AT&T pleads poverty
p2pnet news | P2P:- AT&T says if it doesn’t get billions of dollars in fresh cash by 2010, it’ll have reached the limits of network capacity.
At least $55 billion is needed for investment in new infrastructure in the next three years in the US alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide, according to the company’s Jim Cicconi (right), quoted by CNET News.
He was speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, declaring, “The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today. In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.”
The “unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic” would increase 50-fold by 2015 with AT&T investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network, said Cicconi, stating, “There is nothing magic or ethereal about the Internet – it is no more ethereal than the highway system.”
Cicconi didn’t actually utter the dread term, “Net neutrality,” but, “some audience members tackled him on the issue in a question-and-answer session, asking whether the subtext of his speech was really around prioritizing some kinds of traffic”.
For “prioritizing” read “throttling” and for “some kinds of traffic” read P2P file sharing.
“The reason I resist using the term ‘Net neutrality’ is that I don’t think government intervention is the right way to do this kind of thing,” he said, according to the story, going on, ” I don’t think government can anticipate these kinds of technical problems. Right now, I think Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.”
Net neutrality, “refers to an ongoing campaign calling for governments to legislate to prevent Internet service providers from charging content providers for prioritization of their traffic,” says CNET.
“The debate is more heated in the United States than in the United Kingdom because there is less competition between ISPs in the States.”
It’s also raging in Canada where the major ISPs are using blatant traffic ‘management’ to throttle accounts they say are sapping more than their fair share of bandwith.
CNET News – AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010, April 18, 2008
throttle accounts – p2pnet traffic shaping digest, April 19, 2008
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April 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am
From ArsTechnica:
Analyst Daniel Beringer argued in a 2006 article that network maintenance and upgrade expenditures are a lower priority for AT&T than attaining monopoly control of the market through acquisitions. “The Bells only invest in more monopoly which usually means buying each other. The track record shows steadily lower spending on networks to increase free cash flow for acquisitions. The $140 billion SBC spent acquiring Ameritech, PacBell, SNET, AT&T Wireless, and AT&T lifted the company’s market cap by only $40 billion,” wrote Beringer. “SBC missed an opportunity as $140 billion happens to be about what it would cost to run fiber to every home in America.”
April 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am
Powerty? – NO WAI!
April 21st, 2008 at 11:59 am
Jim “Facts Schmacts” Cicconi states, “20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.” Um, if that is really true they will need a brazillion billion dollars… If this guy expects anybody to take him seriously he cannot make idiotic statements like that.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Mostly Harmless,
The statement about 20 houses generating more traffic than the whole internet is of course, based on them purchasing ‘high definition’ content from att and watching/listening to it 24/7. Of course 90+% of the ‘data’ will be the DRM overhead.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Then we can solve that problem. Just need to do some marketing for Bittorrent and DVD-rips and against DRM and “att high definition content” – and the bandwidth problem is solved.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
“The reason I resist using the term ‘Net neutrality’ is that I don’t think government intervention is the right way to do this kind of thing,” he said, according to the story, going on, ” I don’t think government can anticipate these kinds of technical problems. Right now, I think Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.”
Translation: “The reason I resist using the term ‘Net neutrality’ is that I don’t think government intervention would be good for our long-term plans,” he said, according to the story, going on, ” I don’t think government will be sympathetic to our goal of using the net as a distribution platform for premium content. Right now, I think Net neutrality is a huge thorn in our sides.”
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I would like to see the internet infrastructure based entirely on WiFi, eliminating most of the need for any central ISP to begin with.
Technology seems to be making many corporations obsolete (at least under their current business model), and they are “clawing at the insides of the coffin”, so to speak.