Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

At ITEXPO East 2010 and 4GWE last week, the discussion about net neutrality included some alternative views.

 

David Erickson (News - Alert) of FreeConferenceCall.com and WYDE offered the perspective of someone making money via reciprocal compensation. As we deal with the legacy of POTS services, the ability to make money for enhanced services has always been elusive. The Advance Intelligent Network was not particularly accessible to third parties and often had lots of tariffs that made accessing it cost-prohibitive. The lack of a working mechanism for charging for revenue sharing plus the stigma of using numbers such as call.

 

Enabling Internet Service Providers to use the network via access gateways had been a boom to many alternative and local carriers, and the logical progression into media services and enhanced services had strong economic incentives. The marriage between rural carriers and enhanced service providers put a new revenue model into the underserved areas that presumably could off set the high cost of access.

 

However, Intercarrier compensation has been marred by legacy tariffs, and it was generally agreed by all participants in the net neutrality session that reform was needed. For the major carriers bill and keep has been the proposed alternative

 

However, voice is not the place where net neutrality has been the subject of discussion. The concern has been with data and video services associated with the Internet.

 

Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB.com offered the view that the market could solve net neutrality by driving out piracy. The logic is that as a custom of network providers he is willing to pay for quality of service solutions that deliver better quality to his subscribers. Regardless if they are using a PC or their iPhone (News - Alert) application. For MLB.com, which also runs CBS’s March Madness, delivery is part of the deal. Embedding the quality of service with the carriers delivery method runs against the concept of non discrimination which is part of Net Neutrality.

 

However, it is in keeping with the expected 911 solutions that the first point of network access is associated with the user and. This point of connection could be used to monitor use. This is something the carrier does not want to do without regulattion driving them. It also would give rised to competing technology strategies as piracy software would evolve.

 

The commission has a lot of goals connected to Net Neutrality and it’s hard to think of an answer that makes all parties happy. The first goal should be designed for the future and not be stuck supporting legacy strategies, but this should be done by maintaining continuity.