Comcast is threatening “abusive” users with disconnection if they don’t reduce their use, but won’t tell them what level of use triggers such a warning. This story follows less than a week after BT has sent up a trial balloon for charging users by the bit.
Author: Barry Parr
Is price discrimination on the network inevitable?
David Isenberg notes that price discrimination in networks is probably inevitable, but that it needs to take place at the ends, not in the middle:
One of Mile O’Dell’s aphorisms that has stood the test of time is, “Today’s optimization is tomorrow’s bottleneck.”
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We need to accept that price discrimination happens, and focus on where it happens, for what and to whom. According to the End-to-End Principle, if you have a choice to put a function at the edge of the network or in the middle, you should put it at the edge. Price discrimination in the middle of the network is a risk to new app discovery and to free speech. We should keep the network stupid — and put the “for what” and “to whom” of price discrimination at the edge.
I had never heard the O’Dell quote before. It’s brilliant.
I certainly agree that price discrimination puts the brakes on innovation in networking applications. But I’m not sure how it can be moved to the edges the network, or if that is the right solution to the problem.
Another reason the mobile networks should be more open
There is a huge opportunity that the cellco’s are ignoring. All kinds of devices should be connected to the Net, but aren’t.
Why doesn’t my digital camera have an “email this picture” option? Why can’t my iPod be updated with news or email or RSS feeds? Why does Tivo require a physical connection to a telephone landline? Why is data access so much more expensive than voice access?
The cellco’s are tightly controlling what devices can connect to their networks and are stifling innovation in the process. Right now, they make money on the hardware and selling hardware is a big part of their distribution model.
If they opened up their networks to well-behaved devices that could be traced to a known account holder, they would greatly increase the amount of innovation on applications and devices that used mobile networks. Furthermore, if any one of the big cellco’s did this, they would have a significant competitive advantage. And, finally, if they don’t do it soon, WiFi could preempt most data-based applications of cellular networks.
No single company can innovate a fast as a market, especially a networked market. Cellco’s could achieve Internet-style growth rates in users and traffic if they opened up their networks to all kinds of devices, protocols, and applications. Is it too late for Congress or the FCC to make this a licensing requirement?
Sony Ericsson T616 followup review: after two weeks, I'm really happy
The Sony Ericsson T616 has tons of features, including dozens of shortcuts. I’ve read the manual a couple of times, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to master all of them. It’s critical to read the manual if you’re going to get the most out of this phone. Fortunately, the manual is pretty well written and organized.
Synchronization with iCal and Address Book is seamless and painless. The address book and calendar on the T616 are very good. I’m still confused about one thing. There are two places numbers can be stored–either on the phone’s built-in memory or in the SIM card. It’s still not clear to me how these two phone books work together. Also, the process of setting up speed-dial numbers is unnecessarily cumbersome.
Email works well, and you don’t need to use a proprietary account to do it. I was able to set up my POP account, and send and receive email without a problem–including emailing pictures I took with the phone. I’m still struggling with how to use email with this device. Fortunately, the T616 allows you to set up and choose from multiple email accounts. I can see that I’m going to start racking up some significant data bills with this device.
The ergonomics of the phone are good. Despite its square shape, it has curves in the right places, making it comfortable in my hand and easy to grip when I’m using it. The limited number of keys are well laid-out, and it’s (usually) easy to figure out what to do next. My only other complaint is that the functions of the special-function keys, clustered around the joystick, are sometimes difficult to figure out. Also, the keys (and the clickable joystick) are a little smaller than I would like, resulting in a great deal of pressure on your fingertips. After a lot of use, the tips of my fingers can be a little sore.
The menus are ugly and hard to read. Nearly every other part of the phone acknowledges that upper and lower case is more readable than uppercase, but the menus are upper-case only.
The camera is fun and doesn’t appear to add a lot of overhead to the phone, but its resolution is pretty low. But it’s better than nothing when you need to send a picture. If mobile networks were more open, we could have “email this picture” function into cameras as well as cameras built into cell phones.
I still haven’t set up voice control or explored AT&T’s mMode walled WAP garden. I’m excited about one, and couldn’t be less interested in the other.
Reach out and touch…sports scores?
Douglas Rushkoff says it’s not content that matters on mobile phones, it’s communication.
He’s right. That means that the cellco’s are doubly stupid. Not only could they have virtually unlimited content on their systems if they opened up their networks, they’ve completely missed the point that content doesn’t sell phones.
As the wireless industry begins on its long, misguided descent into the world of content creation, it must come to terms with the fact that the main reason people want content is to have an excuse – or a way – to interact with someone else.
Ideally, this means giving people the tools to create their own content that they can send to friends. Still cameras is a great start. Some form of live digital video would be fun, too. (“We’re at the Grand Canyon, mom, look!” or “Here’s the new baby!”)
But elaborately produced content – like prepackaged video shorts, inscrutable weather maps, and football game TV replays – are not only inappropriate for a two-inch screen, they are inappropriate as social currency.
Why are they trying to reinvent themselves when they can sell the single most valuable thing of all…human contact? Why are they trying to create the elaborate content superstructures when they should be enhancing how their hardware and their networks enable communication? Why are they nickel-and-diming us for text messaging when they should be looking for the next killer communications app?
The next killer app on mobile phones will be hosted by the first cellco to open up their network to developers.
E&P goes, weakly
Vin Crosbie (who knows more about this than I do) says that the Web didn’t kill Editor & Publisher as a weekly. He blames by poor management by VNU.
I confess, I haven’t read E&P since 1996. So, I was alarmed to read Vin say that the magazine declined under the management of VNU. Really alarmed. In the 90s, before they were bought by VNU, E&P was arguably the worst trade magazine in America.
He then makes two excellent points:
- Circulation declined under VNU.Surely a big part of this circulation decline is due to the Web. I’m not the only person who has stopped reading the weekly trades because they no longer contain any news.
- Advertising was decimated by too-high ad rates and advertiser migration to the production-specific magazine Newspapers and Technology. I can hear the pitch now: “Why waste money to reach an audience who don’t have any purchasing authority over presses/paper/computer/services? And why pay to reach them four times a month?” I’m already reaching for my checkbook. That a humble industrial trade like Newspapers and Technology can bring low the mighty journal of journalism itself is a symptom of the decline of newspapering as a American endeavor.
There is no reason for E&P to be weekly. That didn’t serve its readers and it didn’t serve its advertisers. E&P barely has any reason to exist as a monthly, now that the industry is milling about waiting for permission to become a subsidiary of the NAB.
E&P has been drawing dead for a decade or two. It would have been doomed by the consolidation of the industry even if the Web hadn’t made weeklies irrelevant, or VNU hadn’t stepped in to manage its decline. But today, every weekly trade in America needs to think about whether they’re on the right frequency.
The Web is slowly and quietly killing the weeklies
The will be difficult for newspaper publishers to ignore. The industry’s trade magazine, Editor & Publisher is moving from weekly to monthly publication, moving its news to the Web and using print for features, analysis, and commentary.
Steve Outing (an E&P columnist) notes that this is part of a long-term trend in magazine publishing. The Net killed weeklies years ago, and we’re just waiting for the bodies to drop. All the computer weeklies have been struggling to find a reason to exist for years.
How much longer can newspapers ignore the impact of the Web on their own publications? I’m still waiting for the first big daily to drop stock price listings.
The ITU says competition increases broadband penetration
The International Telecommunications Union has released a report that says The US is 11th in broadband penetration worldwide, with only 7% versus nearly 21% in Korea. I added emphasis to a key paragraph below;
More than 10 million of the world’s high-speed Internet users are in South Korea alone, a rate of 21.3 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Hong Kong was in second place with 14.9 percent and Canada was third at 11.2 percent.
The United States was in 11th place in the per-capita broadband rankings at 6.9 percent, though it had the highest overall total with 19.9 million subscribers.
Japan was in 10th place, with 7.1 percent broadband use. But ITU experts expect Japan to move up because it is now offering the world’s fastest speeds and lowest prices. Broadband service that is about 520 times faster than a dial-up modem is available in Japan for about $24.19 a month.
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[Taylor Reynolds, one of the authors] said a key reason why Japan and South Korea are so far ahead is because of heavy competition among broadband providers. The Japanese and South Korean governments have taken steps to encourage the use of broadband, such as requiring telephone companies to let competitors use existing lines at low cost.
The FCC has taken the opposite approach, granting monopolies to local phone companies in exchange for them granting citizens broadband access when it suits their purposes.
Meanwhile, Peterme points to a Business Week commentary that says we need to grant telcos a monopoly on DSL, subsidize their deployment, and improve content protection to increase broadband penetration. He notes correctly that more content isn’t what we need to create broadband demand. There’s now plenty of evidence in worldwide Internet penetration to show this is nonsense that only serves intellectual property owners.
The telcos are beginnning their PR campaign for a metered Internet
Yesterday, I said that the telcos would make us pay by the bit for Internet access if they could. Today, PaidContent pointed up an article that shows BT, the UK’s access monopoly, wants to charge by the bit.
it’s based on the specious argument that a few heavy users are being subsidized by everyone else:
It sounds like a good idea, as no-one wants to pay over the odds for unused services.
“All consumers are not equal,” says Mr Gadekar. “You have some of the heavy users who are using so much of the network that a user who wants to do a simple video stream or talk to someone over the internet suffers.
Rafat Ali at PaidContent suggests this is because Europeans have a “socialist” desire to make heavy (presumably rich) users subsidize light (presumably poor) users. Of course, per-bit pricing will limit the communication options of the poor, defeat creative applications of the net, and result in higher charges for everyone. But you can bet that the access monopolies will appeal to our sense of fairness when they’re selling this dangerous nonsense.
When telcos run the Internet
My new phone has given me a first-hand experience with how telephone companies would like to see the Internet work. It’s a chilling vision, and one that publishers, regardless of size, should be fighting.
Right now, telcos are working behind the scenes to control your access to the Internet. They have already turned wired broadband into a duopoly. They have already turned as-yet-undeployed fiber broadband into a monopoly.
As the telcos tighten their grip on the Internet, you can expect to see Internet access look more like the mobile network.
Complicated and confusing pricing: Right now, you can get unlimited Internet access at a specified speed for a flat monthly rate from the telcos and cable companies. That’s because they’re still competing with dial-up, which is a wide-open free market with plenty of real competition. Even so, duopoly pricing has suppressed broadband adoption in the US. If the telcos ran the Internet and could structure access pricing, you could expect to have “plans” that would offer multiple tiers of service, allowing you to “choose the plan the met your needs”. The result, because your needs are less predictable than you think, is that virtually everyone would pay more for the same amount of service. The unpredictability of our monthly bills would suppress usage almost instantly. This would be a hidden tax on the free Internet.
Discrimination among traffic. Despite the fact that it’s all bits, AT&T bills separately for voice and “data”. There are two separate plans and the prices are wildly different. AT&T’s cheapest data plan is 8 MB for $19.95/mo + $.006/kb after that. Their most expensive is $.03/kb with no plan at all. I’m not sure how fast AT&T’s network is, but let’s assume its 14.4 kb/s. At maximum throughput, this works out to be about 10 minutes of data use (8,000 kb / 14.4 kb/sec / 60 sec/min = 9.26 min) for $19.95/mo. It gets worse if their network is faster. AT&T wouldn’t get very far selling voice plans that provided 10 minutes a month for $20. Why are they charging more for “data”? Because they can.
Charging for messaging: In addition to the hourly charge for voice, and per-bit charge for data, there a per-message charge for text messaging. Imagine having to pay for each email or instant message you send.
Walled gardens and discrimination among destinations: The cellco’s invented the term “walled garden” to describe a subset of the Internet that they control, which their subscribers would be forced into, and which content and commerce companies would be forced to pay for access. You could expect it to be more difficult (or impossible, depending on your provider and your plan) to get to content providers who are not paying to reach you. This hidden tax on Internet access would result in more fees for content, more advertising, and higher prices from Internet merchants.
Dedicated hardware: Why can’t you buy any cell phone and hook it up to your cellco’s network? Why do you have to pay a fee to add an approved phone that you bought from another user? The cellco’s are selling access to you to the handset providers. There is no free market for mobile hardware. The other result of this is that there is no free standard for data access on cell phones. Imagine an access provider that didn’t support anything other than the latest version of Windows, which included lots of goodies like digital rights management, copy prevention, telco control of which applications and protocols you can run, and advertising.
Limited protocols: Why can’t you use MP3 rin, display HTML pages, access POP and IMAP email, or use AOL instant messaging on your cell phone? Why are the access companies already limiting access to email servers or bouncing mail from people who operate their own email servers?
This is the direction in which the Internet is moving. This is the vision of the telcos and the current management of the FCC. Its bad for users, small hardware and software companies, publishers, merchants, and anyone who uses the network to work, communicate, or gather information.
And the irony is that it’s probably not that much more profitable in the long run for the telcos than providing us with open, unlimited access to bits via whatever devices and protocols we choose.