 Bill Smith, one of the best engineers in the world, Dec 8, is answering FCC questions. (Update: Bill promised to get back with an answer.) If Bill in detail explains that minimizing congestion on a network like U-Verse is impractically expensive, I will change my position. Opposition to reasonable traffic shaping would fall away rapidly if a truly high cost is confirmed.
If Bill does say U-Verse has such extreme congestion problems, it would suggest his CEO, Ed Whitacre, repeatedly lied about AT&T's network to a Senate committee. CEOs do sometimes say untrue things. Maybe Big Ed, an engineer, didn't understand the basics of his own network. It would also mean AT&T's network is drastically inferior to Verizon's. Verizon CTO Dick Lynch three weeks ago told an FCC workshop congestion was under control. If Bill doesn't say the congestion problems are extreme, he could tear the heart out of his company's lobbying.
I predict Bill will do his best to duck the real questions, but I'll be glued to the webcast at http://www.openinternet.gov
Bill might say it is impractically expensive to upgrade U-Verse because the congestion problems are so challenging. If Bill confirms such a high cost for a network like U-Verse or FiOS - say 10% of AT&T's $30 typical price, or $3 - even I would change my own position. I'd endorse sensible traffic shaping to prevent a big price hike. The CEO might have have been wrong in his testimony. Bill might say instead that U-Verse has modest or minimal congestion. like Verizon and most large DSL networks. If the current network has only modest congestion, the cost to upgrade to essentially neutral wouldn't be more that 1-2% of the bill, a few dimes or less. AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre told the U.S. Senate AT&T simply didn't have a congestion problem. "Our network does not degrade traffic. We don't block anything."
he answered. "We do not degrade any traffic," he repeated to another question. If you have significant congestion, some streams will inevitably degrade. AT&T's policy EVP Jim Cicconi said the same thing. The point they were making was that regulation was unneeded because there was no problem.
The question I asked Dick Lynch is a good place to start. "How many hours a week. month or year does congestion cause the average U-Verse user's throughput to drop by 20%? By 50?" With U-Verse 10 meg or DOCSIS 50 meg, even a 50% drop means today's HD TV come through, a pretty good test. This is a very able panel. Stagg Newman, a world class technologist; Ruth Milkman, a tough as nails attorney; Sharon Gillette who was in the middle of the Internet congestion debate while at MIT; Jon Peha, an engineering professor, and two FCC staffers who have been asking demanding questions. Ed Whitacre is an engineer, so understood he was describing an essentially neutral network. When I doublechecked, I was surprised to find U-Verse was almost as robust as he said, unless you have a Katrina or a cable cut. AT&T policy lead, EVP Jim Cicconi, went beyond "We don't degrade." To a room of reporters and Jennie's camera. Cicconi and Tom Tauke of Verizon said that if streaming video came to their network at two megabits, "the customer would get that 2 megabits without degradation if they had a 3 megabit service." At the time, the lobbyists were making the argument their network had so few problems there was no need for rules. the networks haven't changed, just the lobbyists' arguments.
Bill today runs most of AT&T's network so he knows how often they have problems. He's made up network budgets for more than a decade and represented BellSouth on Wall Street. He knows the costs involved in reducing congestion if needed. He has the facts. |
