Wireless as the model?
Mitch Ratcliffe on his blog Rational Rants at ZDNet titled “Verizon treads into the realm of The Prince” in which he covers some recent developments regarding Verizon’s wireless data services. I am a heavy user of Verizon’s EVDO service. It is the wireless broadband connection I use while taking the train to and from New York, so Mitch’s article is of particular interest to me. It is Mitch’s coverage of the Net Neutrality angle however; that I am most interested in.
I’ve written before that I believe that if Verizon had a choice it would restructure (from a business model point of view) the internet so that it more closely resembles its wireless network. Mitch helps point out some of the problems with Verizon’s wireless broadband network.
For example, Verizon’s says that user’s are not allowed to stream video over their EVDO network unless it is their VCast brand of video streaming. Why is that? I have the technical capacity to turn on my slingplayer and view streaming television to my laptop, I’ve tried it and it works every bit as good as the VCast service. The reason why Verizon does not want me to do this is: quite simply, because Verizon does not generate any additional revenue from that slingbox, Verizon only makes money off of my monthly subscription fee. Verizon has partnered up with select media providers to provide video streaming via their VCast service and through those partnerships they generate revenue from the content provider. So not only do they make money off of my monthly subscription fee they also make money by effectively charging content providers to gain access to their network.
Does anybody disagree that in Verizon’s perfect world they would like to expand this model to the internet as well? Let’s set aside technical and regulator barriers for a second. Given its druthers, don’t you think that Verizon prefers their Wireless model to their landline ISP model? I do. That’s why I am concerned that the very smart people at Verizon are looking at very creative ways to slowly change the model of the internet to more closely resemble their Wireless paradigm.
