Monetizing the Internet
What would duopoly providers of internet access really like to have? They'd really like to be paid for providing non-commodity services. They'd really like to be rewarded for running the network, top to bottom.
“But that's not possible,” you say. No provider can tell one packet from another. Providers can only block the ports used by applications they don't like, and that's a clumsy, unwinnable arms race. The applications can always switch to common and useful ports, and no provider wants to alienate its subscriber base.
But what if providers could inspect the contents of packets, without using too much computational power, and discriminate among applications? “Naah,” you say. “They can't possibly do that.”
This article suggests that providers hope to monetize the internet someday, through “deep packet inspection” that would make mammoth walled gardens possible. In a nutshell, the described set of standards (called “IMS,” or “IP Multimedia Subsystem”) would make circuit-switched-like control possible for packet-switched networks. It's been under development since 1998, and it makes billing and signaling possible for IP networks — it makes it possible to monetize the internet.
IMS is being inserted (somehow, the article isn't clear how) into ITU's overarching plans for the Next Generation Network (NGN). “Hah,” you say. “That means it will never happen.”
But if you're feeling particularly bleak following the FCC's moves late last week, the idea of the IMS should make you feel even bleaker. If all telecom agencies around the world read their broad statutes to allow for (and, indeed, encourage) customized internet access, and vendors of things like outsourced emergency services and CALEA compliance keep pushing along, then (as the author of the article says) you can see IMS as “part of a huge 3G gamble by the mobile telephony operators around the world, with assistance from traditional telephony vendors, to obtain control of the vast new Internet medium and monetize it.”
The author concludes:
This is the emerging, consensus view: That IMS will let broadband industry vendors and operators put a control layer and a cash register over the Internet and creatively charge for it. It is this monetization of the Internet that makes IMS extremely appealing to all communications operators and all but guarantees that it, and its numerous derivatives, are likely to spread.
Audacious. Maybe impossible. But getting incrementally more likely by the day.
Notice what UBS said about the extremely weak and watery network neutrality principles the FCC plans to believe in:
“[N]etwork providers risk being disintermediated,” UBS warned in a research note [issued in response to the neutrality principles]: “We believe that network neutrality could tie the carriers' hands in their efforts to avoid being disintermediated from higher-value services for a portion of their target market.”
UBS is worried about “content providers” “free-riding” on the carriers' networks. In turn, we should be worried about the rest of us getting a chance to use an open, non-monetized internet.