidder in the same way that the Carriers are demanding to be allowed to do. (Not really fesible, but that's why we have things like Regulation).

* The Carriers are exploiting a natural monopoly and network effects to further their business model. If spectrum were limitless and if running fiber across long distances did not create an effective barrier-to-entry for new market participants, then the Carriers arguments about letting the markets decide might have some validity. But market forces are always distorted under monopoly conditions.

History (both railroad and telecommunications) tells us that when a single entity is in control of the network, evolution of that network proceeds slowly, and only in a way as to increase control and profitibility. Let us not forget; between automatic switching (circa 1890's) and the 1984 breakup of AT&T, the two big telephone company innovations were DTMF dialing and the... Princess Phone™.

The railroads fell only when an alternate infrastructure (the Interstate highway system and, to a lesser extent, commercial aviation) was built along side the existing network infrastructure. The Internet, as we commonly know it today, took-off as a result of the break-up of the Bell System monopoly and legislated network-neutrality. Prior to the 1996 Telecommunication Reform act, the Carriers were prohibited from offering data services (like AOL or CompuServe did) specifically to prevent them from favoring one provider over another. AOL, CompuServe, Earthlink, and the like, using modems and the fact that the telephone companies were required to carry these calls even though it prectically bankrupted many of them, were the impetus behind the creation of DSL, which in turn forced the cable television providers to convert their profitable one-way television broadcast model into a two-way Internet model.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe 150 years of telecommunications wisdom was wrong. Sadly, I suspect for the next 25-50 years we're going to find out.

The Death of Peering

Look at a traceroute some time... your packets could go through a half a dozen or so different entities. If any one of them hasn't been paid their bribe from Apple, your 'net performance suffers.

The way packets are routed on the internet, this will be a free-for-all of people trying to gouge a little extra money. The whole concept of peering -- since our packets travel over your network, and your packets travel over ours -- will all go to s**t. As packets get rerouted around individual places that aren't playing nice because they haven't been paid, all of your traffic will be sent through congested chokepoints.

The sum total will be an overall reduction in service and relibility for everyone.

Your downloads of Mozilla, or Linux, or iTunes, or things from sourceforge, Microsoft updates, or whatever -- all of them will be subjected to intermediate 'road tolls' by people who feel they should get a cut for reliably delivering your data. Every single one of them will be approached little-by-little to cough up or experience packet loss/delays.

...to me, this sounds like... the beginning of separated, specialized networks. This is like travelling through some third world country where armed groups stop you and charge a fee to be allowed to continue.

And what of Common Carrier status?

In my opinion, any company who wishes to be able to charge certain sites for reliable bandwidth should immediately lose any and all common carrier status afforded to them. They are now liable for every single packet which travels over their networks; since they clearly need to identify the source of every packet for specific billing purposes.

A Free Market requires Competition

However, the Republicans are doing the right thing by their constituents by allowing the maximum freedom to these broadband providers and only seeking legal recourse if there is proof of anti-competitive actions.

I agree... but this philosophy only works when there is competition. The reason this thing is so bad, isn't because AT&T is going to go off and do something dumb... its because AT&T is going to go off and do something dumb, and the market can't punish them by allowing their customers to switch. For 99% of broadband customers, they only have one high-speed choice.

This is something, sadly, today's Republicans forget. They believe the solution to every problem is "the free market" when they forget that includes "competition".

Google's "free ride"

The chairman of AT&T has openly lamented during hearings that he gives websites like Google a "free ride". To his mind, Google is a service that should be paid for. That Google needs to apportion a percentage of its revenue into a general fund, because AT&T doesn't sell bandwidth to Google, but carries a lot of Google traffic. He specifically used Google in his example.

That's called revenue sharing, and you know who does stuff like that? Sports team owners. They divide up the revenue from tv rights equally, despite teams representing unequal market share. You know what the big ISPs want? They want that. They want to see Microsoft and Google, and anyone else THEY deem to provide some essential function to the net to pay into a revenue sharing pool.

You know the only time a free market can allow something like that to happen? When you have [an] oligarchy. And that's what the big backbones providers want. They want to consolidate the market, and start putting tarriffs in at peering sites. They want to exert influence outside the carrier market, and they see QoS as the first step to getting down the slippery slope. Pretty soon, some carriers decide to de-prioritize packets to Google. Maybe Google works, maybe it's really really slow...

Payment plan

Let me get this straight:

I paid once for taxes that created the internet and supported most of the phone system infrastructure.
I paid again for phone service and use of the lines.
I paid again for all the people who can't afford access to the lines.
I paid again for dsl.
I paid again for the USF (which gets paid to Verizon so that they can pay themselves for using there own lines, which I already paid to use twice.)

Yet the oposition to this bill wants me to think that someone needs to pay for [all] this service they're providing.

I'm generaly against government regulation, but something isn't right here. It makes me glad we also paid all that money to [break] up AT&T in the first place.

Bad for the Telcos

Yes, this is bad news for regular users, but its also bad for the big telcos. That's because if they start trying to sell traffic prioritization to people, they'll end up with egg on their face due to the very nature of the Internet, and everyone will lose. Regular customers will just lose first, but I think telcos will lose later.

The reason is that telcos think only in terms of their own networks, not in terms of the internet as a whole. For example, suppose I want to go to google video and so does Joe in Iowa. If Joe and I are both are customers AT&T, for example, and we both purchase some kind of fast streaming... video service from AT&T, and Google has direct uplink to AT&T, then we both will get faster video downloads. However, if Joe's traffic ever traverses another network like UUNet, then the fast steaming video service Joe paid for won't be so fast. Unless, that is, AT&T and Verizon/MCI (UUNet) have an agreement to honor each other's traffic prioritization.

Here's where it gets interesting. What if Verizon sells the same traffic prioritation to its customers? Are we to believe that Verizon will treat AT&T's 'prioritized' traffic with the same expediency as their own high-priority steaming video traffic? I think not. The interesting thing is that it doesn't matter if Joe is an AT&T customer or not - the chances of his traffic traversing non-AT&T link somewhere on the internet are pretty good, since there are... video providers all over the place, not just on AT&T's network.

The end result is that telcos may sell something to customers that they can't deliver, due to the nature of the Internet. What will happen in time, without 'net neutrality', is that telcos will try to re-engineer their networks to reduce the chances that their customers' traffic will ever traverse other provider's networks out on the internet.

Who will scream first will be business customers. They'll insist on SLAs when paying extra for 'prioritized' traffic, and SLAs nearly always include rebate clauses when things go wrong, and things will go wrong until the internet gets all partitioned up (and functionaly broken). My place of work hosts many hundreds of large commercial web sites, and I'll for sure enforce rebate clauses when the content we pay to have 'prioritized' doesn't move with the specified urgency. And, yes there are ways to determine how to measure whether or not traffic like... video is getting the performance promised in SLAs. I think what will happen is that big telcos will be at each other's throats for failure to honor each other's traffic prioritizations.

The Internet is an ocean, not a bunch of lakes. The telcos want to sell good weather and calm seas.

The only thing a 'tiered' internet will result in is poorer service to people who don't pay for 'prioritized' traffic - that you can bet on. Once that becomes apparent, of course people will start coughing up extra dough, and telcos will get a temporary boost to their bottom line. Of course, that is, until the internet starts to break down as telcos start to partition up the ocean into nice, managable lakes.

Well, it was interesting while it lasted.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Proof is in the pudding


Interesting excerpt from an interview with JBoss execs at the RedHat summit:

Q: In reference to a quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about open source software and it being unreliable from a TCO perspective, how can we drive quality through open source development?

Crenshaw: When people ask this, I can't believe Microsoft is talking about reliability of open source software. Look to the FAA or to Orbitz or most of Wall Street and there is no doubt that open source is reliable.

What we must do now is shift from reliability to availability. Until today, highly available has always been in the domain of companies with the most money and the deepest development benches. But if you think about it, highly available is something that fits everybody. Our role is to provide that availability through virtualization, storage and clustering and then bring that availability to the masses. As far as TCO goes, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] saved $15 million and two-thirds time by going with Red Hat. I say we let customer success speak instead of the analyst reports.


SearchOpenSource: Red Hat Summit: The trials and triumphs of open source

Friday, June 09, 2006

House rejects net neutrality - sort of


The House of Representatives voted 269-152 late yesterday to reject a net neutrality amendment to the COPE Act. COPE -- Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement -- is a rewrite of the 1996 Telecommunications Acts that appears to have been ghost-written by the telcos.

...broadband providers such as Verizon and AT&T, say it has sufficient Net neutrality protections for consumers, and more extensive rules would discourage investment in wiring American homes with higher-speed connections...

By golly, if Verizon and AT&T say it has enough protection for consumers, well, that's good enough for me!

Back in the little land we like to call reality, though, a vast public outcry over net neutrality and the telcos' checkered history of network deployments has arisen. Recent action around COPE has opened the door for some new players: specifically the House Judiciary Committee.

The bi-partisan committee, led by Rep. James Sensebrenner (R-WI), had raised enough of a ruckus about its ability to enforce antitrust violations, that a new amendment was proposed. It would preserve the Judiciary Committee's ability to slap the carriers down in the event that its activities required antitrust enforcement. Consider a Madison River situation, in which a carrier decides to block or degrade Vonage VoIP calls. The Judiciary retains the ability to position that activity as an antitrust enforcement action and act accordingly.

Once again, the telco lobbyists and apologists are crowing about their victory a bit too soon. After spending I-don't-know-how-many millions of dollars on lobbying, they didn't quite get the COPE Act they wanted. I wonder how’s that House Judiciary Committee's working out for them? The term 'seething' comes to mind.

After all of their spending and lobbying, their plans are coming apart faster than a five-dollar Taiwanese bicycle. The best is yet to come. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

ADSL2 Performance Reports: "Good Interim Solution"


This report from a broadband networking forum is interesting. It discusses achievable bandwidths with "next-generation DSL": ADSL2. This engineer calls it a "Good Interim Solution". The question for AT&T (and the other telcos) is this: will streaming HDTV over next-gen, DSL-based IP pipes suffice? Or we destined for another series of broken promises (e.g., ISDN, fiber rollouts to millions of homes, etc.)?

Based upon the telcos' track records, I think we can all surmise the answer to that question.

I can shed some light on the capabilities of newer DSL technologies. I am the network engineer for a small independent telephone company, and we are currently in the process of testing IP video over our ADSL2+ network. We have been pleasantly surprised by the speeds achieved with ADSL2+. Examples of real world speeds:

5k feet= 26400 down / 1408 up (ADSL2+)
5k feet= 23872 down / 2624 up (ADSL2+ Annex M)

14k feet= 10336 down / 960 up (ADSL2+)
14k feet= 8540 down / 1520 up (ADSL2+ Annex M)

17500 feet = 7240 down / 768 up (ADSL2+)

Loop bonding will double these speeds if needed. We are just beginning the video testing, but we have been assured that SD will consume 1.5-2.5 Mbps and HD will consume 6-9 Mbps using MPEG-4.

Let's do the math. My household might need three HDTV streams running simultaneously: me watching Fox News, my wife watching e-TV, and my kids watching MTV American Idol. Let's do the math: three times 8 megabits-per-second (what I've been told the average HD stream requires) = 24 Mbps. Oopsie. Looks like someone's going to have problems deploying this in the real world. In other situations, I'd be surprised. But seeing who is behind these deployments, I'll just suppress a giggle.

Broadband Reports Forums: Good Interim Solution

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Google goes for the jugular


I've been playing with Google Spreadsheets and it appears to be a pretty impressive offering. The hosted service is a completely collaborative workbook environment that can take XLS files, allow multiple users to edit them, and spit out XLS files on the back-side. GoogleTalk (its web chat facility) is integrated throughout the application, so that you can interact with other parties who might be updating the workbooks.

The user-interface is very impressive: Google is pushing the limits of AJAX to deliver column-width slider bars, cell merging, and a webby version of the Windows File menu.

On the down-side, the interface formatting options appear quite limited compared to Excel. For a collaborative environment, it doesn't seem to have the sophisticated security options of, say, a BadBlue, which offers read- and write-protection at granular levels for each user. The workbook also is limited in size - if you upload a workbook, you get a slightly larger "palette" to work with than the Excel file you started with. You can't just cursor down a hundred rows to begin a scratchpad experiment the way you can in the thick-client app.

All in all, though, it's a very impressive effort and one that Microsoft has got to be tracking at the highest levels of the organization. If there's a NORAD-style control center in Redmond, I'd bet Gates and Ballmer are barking at minions at this very moment.

Where does Google go next? My take is the same as it was in December. I believe Google will offer hosted versions of major Windows applications (remember the Writely acquisition, which gave Google a collaborative online version of Word?). Then, when you least expect it, watch for the Google Office Appliance - a bright yellow box that any company can buy, which will offer the same sort of functionality... while keeping files inside the firewall.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Of Vonage, IPOs, and the Extermination of Net Neutrality


The carriers and their apologists endlessly babble that technology has passed the Internet by. That TCP is decades-old technology that somehow doesn't map to the new world order of carrier last-mile fiefdoms. That Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf, Lawrence Lessig, and Tim Berners-Lee are harmless old coots who couldn't spot a modern network architecture if it fired off signal flares at the rest home.

The only problem for the carriers and their minions is this: context-less technical diatribes don’t stand up to the scrutiny of this little world we like to call "reality".

Internet phone provider Vonage has been sued in a class action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders who bought stock in the company prior to its IPO. Many observers believe that the risk of net neutrality’s demise has taken its toll on Vonage’s stock price.

That is what we call value destruction, an endemic, pervasive quality of handing a few juggernaut-sized corporations the keys to the Internet.

Here is all that I ask of the carriers and their lackeys: show me the business plans. Show me the forecasts of value-creation predicated upon last-mile gatekeeping.

Show me where IPTV works over Project-Lightspeed-quality last-mile lines (not on some carrier’s pristine backbone).

Illustrate for me with pie- and line-charts the carriers' customer-sat ratings.

Regale me with stories of the innovative IP services that have demonstrated the carriers’ net-savvy nature.

Tell me how Internet2 -- arguably the most advanced end-to-end network on the planet -- handled tiered architectures.

List for me all of the carrier's Internet deployment successes, ranging from ISDN to their promised fiber rollouts of the late 90’s.

Show me where the carriers have implemented tiered HDTV-over-IP over an end-to-end infrastructure… anywhere in a real-world situation with consumers involved.

I can show you a rich history of aggregate trillion-dollar market caps with the "old-model" Internet. That’s right - the one with net neutrality enforced by the FCC. Tell me how the carriers will do better by exterminating net neutrality. Let's start with opening up the telcos' business plans to public scrutiny.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Ten Highest- and Lowest-Radiation Cellphones


From CNet:

Ten highest-radiation cell phones (United States)

Manufacturer and model SAR level
(digital)
1. Motorola Slvr L6 1.58
2a. Motorola V120c 1.55
2b. Motorola V265 1.55
4. Motorola V70 1.54
5a. Motorola C290 1.53
5b. Motorola P8767 1.53
5c. Motorola ST7868 1.53
5d. Motorola ST7868W 1.53
9a. Motorola A845 1.51
9c. Palm Treo 650 GSM1.51
9b. Panasonic Allure 1.51

Ten lowest-radiation cell phones (United States)

1. Audiovox PPC660010.12
2. Motorola MPx200 0.2
3. Motorola Timeport0.22
4. Qualcomm pdQ-19000.2634
5. T-Mobile Sidekick0.276
6a. Samsung SGH-S100 0.296
6b. Samsung SGH-S105 0.296
8. Sony Ericsson Z600.31
9. Mitsubishi G360 0.32
10. Siemens S40 0.33

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Net Neutrality and Christopher Yoo's Paean to the Carriers


The carriers and their apologists gleefully point to Vandy professor Christopher Yoo's recent paper as "academic" proof that net neutrality need not be regulated. His article, entitled "Promoting Broadband Through Network Diversity," argues that carriers should be permitted to "experiment" with various network architectures.

Ignoring the fact that the cable industry reportedly funded the paper (which should tell us all we need to know about its assertions), its flagship example should send chills down most readers' spines:

One of the best current examples [of network competition] is the manner in which direct broadcast satellite (DBS) provider DirecTV is using an exclusive programming package known as “NFL Sunday Ticket” to enhance its ability to compete with cable television. Indeed, it appears that exclusive access to NFL Sunday Ticket constitutes one of the major factors helping DBS emerge as a viable competitor to cable.

The frightening aspect to this is that Yoo's key example is a pay-per-view-style (PPV) offering, the content and delivery of which are controlled by enormous corporations and not at all relevant or analogous to the democratic platform represented by the Internet.

Yoo's grand idea is apparently just that: turn the Internet into a model proven out by the cable companies. This would give a handful of corporate leviathans control of which content is permitted to reach consumers. And, using Yoo's example, there are very few choices in last-mile television. If we're lucky and happen to live in an urban environment, we've got a single cable provider to choose from and several satellite choices.

One need not be an academician to contrast cable TV, where a select few choose the approved "channels", with the most democratic media dispersion instrument in history: the Internet.

But Yoo's not finished with that bizarre analogy. Here's another gem:

Broadband policy would be better served if such efforts were directed towards identifying and increasing the competitiveness of the last mile, which remains the industry segment that is the most concentrated and protected by entry barriers.

Very true. Odd, then, that Yoo fails to mention the carriers' unceasing efforts to reduce competitiveness at the last-mile. Yoo carefully ignores: carrier suppression of municipal wireless roll-out efforts; heavy lobbying by the carriers to transfer local control of cable networks from municipalities to states; and the checkered history of the carriers' various promises of high-speed networks (that never seem to get fully deployed) in exchange for deregulation.

In other words, competition among last-mile offerings, which Yoo claims to endorse, has been hampered at every turn by a juggernaut he dares not mention.

Yoo also posits that investment in last-mile technologies won't be forthcoming if net neutrality is mandated:

In the process, network neutrality risks dampening incentives to invest in new last-mile technologies to the extent that it cements the existing last-mile oligopoly into place. Although such a policy might be justifiable if entry by alternative network capacity were impossible, it is indefensible when 3G, WiFi, WiMax, broadband over powerline (BPL), and other technologies are actively searching for capital to support their deployment and when what represents the state of the art in transmission is undergoing rapid technological change.

Funny, then, that all of these technologies have received significant and increasing investment over the last decade... all under the auspices of FCC-enforced net neutrality. Not much of a dampening effect, eh?

In fact, Yoo's paper strikes me as carrier-funded jibber-jabber that fails to address the most important components of the net neutrality discussion:

First, we have indisputable proof that the net-neutral Internet has created the most valuable and open communications architecture in the history of the world. Strike one: Yoo's paper fails to address this simple, irrefutable fact and instead points to cable as an aspirational example. That his paper was apparently funded by the cable industry is not the point. Does Yoo truly believe that cable is an examplar of network diversity principles when compared to the Internet? Presumably, he would permit tampering with this fragile value-creation machine for a model proven to reduce consumer choice.

Second, the carriers' efforts to suppress last-mile competition flies in the face of Yoo's core tenet. Strike two: Yoo's paper advocates last-mile competition and then studiously ignores its biggest stumbling block: the carriers themselves.

Third, last-mile investment has been on a massive upswing in spite of the carriers and the current state of net neutrality. The momentum for BPL, muni-wireless, content-provider wireless (e.g., the Google/Earthlink pairing), carrier wi-max, and related technologies has never been better. It will be quite a while before they are viable options for most Americans, but the pace of investment flies directly in the face of Yoo's assertion. Strike three: the mighty Yoo has struck out.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Net Neutrality and the Telcos' Broken Promises


I'm in the midst of reading telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick's book The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal  and it is chock full of broken promises. Documented in exquisite detail, most useful are the insights into the telcos' various visions of the future. In each case, the telcos talked a great game, but didn't quite deliver what was promised. And, for each debacle, kindly recall that these are the same corporate behemoths that want to eradicate net neutrality and control the keys to the Internet.

Southwestern Bell 1986 Annual Report:

At the forefront of new technology is ISDN. Scheduled for commercial availability in 1988, ISDN will revolutionize day-to-day communications by allowing simultaneous transmission of voice, data and images over a single telephone line… With ISDN customers will have the potential to access videotex, telemetry, alarm services, sophisticated calling features, teleconferencing much more economically than they can today.

It is interesting to point out that ISDN, the posterchild for all failed digital deployments and a technology that could have been rolled out in the 1980's, waited until the 1990's before any actual implementation occurred — and it was never fully deployed.

Yes, and we're all intimately familiar with the success story that was ISDN.

A more recent chapter in the story begins with Clinton-Gore administration. Their vision to create a high-speed network throughout the country was the ostensible blueprint for the telcos.

...the Bell phone companies claimed that instead of the government taking the lead role, the Bell companies would step up to the plate to rewire America’s homes and offices, schools and libraries with a fiber optic broadband network. It would replace the aging, 100-year old copper-based network with a glass-based fiber optic wire that could handle America’s broadband needs.

...What was promised? By 2000, according to the Bell companies' annual reports, press releases and state filings, about 50 million households should have been rewired... Alongside the annual reports, the Bell companies also filed with the FCC to offer "video dialtone" services over fiber optic wire. Over 9,787,400 households in 43 cities were supposed to be upgraded between 1995 and 1997.

None of this was DSL. DSL goes over the old existing copper wiring and could not
deliver “broadband”, as defined by the Bell companies... By 2005, if the Bell companies (including Verizon/GTE) had actually delivered on their broadband promises, approximately 86 million households would have had fiber optic based services. These state commitments also would have rewired schools and libraries, hospitals and government offices. And in most states, the plan called for ALL customers to be rewired equally, whether they were in rural or urban areas, rich or poor.

And where would all of that funding come from? I think you've guessed the answer already.

The local phone companies are regulated by the state public utility commissions... Remember, in the 1990’s there was no competition of any consequence, and so the phone companies had a guaranteed income. It is still guaranteed in that if their profits fail to please, they ask for a price increase.

The plan was to simply get all 50 states to remove this old "rate of return" regulation with “deregulation”, meaning the removal of regulation. In this case, it was also called “price caps”, or “alternative regulations”, or “incentive regulations”, all of which would give the phone companies more money to pay for these upgrades... For example, “Calling Features”, such as “Call Waiting” or “Call Forwarding”, can cost customers $3-$5 a month, and yet cost less than one cent to offer.

Now that's value!

So, what was the net effect of the various "deregulation" efforts? Why don't tens of millions of homes have last-mile fiber?

While each state has different laws, nationwide, we estimate that the Bell companies overcharged over $205 billion from 1992-2004 for these networks, including various financial perks - and that figure is growing. On average, we estimate that it was over $2000 per household...

...what happened was that because of the state and federal deregulations that were primarily written for the companies’ fiber optic service promises, local service became the Bells’ private cash machine. By dumb luck, the timing for deregulation couldn’t have been better. There was a massive increase in telephone services being purchased fueled by the Internet’s growth starting in 1995...

...We argue that the company made false statements that changed the laws and that those laws should never have been allowed to stand based on what the company delivered. The monies should be refunded or given to others, such as the municipalities, to do the work.

And these are the jamokes that want to control the Internet? Go to Save the Internet and -- if you want a shocking education into the mindset of the telcos -- buy Bruce Kushnick's book.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Navy Federal gets hammered by George Ou


The e-banking folks at Navy Federal have taken a nice beating at the hands of ZDNet blogger George Ou. Navy Federal commits what is, unfortunately, an all-too-typical gaffe: serving up many of their pages in clear-text rather than through a secure (SSL) link.

As Ou points out (and as I noted out in, "Making Phishers solve a captcha") the use of clear-text for banking application-serving is problematic. DNS cache poisoning and other DNS hacks are possible attack vectors for in-the-clear apps. Why not get the user accustomed to expecting a secure connection for each page, every page?

Navy Federal:
Signing on to secure sites from an unsecure page is a common industry practice, and not unique to Navy Federal. You may see this same functionality at other Web sites.

George Ou:
No you're not unique; you're just among the batch of ignorant American Banks that don't understand basic SSL server side authentication... do me a favor and run this portion of your answer past your legal department and ask them if "but your Honor, everyone else does it" will ever fly in a class-action lawsuit.

Banks should aggressively protect their customers' security. The financial impact of securing all pages with SSL is pitifully insignificant. Someone at the FDIC needs to knock heads together and make this a requirement for online banking applications.

ZDNet: Bank's defense of bad security: Everyone else does it

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Net Neutrality All-Star: Susan Crawford


The blog over at Susan Crawford's site has some must-read material. Crawford is Assistant Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, teaching cyberlaw and intellectual property law. Here's an excerpt from her answers to five frequently-asked net neutrality questions:

Q: The cable and telephone companies argue that they need additional revenue to build 'the internet of the future' and so the Googles and Amazons of the world (who will benefit from that new internet) need to pay their fair share. Is that a legitimate argument?

A: What they mean by 'the internet of the future' is a cable system -- not the internet. They'll be using their market power over broadband access to force us all to accept their cable-ized version of 'the internet' and to force nascent Googles to pay protection money. Those nascent Googles may never come into being -- so net neutrality is a right-to-life movement for new technology.

These incumbents don't have competition. We have no real information about their costs or how their networks work. We're having this argument about "need for additional revenue" in the dark. They've been promising to build broadband networks for a long time, and we're falling behind as a country.

We know from Japan that competition for broadband access (lower prices, higher speeds) comes when you force the incumbent to "unbundle" (let competitors use its facilities on nondiscriminatory terms). That's the real 'internet of the future.'


Read the whole thing

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Net Neutrality and the Value-Chain


A concept that seems to be hard for the carrier execs and Richard Bennett to grok is that of commoditization. Throughout history, lower-value functions have become commoditized. Those organizations that can successfully move up the value-chain survive. Those that can't... don't.

Billions in Lost Opportunities


The giant railroad companies didn't realize they were in the transportation business - not the railroad business. They subsequently ignored the nascent airline industry altogether.

Likewise, the telcos never figured out that they were in the communications business. They weren't in the phone business -- they never were. They provided infrastructure to allow people to communicate with other people. That's it. Moving bits around. Even when their network was pure PSTN, that was their business. They just hadn't realized it: AT&T thought of itself as "the phone company". They weren't. They were in the business of transporting bits from one device to another in the form of a switched, analog phone call.

Because they didn't realize that their business was really moving information around for customers, they ignored -- and, for the most part, continue to ignore -- the real value-creation opportunities represented by the Internet.

Consider all of the billion-dollar business opportunities that the telcos ignored. The opportunities jumped up, waved their arms, shot off signal flares, did everything but bite them on the butt. Ask yourself: did the telcos meaningfully innovate and/or partner in any of the following areas to the tune of billions of dollars?

Domain registrars like Network Solutions? Nope. Certificate authorities like Verisign? Nope. Search engines like Yahoo or Google? No. E-commerce solutions like PayPal? No. Online auctions like eBay? Nada. VoIP offerings like Vonage? No. Open-source communications projects such as Open H323? No. Video distribution tools like BitTorrent? No. Telephony solutions like Skype? No. Online retail? No.

The carriers studiously ignored the multitude of value-creation opportunities that were popping out of the ground like moles in a slow-motion whack-a-mole game.

The Telco's Alternative Strategy


Instead, the telcos seemed to expend energy on lobbying Congress, suppressing last-mile competitors such as municipal wireless, and building out plumbing: the layers 1-3 infrastructure that makes up the backbones and last-mile loops of U.S. communications infrastructure.

Their plan was to gain control of all last-mile infrastructure. And, once that was accomplished, to erect tollbooths on the Internet to extract every drop of revenue from the application providers that had built fortunes on their networks.

Remember H.R. 2726, the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005," introduced by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)? If enacted, the bill would have prohibited any municipal government from offering a telecom facility "in any geographic area" that might intersect with a telco's footprint.

How about H.B. 699, a cable franchise bill that "takes local control... [from municipalities] and transfers it to the state level because it would be more convenient (that is, more profitable) to a single large corporation if local governments could be neutered." Easier to lobby a single state government than thousands of cities and towns, I suppose.

The list goes on. In short, the telcos spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time, energy, and money on inhibiting last-mile competition.

Even the network buildout was questionable. Some sources assert that the telcos gamed taxpayers and never built the high-speed networks they had promised. Of Bruce Kushnick's book, "The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal," attorney Harold Feld wrote:

...[it] meticulously documents how the incumbent telcos have used the promise of broadband to win subsidies and regulatory goodies. The pattern Bruce describes is a fairly straightforward one. Bell companies go to [name state] legislature and promise to provide fiber networks (which will bring high-speed internet access, video services, jobs, education etc. to [name state]. All the telco asks in exchange is deregulation of prices, deregulation of competitive obligations (such as opening the network to rivals), and subsidies or tax incentives to reach the areas where it is not profitable to deploy. Then take the goodies, make some high profile efforts to deploy, then quietly forget about it while enjoying deregulated monopoly and tax subsidies. Don't worry, state legislators and the public will forget about it as well, and will accept the current state of the universe as the best possible world that can be achieved.

While apparently lifted from today's headlines, Kushnick traces this kind of behavior back to the early 1990s. His book asserts that this behavior has cost the U.S. tax payers over $200 Billion, at a minimum over the last ten years. Lest one ask “how could the Bells ever get away with such a thing?!?!” I will observe that what Kushnick documents are no secrets. Rather, like the purlioned letter, each broken promise, terminated project, absorbed tax incentive, and regulatory bonus happened in plain sight...


In short, the telco strategy appears to have been suppression of last-mile alternatives, strengthening lobbying ties to appropriate governmental officials, and investing in low-value-added (and very, very high profit-margin) plumbing.

Last-mile plumbing


As it stands today, last-mile infrastructure is a natural monopoly. How many water lines would you want running into your house? Sewer lines? Power lines? Network fiber lines? In fact, it makes little economic sense to build more than one high-speed fiber loop in a given geographic area.

Think about the germination of the power or water utilities. They were heavily regulated because, in fact, they were natural monopolies.

Susan Crawford believes that the carriers must be forced to unbundle their last-mile infrastructure:

The only standard that will keep the architecture of the internet optimized on innovation (instead of billing) is to ensure that all broadband pipe providers (cable as well as telco) are required to unbundle their facilities so as to promote competition...

While this will almost certainly result in a litigious, regulatory morass -- consider the nightmarish stream of local- and long-distance cases ignited by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- it is a far preferable scenario than the alternative.

Of the seven Baby Bells formed after the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984, only four remain. The old AT&T, Southwestern Bell, Ameritech, SNET, Pacific Bell, and BellSouth are now collectively “AT&T.” Similarly, GTE, Nynex, Bell Atlantic, and MCI have joined together to form Verizon. Two Baby Bells, the new AT&T and Verizon, control telco access around the country. The vast majority of Americans have at most two choices of broadband provider wherever they are, and competition between these providers is not intense. Prices have stayed high and speeds have stayed low. In effect, the industry is re-monopolizing.

If the carriers' track record is any indication, re-monopolization bodes poorly for the Internet.

Moving up the value chain


In the auto industry, imagine if GM hadn't decided to manufacture and integrate radios, air-conditioners, small motors for power-windows, and the like. In other words, the "applications" that make automotive infrastructure more usable. Had they ignored those innovations, they'd have been swept into the dustbin of history decades ago.

In the software industry, plumbing layers invariably became commoditized. The Trumpet TCP/IP Stack used to be an add-on to early versions of Windows. Microsoft began incorporating its own TCP/IP stack (OSI layers 3 and 4) and Trumpet was no more.

In recent years, open-source software (OSS) commoditized lower levels of the software stack. If you're a web-hosting provider, you can choose to license Microsoft operating systems as your defult offering or you can use Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (otherwise known as the LAMP stack) for free. Most hosting providers use LAMP as a default stack.

EAI products, application servers, email clients, browsers, security software, and many other types of offerings represent lower layers on a value stack. The lower layers invariably become commoditized. Vendors must relentlessly move up the stack. Or they die.

Microsoft recognizes this. They've branched out from the core OS and language business in a major way: they acquired Great Plains Software in order to move up the software stack. They branched out into gaming, telephony, cable distribution, and other areas.

In order to compete, successful businesses must find ways to move up the value chain to differentiate themselves and to find profitable niches.

For whatever reason, the carriers haven't bothered to play at higher levels of the network stack: layers 5-7. They haven't moved up the value-chain. Instead, they remain in their comfort-zone, primarily layers 1 through 3. In order to bring more money in, they've proposed killing off network neutrality and -- essentially -- erecting tollbooths all over the Internet. The tollbooths are ostensibly there for video and other streaming, "real-time" content. But, in effect, if you listen to AT&T chieftan Ed Whitacre, anyone might have to pony up to get prioritized treatment. Search engines, auction sites, booksellers, you name it.

Given the telcos' history of lobbying, suppression of competition, and questionable build-out of fiber infrastructure, the risks of "trusting them on this one" are far too high.

America's technological leadership position (and, by extension, its national security) hang in the balance. The value-creation machine that has been the net-neutral, democratic Internet also sits on a precipice. Go to Save the Internet today. And take action.

Net Neutrality and Commoditization: a new concept for the carriers


This article has been superceded by this one. Apologies for any inconvenience.

That's certainly one approach


There's security. And then there's "security":

In a rare discussion about the severity of the Windows malware scourge, a Microsoft security official said businesses should consider investing in an automated process to wipe hard drives and reinstall operating systems as a practical way to recover from malware infestation.


eWeek: Microsoft Says Recovery from Malware Becoming Impossible

Monday, May 29, 2006

Net Neutrality All-Star: Tim Berners-Lee


From the Amherst Times:

Sir Tim expects that there are great Internet innovations yet to come, many involving video. He believes people at the scene of an accident — or a political protest — will one day be able to take pictures with their cellphones that could be pieced together to create a three-dimensional image of what happened. That sort of innovation could be blocked by fees for the high-speed connections required to relay video images.

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan "hands off the Internet," that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it...

Sir Tim argues that service providers may be hurting themselves by pushing for tiered pricing. The Internet's extraordinary growth has been fueled by the limitless vistas the Web offers surfers, bloggers and downloaders. Customers who are used to the robust, democratic Web may not pay for one that is restricted to wealthy corporate content providers.

"That's not what we call Internet at all," says Sir Tim. "That's what we call cable TV."

Go to Save the Internet now.

Movie review: Unleashed 

Unflinching, offbeat and intriguing action film

UnleashedTrained from childhood to become a killing machine for a mobster (Bob Hoskins), Danny (Jet Li) is literally a caged animal. When bills need to be collected upon, the gang brings Danny along. If payment isn't made, they release him from his steel leash and Danny becomes a barbaric war machine of unspeakable fury, using lightning-quick hands, feet, elbows, headbutts, and any other appendage in staccato blasts. The gang always gets paid.

But when his boss crosses the wrong crew one day, Danny suddenly finds himself wounded badly, bewildered and homeless. With no social skills whatsoever, he staggers back to the scene of one of his recent battles, where a piano and a blind piano-tuner (Morgan Freeman) had briefly captured his attention. Bleeding profusely, Danny collapses at Sam's feet.

Recognizing that Danny has special needs, Sam and his adopted daughter nurse the youth back to health and begin to integrate him into polite society. Danny becomes a set of eyes for Sam, helping with chores like shopping and escorting Victoria back and forth to school. Over a period of weeks, Danny becomes an adoptive member of the family. It is on a typical daily shopping sojourn that one of the old gang spots Danny. It turns out that Bart, the boss, has survived to live another day. And he wants his old enforcer back in the fold. This is where things get really ugly.

Li, Hoskins and Freeman all do fine work here. Hoskins obviously has the part of Glasgow mobster mastered and you probably couldn't find a more convincing actor to play the role. Freeman is, well, Freeman. He's convincing without being overwhelming and is the warm, stable center of the film. And Li is not only a gifted fighter, he's also convincing as a human being raised in unspeakable living conditions. All told, the film is far more than a cookie-cutter action flick. It's enjoyable, escapist fun with some pretty fine acting to help drive the story.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Book Review: Lee Child's The Hard Way 

A top-shelf thriller from start to finish

The Hard WayEnigmatic drifter Jack Reacher is minding his own business in Manhattan, sipping an espresso in a coffee-bar patio, when a man crosses the street in front of him and drives off in a Mercedes. The Benz contained one million dollars worth of ransom money. With that simple act, Reacher is dragged into the life of Edward Lane, the man who paid the money. Lane, who runs a highly profitable mercenary operation for any government that can afford his fee, is willing to pay any price to get his family back.

And an ex-military investigator like Reacher seems to be just the man Lane needs. Soon Reacher is tracking a sadistic kidnapper through the gritty streets of the Big Apple. And, along the way, Reacher begins to discover that Lane has some secrets of his own. But now that he's in the middle of the kidnapping, Reacher has to see it to the finish. And that finish will be anything but peacable.

By my count, Child is ten for ten. Read all of the Reacher stories -- in any order -- for a sure-fire adrenaline rush. Child's thrillers are so good you'll find yourself agitated when you hit the last page. It's just a shame he isn't cranking them out faster or, at the very least, getting some of them on screen.