Presentation On Multi-Tiered Internet
Lawrence Lessig mentions Quality of Service (QoS) in The Future of Ideas.
QoS is basically a prioritizing system for internet traffic.
- For example, perhaps packets transfering streaming video will travel faster than packets transferring email, and other such things.
- Lessig warns that QoS requires the network to be smarter, and thus biased toward certain data. ISPs could use that bias to their advantage to slow the competitor's website while making theirs faster.
- The problem is, this is no longer a simple warning. It is happening right now.
The dangers of two-tiered internet.
- "AT&T Inc. and Bell South? Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors." 1
People would pay a premium to access the higher tier, and thus they would be able to stream AT&T's video at a faster, higher-quality rate, leaving other video services (such as Google) lagging in the digital dust.
- However, a competing video service, like Google, could pay AT&T a fee to send their content over the faster tier. Only AT&T customers paying the premium would benifit from this.
- There are numerous problems with this, mainly because it destroys the end-to-end architecture of the internet.
Competition would be stifled because:
- Competitor's websites would load slower than the big telco's websites. This could be devestating to internet services that need high bandwidth, like streaming video or VoIP (like Skype).
- Competitors would have to pay a fee to send their traffic over the high-bandwidth tier, meaning many small companies and startups would be excluded from it altogether. This could stifle innovation and new upcoming services.
The telco companies could charge an extra fee to the consumer to use certain competitor's websites, like cell phone companies do now.
- For example, to download a song from iTunes you'd have to pay AT&T $1.99 to just to access the bandwidth plus the cost of the song from iTunes ($.99). However, if you bought the song from AT&T's music service you'd only have to pay the cost of the song ($.99). Thus iTunes would quickly be put out of business because of the imposed costs of transferring data.
- The telcos could block certain kinds of traffic or slow it to a halt, like P2P applications, Bittorrent transfers, even free services like Skype.
Because there are only a few telcos that would control the entire two-tiered system, interests would fall into their hands, leaving the consumer with little or no voice to change or object. This could lead to corporate-sponsored censorship and rampant rises in costs with little compensation in service. Freedom of information (of your data) would be comprimised.
- From the CEO of AT&T: "We’re not going to block our customers from accessing any legal or legitimate sites, or accessing any content through their broadband or DSL connection."5 Notice he says legitimate, but does not mention who decides which websites are legitimate and which are not. Obviously this responsibility would fall on AT&T.
This is a move by AT&T to try to reinstate Ma Bell. They've been working for 20 years to try to regain their monopoly, and this legislation, if passed, may be the final push they need.2
- Their reason for the two-tiered internet is in response to cable companies, like Comcast, starting to offer internet access. The telcos want to retaliate by offering television programs on the interent. To do this, though, they need a lot more bandwidth to support streaming all that video at a high enough quality to get TV users to switch. Thus a second tier to offer enough bandwidth for these television programs would have to be built, and the telcos don't want to invest in so much infrastructure if it can just be used by any old network data.1
So protect your interests! 
Write your congressman today!