More vacation work — Stevens bill cont.
Let's take a look at the section of the draft Telecom Act of 2006 that starts on p.112. It has to do with “phantom traffic.”
It requires that all “providers of voice communications services” (including any online application that's capable of connecting to the traditional phone system) preserve/present information — like the calling and called parties. This is supposed to allow “traffic identification” by other providers that transport the traffic.
The traditional telephone incumbents are hoping to be able to charge for all voice traffic, don't want to permit encrypted traffic that they can't inspect, and want to be able to perfectly discriminate between different voice services.
What's odd about this approach? Well, a bit is just a bit. A voice bit ordinarily wouldn't look any different from another kind of bit. There's nothing illegal (now) about encrypting traffic, and forcing voice bits to self-identify is a major change. The original design of the internet was based on “layer independence” - the idea was that the transport layer wouldn't discriminate with respect to what it carried. Reinstantiating the complicated system of telephone payments online certainly helps the incumbent telephone companies — but it's not clear who else it helps.
Traffic without a label isn't “phantom traffic.” It's just traffic.
Then, on p. 122, we get to the video services section. We've been told by the incumbent telephone companies that this is what they really want. They want to avoid having to go town-to-town to get franchises to provide broadband video services. They're seeking to standardize and simplify the process.
The key question is whether the telcos should get this treatment without having to give up on something else. Why should they have access to public rights-of-way without having to act like common carriers for these broadband services? How much subsidization is appropriate? Why wouldn't we want to wait for real competition to emerge in the broadband access market before giving this central concession to the telcos? If everything becomes cable-like, we'll end up with a private communications world — is that what the country wants?
Tomorrow we'll continue — this time with the Video and Audio Flag subsection.
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