Red Bank TV

Verizon EVP Tom Tauke, former Democractic Congressman from Iowa, spoke today at The Media Institute’s Communication Policy Forum, Thanks to ipdemocracy & Cynthia Brumfield for providing the links.

Tauke spoke of hypothetical deals that Verizon might enter into with content providers.

“For example, online video gaming is a growing business, and consumers of those sites expect a seamless experience for their role-playing and action games. Let’s say a gaming company has a game that requires 24 megabits of capacity. Consumers may be paying for Internet access speeds anywhere from, say, five megabits to 15 megabits. That company could enter into a commercial agreement with Verizon to provide online gamers the megabit burst they require for a quality experience.”

As I’ve been saying all along, this is the real way that the telcos plan on implementing tiering.  Not by blocking or restricting access to site but instead to enter into deals with partner content providers and provide them “private” bandwidth.

Mr. Tauke’s plan sounds innocuous enough; what gamer wouldn’t want an extra boost of speed when they need it?  You may be asking: How can you have a problem with that?

Here is why I think such boosting is bad for content providers and content consumers:

1. Verizon will have complete control over who gets to have this speed boost. Nowhere in their track-record is there any indication that they will open this speed boost up to anyone with the cash to pay for it.  Verizon’s history, both wired and wireless, shows that they choose to partner up with very few providers and have no problem locking out competitors.  Can you download music on your Verizon Wireless phone? Sure, but only if you buy from Verizon.  Try buying from Apple, can’t do it.
2. Developers that are not able to obtain access to Verizon’s speed boost will have to develop within the parameters of the limited bandwidth.  That means developers won’t be able to produce their top products, in effect they will be watered down, and consumers will be deprived of the best possible product.  An analogy would be a developer being restricted to developing for the XBOX only while others get to develop for the XBOX 360.
3. Developers that are able to obtain access to Verizon’s speed boost will get lazy.  Give a developer an inherent advantage over their competition and they will design to that advantage.   Whether it is extra processing power or graphics power or speed boost; game shops focus on how best to show off their technical advantage and focus less on actual good game design.  The history of the video game industry is littered with examples showing this.  Consumers will be deprived of the best possible product when one developer has access to speed boost and another doesn’t.

It’s not just video games that Verizon wants to do this for.  It’s all areas of content delivery.  What you’ll end up seeing is that those providers who enter into a “commercial agreement to provide … megabit bursts” with Verizon will start to produce lesser and lesser quality product; while those providers with who Verizon does not partner with will be locked out.

Dear reader, please take a look at the big picture here.  Verizon and the telcos’ plans are bad for the future of the internet, not matter how innocuous their lobbyist make it sound, as ISPs get into the role of King Maker on the internet we will see reduced innovation and competition and we may very well end up with an internet that looks a lot less like the wide open American innovation engine it is today and a lot more like cable TV.

[ edit: updated links ]