A story about the looming threat of high-bandwidth video on the internet, authored by AP technology writer Peter Svensson, has been making the rounds of the blogosphere today. In it, a Verizon lobbyist claims that
“The plain truth is that today’s access and backbone networks simply do not have the capacity to deliver all that customers expect.”
That’s because the company expects a broadband household to download only around 2 GBs a month — less data than one DVD movie. So we need fatter pipes, right? And who’s going to pay for them?
That’s the point behind the article — another PR salvo from the big Telcos to justify their need to charge extra to guarantee a fast lane for high-bandwidth content.
Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn isn’t buying it. She points out that
These fears (how ironic that the pro-NN forces are the ones accused of fear-mongering) are based on absurd assumptions about how people use the Internet — that people will start watching streaming video like they do regular TV, “for 8 hours a day,” or that, as the AP story states, “everyone in a neighborhood is trying to download the evening news at the same time.”
Even more important, however, is the fact that the Bells haven’t been interested in building out internet infrastructure to begin with. Where’s all their money gone? Into mergers and buyouts, not making a faster, more robust internet. The AT&T-SBC merger last year cost $16 billion, and the Verizon-MCI merger cost $8.44 billion. Gee, doesn’t sound like those companies are on the edge of backruptcy, especially not due to people watching Google Video and YouTube.
Sounds to me that the Bell execs are more interested in building telephone empires than building and strengthening the networks that form the backbone of their business. Then they pass that cost onto their customers, and they hope to pass it onto everyone else putting up content on the internet.
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