In 1997 I spent some time lobbying at the Minnesota Legislature and the Minnesota Public Utilities commission about the differences between a data connection and data communications.  The differences may seem plainly obvious to those of us in the Internet / Cable / Telephone industries, but for those milling around on the hill, they can’t quite grasp the difference between a carrier pigeon and the message tied to it’s leg.  This analogy was too esoteric for those who were approaching dementia so I changed the analogy to a letter carried by a postal service.  They seemed to understand that governments should regulate the postal service, but not the contents of the letter.  You tell me, which part of that analogy resembles a connection and which resembles information?  Pretty obvious, huh?

While it has been obvious for a long time that a telecommunication service is HOW you connect, I think the codgers on the hill got fouled up in the language. The word telecommunication contains that magic word, communication.  When you hear communication, you immediately think of what you DO with a voice service, a cable television service or the Internet.  But we in the industry all know that the Internet, voice, cable television, or anything you DO with a telecommunications service is an information service.

We all use telecommunications services AND information services everyday.  Honestly, it’s difficult to think of a reason to have a telecommunications service without an information service laid on top of it.  I admit that they are so closely tied together that most often you need one to utilize the other.  But there are so many methods of delivering information services that there really is a need for separation.

And that’s how we buy most of our services.  We buy an Internet LINK/PORT and we buy Internet BANDWIDTH.  These are two line items on one invoice.  Sounds like the telecommunications companies already realize these are separately regulated items.

Way back in 2002 the FCC ruled that cable modem service was an information service.  This was dismaying to many ISPs.  Cable companies could legally block ISPs from delivering Internet on cable networks and this new ruling spelled out a path for the ILECs to shut the ISPs out of the DSL / high-speed Internet access market too!  And that’s exactly what happened.

Today Qwests third generation DSL offering is FTTN DSL, with dramatically higher connection speeds than the prior Qwest DSL offerings.  That’s a mixed blessing for consumers.  If consumers really want faster speed for their Internet access and want to stay on DSL, they have but 1 choice, buy from Qwest.  Consumers must buy a bundled telecommunications service and information service from Qwest if they want the higher DSL speeds.  Sadly, that means customers who want to remain loyal to ipHouse cannot.

Prior to 2002 consumers had dozens of ISPs to choose from.  Those same ISPs have been squeezed out of the market by a simple “reclassification” of broadband by the FCC.  Today, if you listen closely you can hear ISPs across the country rejoice at the thought of being able to buy connections again if the FCC is successful at retracing it’s steps.  It might take another 8 years or even longer, but I think that progress is worth waiting for.

Peace.

Bil

Radio and television broadcasters as well as Broadway theater producers are very disappointed by the ruling. In their tests, the use of the new frequency interfered with wireless microphones and television signals.

The F.C.C. is confident that the interference problem can be solved by strict regulation of any new devices that use the white space.  To be certified by the commission, any new devices will need to include technology that will detect existing broadcast channels and change their own broadcast to avoid any possibility of interference.

It will be interesting to watch how these new spectrums are used. Their potential has been described as Wi-Fi on steroids. Perhaps the most immediate devices will be used for applications within the home such as connecting your computer to your TV. It remains to be seen if the new spectrums can solve the broader home or business to ISP issues we have seen with existing Wi-Fi technology.

For more information on this, check out ipHouse customer, Ann Treacy’s Blandin on Broadband blog, the New York Times article, and the official F.C.C. web site.

Peer-to-peer applications, including BitTorrent, the most well-known, give Internet users the ability to view and share high-quality video. The FCC found that Comcast’s network management practices were inconsistent with the concept of an open and accessible network and had significant effects on their customers. These effects were made worst by the fact that Comcast tried to hide what it was doing. It changed its story more than once and only admitted the extent to which it was blocking traffic when confronted by solid third-party data.

The FCC was particularly concerned with how this secrecy interacted with the anti-competitive nature of Comcast’s blocking policies; stating that:

The Commission also concluded that the anticompetitive harms caused by Comcast’s conduct have been compounded by the company’s unacceptable failure to disclose its practices to consumers.  Because Comcast did not provide its customers with notice of the fact that it interfered with customers’ use of peer-to-peer applications, customers had no way of knowing when Comcast was interfering with their connections.  As a result, the Commission found that many consumers experiencing difficulty using only certain applications would not place blame on Comcast, where it belonged, but rather on the applications themselves, thus further disadvantaging those applications in the competitive marketplace.     

It is not surprising that Comcast attempted to block traffic.  In fact, Bil MacLeslie, ipHouse’s CEO, predicted in a StarTribune Op Ed piece in 1999 that providers would eventually begin to preferentially filter content.

Comcast has new plans for how to manage the traffic on their network. They are now planning on selectively limiting bandwidth to high bandwidth users. The New York Times had a good article on the new bandwidth restrictions back in June.

In its official ruling, the FCC reiterated that while providers need to allow consumers to access legal Internet content, ISP’s can still block unlawful content such as child pornography, pirated music or videos.