Hijacking the Internet
ARTICLE DATE: 03.15.06
By John C. Dvorak
A look at the white papers and articles archived on the Center for Digital Democracy's Web site reveals paper after paper on how the telecom companies want to make the Internet into a tiered service, so that your 1.5-Mbps service is not the same as my 1.5-Mbps service.
These companies are preoccupied with deep-packet analysis. Instead of just routing traffic, the new routers will also determine the nature of the packet. This isn't for security or spying, but to flag Skype and other VoIP calls so you can be charged extra for making them. You can assume that IPTV traffic will be charged differently, too. One of the more shameful aspects of this is that Cisco seems to be promoting some of these ideas so that it can sell more specialized (and expensive) gear.
If they were serving the public interest, the telcos and cable companies would simply provide a very fast connection, and services would flow over those connections in ways determined by the user—everything IP-driven. But these companies would like to use gangland tactics to get into every part of your business. You buy the 1.5-Mbps link, it costs a fixed amount. You actually want to use it, it costs more. How about putting a server on it? Nope, you have to pay extra. Can you make a VoIP Skype call? No way, costs more. So you're not getting a real 1.5-Mbps line at all—you're getting scammed, in fact.
This reminds me of the early era of Internet connectivity, where an ISP would buy a 1.5-Mbps T-1 line from the phone company and resell it over and over and over to hundreds of customers, with the rationalization that the line was magically multiplexed and was providing T-1 service to 500 people. When you read the fine print, you discovered that you couldn't really use the whole capacity of your T-1 at all. This sort of scam is still with us, only now the big boys are doing it. The state and local public utilities commissions say nothing. The Federal Communications Commission says nothing. Nobody says anything.
It seems to me that if you buy a 1.5-Mbps connection, you should be able to redline the connection, to use the full capacity without being charged more. And you should also be able to use it for whatever you want to use it for. Otherwise, it's like selling public-utility water to people and making them pay more to use it for washing dishes.—Continue reading...
As this fiasco unfolds, I blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Its apologists still claim that it's working, when it has clearly resulted in the consolidation of the phone companies and the ludicrous fact that the original monopoly, AT&T, is actually re-emerging as a big clunky ogre, despite its 1984 court-ordered breakup. Where is Judge Harold Green when you need him?
This was made clear when SBC grabbed a slew of the one-time Regional Bell Operating Companies created by the breakup, including Pacific Bell. Then SBC merged with AT&T and is now called AT&T. In just six years, the name of the fabulous baseball stadium in San Francisco has gone from Pac Bell Park to SBC Park to AT&T Park. Just the expense of changing the signage and promotional collateral tells you that someone is making plenty of money.
The entire nation's telecom infrastructure will consolidate, probably into three monopolies: landline, cellular, and cable. The Internet will change drastically. Just look at a list of the documents archived by the Center for Digital Democracy (
www.democraticmedia.org ) to see where all this is headed. The guys who run these telecom companies have no qualms about openly discussing their plans to ream the public. With weak public utilities commissions and an FCC that is not serving the public, what is the point of being secretive?
Apparently nobody cares. The folks in Congress are technophobic and clueless; they just listen to the lobbyists who work for the big telecom companies. The FCC is out to ruin the country by giving the big companies anything they want. The executive branch is all about corporatism at the expense of the public. And the public itself seems not to care, or these jokers would be voted out of office.
Meanwhile, Western Europe and Asia will glide along the Net at 30 to 100 Mbps with IPTV, VoIP, and slick services with a reasonable connection fee, while we struggle to get a solid 1 Mbps while paying all sorts of usage fees. Soon we'll be comparing ourselves to Bolivia or Paraguay and patting ourselves on the back saying, "We're number one."
And sure, in the Western Hemisphere we'll be number one—if you leave Canada out.
