AT&T has not changed its tune. It is still against cities using public funds to compete with private enterprise and believes that communications should be left up to private firms like AT&T. It’s Day 2 of the Muniwireless Silicon Valley Conference and they have an executive from AT&T talking about municipal wireless networks.
AT&T has not changed its tune. It is still against cities using public funds to compete with private enterprise and believes that communications should be left up to private firms like AT&T.
James Cicconi, Senior Executive VP Legislative and External Affairs for AT&T claims that
Net neutrality is a challenge for all companies. You spend billions to deploy your assets and net neutrality means someone telling you what you can do with your assets – what you can charge, tiers of service, etc.
“All bits should be treated equal” is a problem for network engineers because one bit is porn another bit is heart surgery, another is email, yet another is voice, another is spam. That everything should be moved equally end to end is ludicrous. It’s a more costly way to do things. It’s not efficient, according to AT&T.
AT&T cannot build and maintain assets quickly enough to meet the demand. They are spending $19 billion this year. Some of the demand is driven by video. What happens when people start delivering high definition film? They can’t build networks fast enough! What’s the answer? Effective traffic management.
The antitrust laws can deal with the problems of net neutrality (side note: unfortunately these are not being enforced today). Why should AT&T want to degrade traffic? They will go to someone else (side note again: in a duopoly, you’ve got Comcast which has been blocking Bittorent traffic).
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Note: Given what I have heard here today, the only solution here is structural separation.
As much as I hate to say it! AT&T has a point! Did I mention that I hate to say it?
I AM NOT…an AT&T puppet, I compete with “the artist known again as” AT&T.
But all bits are NOT created equal. Net Neutrality needs a DMZ if you will. There has to be some type of criteria that we can all agree on.
Intelligent people find common grounds, not polarization on all things.
My .02cents
In short, I fully agree! Building a successful model for Muni Wi-Fi has to be around realignment of partnerships and value-adds that exist. Access tech companies like ATT have to build their own models and ROIs just the way they did with their faculties’ based networks. Government and cities can and will in in turn benefit from this by being a supporting partner who provides certain assets Vs. them being the front face for a business that they do not necessary want to get in. Leave access to access companies and let them design and manage their networks
I do not want AT&T looking into my bits and deciding which ones to delay, which ones to block. I agree there can be prioritization for voice versus data bits, but why should AT&T decide whether I get to see Buddhist meditation videos of Christina Aguilera?
See my post on Comcast degrading certain types of applications:
http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/6550/1/2/
There may be a duopoly at Layer 1, but there’s not one at Layer 3. I get my DSL from a regional ISP (delivered over LEC DSL), and there are at least dozens and probably hundreds of ISPs that can also offer that nationally. So I get 4 static IP addresses, can run servers at home, can share my wireless with my neighbors, no bandwidth cap, don’t have to do PPPoE, and I even get a shell account with it. The price is higher than LEC basic DSL service, but cheaper than getting a static address from them.
What a giant crock of corporate manure. At the basic level, a bit is a bit. Regardless of what the electron is destined to become; it is still only an electron. Positive or Negative, 1 or 0. AT&T would have me believe that because that electron is part of a video stream it costs more? BS, the only argument even plausible is one of number of electrons. Obviously, there are more 1′s and 0′s in a streaming video than in the email from Aunt Sarah. So, on that assumption, you are back to the volume tiers already in place.