Fresh thinking
There is a media and regulatory battle on between T-Mobile USA and ‘net neutrality’ campaigners over the new Binge On service for video. In the absence of a market price mechanism for resources, there must be rationing. Binge On is merely an improved form of rationing compared to the status quo.
Imagine for a moment you’re standing in a remote jungle in the tropics. Around you there are thousands of swaying trees, flapping birds and mildly worrying creepy crawlies. You venture forth, carefully noting the shapes and colours of each species you encounter.
In “Net Neutrality: Discrimination, Competition, and Innovation in the UK and US”, Alissa Cooper and Ian Brown explore the relationship between two broadband regulatory regimes and their practical outcomes. The paper is of (paradoxical) interest as it (unintentionally) demonstrates how policy is being made without sufficient understanding of packet network performance.
Here is a summary of this year’s Future of Communications content. If you find value in what I write, the best gift you can give to me in return is to ask your colleagues to sign up to my newsletter.
A British perspective on a very American process As a new member of the the “Tech Elders”, I was invited to join yesterday’s hearing [PDF] in Washington, DC on the reclassification of broadband Internet access services. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decreed that Internet access should switch from from being lightly regulated as an ‘information service’ […]
The issue of quality in networks has been long being troublesome, as the underlying science of ‘QoS’ has fallen short of what we need. We have now filled in a significant part of the missing mathematical foundations. The culmination of that work is the ∆Q framework.
The ISP industry has been selling the public (and government) on the benefits of ‘superfast’ broadband. This was a good approach, as historically more quantity did mean better quality. That relationship is now breaking down. A lot of capital is being squandered on delivering substandard experiences.
What is ‘quality arbitrage’? When networks went from circuits to packets, they gained a huge increase in efficiency. This was done by sharing the transmission resource more intensively through ‘statistical multiplexing’. At present, all telcos are holding the risks of statistical multiplexing without extracting the corresponding quality of experience (QoE) value. This is because the very […]
An interview with Prof Andrew Russell The longer I have been in the tech industry, the more I have come to appreciate the hidden complexity and subtlety of its past. A book that caught my attention is Open Standards and the Digital Age by Prof Andrew Russell of Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. This important work shines […]
An Interview with Bruce Rasa, AgVoice The frontier of IT isn’t necessarily found in Silicon Valley, at least not now its fruit orchards are long gone. Since necessity is the mother of invention, those who continue to harvest from capricious Mother Nature have found an ongoing need for innovation.
Read It Now