Rande, since I'm having a hard time getting my crystal ball to boot up this evening, I'll have to wing this one, so hang in there with me. You've presented me with a tall order. If I expound on a few issues, seemingly to excess, don't mind me, it's not about you. The semantics of many of the terms which are used in the contexts you've presented are not fully understood, or agreed to, by all who use them today, so I sometimes go an extra mile to try to draw some distinctions for clarity. Indeed, I am subject to being corrected, I'm sure, as well.
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Do you think that T's maneuvers in connection with their Liberty holdings actually portends a move by them away from their carrier model to some degree, and deeper into content? Is that along the lines if what you are asking?
Or, are they merely optimizing their investments in those properties, while salvaging what they can by integrating some parts of them into their carrier platforms?
It has been my take that where their core operations are concerned, T has been moving farther away from content, and closer to their traditional strengths in transport and switching services, and now the Internet, both as a last mile service provider (in their role as MSO) and as an ISP on the copper line side (Worldnet).
I think that some of the messages (especially those which are unspoken) that they have been sending to ATHM, and their further development of the wireless space, are evidence to a great degree of their regrouping around their own core competence, i.e., the carrier business model, and not the one that would center on content.
Let's draw a few more distinctions here:
Building an infrastructure which is capable of multimedia delivery is not the same as entering the content business. Let's think of it as a three layer stack. At the very bottom there is the MSO or access carrier. The layer in the middle is the network groups, ABC, TNN, CNBC who handle programming, and above both, on the top layer, there resides the content creation part. Studio outputs, entertainment principals, music, etc.
At the lowest of these layers, the construction and ongoing administration of multimedia service platforms takes place. These are the functions of the MSOs and common carriers.
I don't know why I made a distinction between MSO and common carriers. In the last mile they do essentially the same thing. If they don't now, that's where they are headed. Oh, I know why. Perhaps it's because the MSOs want to be common carriers when it comes to supporting voice services, but they don't want to be common carriers when it comes to carrying other peoples' Internet services. Of course, that's why. -g-
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I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by:
"Coupled with T's conspicuous absence from the current text based internet.."
Test based Internet? Do you mean as opposed to multimedia? Please explain.
"...what do you think of the possibility that behind the scenes T might be rapidly [secretly?] at work on the Next-Generation Internet?"
I think we need to stop again and take stock of what these terms mean. I just finished reading an article a little while ago about Swisscom, the Swiss carrier, in the June issue of Lightwave Magazine. They are putting in an IP over DWDM network for their national ISPs, and they are making the claim that they will be the first European carrier to put in what they are calling the "Next Generation Internet."
There is no next generation Internet now. There wont be one three years from now, either. It's a contradiction in terms to suggest that someone could implement a next generation anything. We can only have a state-of-the-art "present Internet" at any point in time. Oi, marketecture!
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Then there is the formal NGI program on the books which has the backing and blessings of the IETF and NFS, which is being partially funded by the government, and partially funded by a number of vendors and carriers. This blob of speculation and experimentation is also called the "Next Generation Internet," or NGI for short.
And then there is Internet2 which is also related to NGI in some ways, when it is not being altogether confused with it.
Aside from the obvious confusion that this term elicits, I thought that T already did put in their version of a "Next Generation Internet" when they supplied ATHM with the dual OC-48 fabric equating to a 5 Gb/s IP backbone network. Granted, a 5 Gb/s backbone does not an NGI make. Maybe someone should also tell this to the Swiss, while we're at it.
And while we're on the subject, there are so many separate directions now that the larger networks are moving in at this time, in a form of heretical violation to the directions which were established by the original net, that I would submit that the term Next Generation Internet is doomed to being all but a moot concept at some point, for all intents and purposes.
I say this for several reasons. In order for the term Next Generation Internet to be valid (with special focus on the prefix "inter" in Internet), it must acquire a level of critical mass consisting of a plurality of large providers. In other words, it must be a shared resource.
How can so many disparate networks, each claiming to be doing end to end provisioning for their own subscribers, be moving towards a Next Generation Internet when they are, by design, islands of connectivity unto themselves? This is what has been happening, slowly but surely.
A primary enabling factor which has been responsible for the affordable delivery of 'net services to date has been the agreement among the old-line ISPs to both compete and cooperate with one another at the same time. The bonding elements that make this work so well have a lot to do with folklore, some very explicit principles which underscore good Internet Citizenship, and the normal forces of mutual assistance and competition, when the betterment of the greater net is not compromised. That's how it used to be (and still is, believe it or not, in many circles).
The 'net would never have gotten as far as it has today, and become as affordable as it has, if the above precepts had not been put into place, decades ago.
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It has occurred to me, recently, that we've been shnookered in a very subtle way by the larger and more traditional carriers. When they saw some of the old-line ISPs perched to eat their lunch, they decided to jump in with both feet and give all indications that they finally "get it."
But sharing is a contraindicative to their collective genetic makeup. So, they actually don't get it after all. This is why we're seeing attempts at isolationism again on their parts, and this goes for the MSOs, as well. And this trend is also spilling into new 'net sectors, more and more each day.
Witness, the openness of most of the ISPs as compared to the islandicity of ATHM's backbone, Sprint's ION, MCI's OnNet, and T's INC services. There are others, but those are among the largest. In each case, these carriers have taken their newfound IP capabilities and ported them over to their own facilities on an end-to-end basis, except for where gatewaying onto the greater net is absolutely essential. And even here, millions are being spent on caching and bypass/acceleration techniques in order to reduce the gateway function to a bare minimum.
Beyond these players, consider:
A few days ago, someone posted a message here that had to do with the Internet exchange bypass carriers and some of the hosting outfits which use bypass. Which one is bigger?, which one is better?, etc. The questions should have also included: Which one is most isolated from the rest of the world?
For this is how they arrive at their necessary levels of freedom from unpredictability and congestion on the greater net, hence affording them greater levels of quality of service. But think of what this says, for a moment.
Some of the most capable players with the highest levels of capitalization behind them are NOT contributing to the solutions which are required on the greater shared Internet in order to assure higher levels of quality for all. Instead, they are eschewing it. These networks are not a part of the Internet, despite their use of the IP protocol. To be a part of the Internet one must Inter-network. And you can't do that if you are an island all to yourself.
So, in light of these anal retentive tactics, where has the economies of scale that was once the defining characteristic of the Internet gone to? Sure, we're seeing reductions in costs, even in these carriers' offerings, but those reductions are only taking advantage of optical economies, thanks to DWDM, but they are not taking advantage of the larger potential savings of route- and other resource- economies through sharing.
This is why, in part, we now have close to 68,000 primary routes on the 'net instead of a consolidated 15,000 to 20,000, or so, which would represent considerably reduced "costs". Costs here, in terms of both financial costs and network route-related metrics.
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"[T] ..at work on the Next-Generation Internet. . for the primary purpose of stealing the thunder of its existence by presenting to the world their own full blown working model?. . . end-to-end all optical . . . fibre to the set-top appliance. . . .with video on demand servers pumping out what the world really wants. . .full-motion video/real-time audio, fully interactive."
Let me catch my breath. We've already covered NGI.
End to End.. implies several things. I surmise that here you are not talking about end to end in the sense of global networking. Instead, you are referring to the capabilities within the usual purviews of MSOs' serving areas.
I say this because of your allusion to Fiber to STBs, video on demand, real-time video and audio, and interactive services. None of these have anything to do with global voice and data, nor, necessarily, even far reaching Internetworking involvement. But they have all to do with the MSO's areas of service responsibility.
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Re: Likening T to MSFT and the PC, I don't see it quite that way. There is already too much diversity in how the MSOs are situated to discourage that sort of thing. Look at TWX's intentions wrt using the STB in the absence of DOCSIS, where subscribers don't have PCs, in order to deliver their new streaming video and audio services. These techniques may differ drastically from T's and some of the others. And TWX serves another purpose in my argument:
There are those natural territorial divisions which the cartel has seen fit to impelement that further divides their reach and their influence from one another's subscriber bases, and at the same time serves to discourage homogeneity of their respective technologies, as well. But if T is successful in standardizing only 60% of the industry, that would be nothing to sneeze at. Heck, I'd be quite impressed. But I don't have a good feel for the likelihood of this happening. You can mold the universe only so far.
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Well, I'm rather certain that I didn't answer your questions fully, or even satisfactorily in your view, in all respects. I'm open to corrections and comments, and maybe someone else can fill in some of the gaps (and the craters) I left behind.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
