ISP-Cable Battle Over Broadband Gets Technical
The cable and Internet industries, which have been fighting about who will profit from bringing high-speed Internet connections to millions of consumers, opened a new front in their war last week--arguing about whether technology allows cable companies to open their networks to competing Internet providers, even if they wanted to.
In the past, the battle has been largely about money and regulatory policy. Cable TV operators, noting that they are investing billions to upgrade their networks for two-way data communications, argue that they should retain the exclusive right to provide high-speed service to their own customers to pay for the work.
Internet service companies, especially America Online, have argued that such a rule would discriminate against them by preventing them from reaching cable company subscribers.
AOL has twice asked the Federal Communications Commission to force the cable companies to open their networks on grounds that the cable lines are, in essence, a public trust; the FCC refused both times.
This week, the two sides launched a battle over the cable industry’s contention that giving customers their choice of Internet providers would be technically impossible.
Cable companies have suggested that because of the way cable systems are designed, allowing multiple Internet providers to use cable networks to reach customers would lead to slowed data speeds and other glitches. Cable networks differ in architecture from telephone systems, which can accommodate thousands of competing Internet providers without mutual interference.
The fight began last Monday when GTE, a local phone company that also owns cable and Internet service companies, teamed with AOL in an effort to prove the cable networks can be opened to multiple Internet carriers without any technical problems.
At a news conference, the two companies released the results of tests at GTE’s Clearwater, Fla., cable network, where three Internet providers were permitted to serve subscribers over the cable lines. No network problems resulted, they said.
“We can provide access to thousands of ISPs on our cable system, or on any [two-way] cable system in the United States,” said Rick Wilson, president of GTE’s Media Ventures subsidiary. “We are debunking the claim by AT&T; and the cable companies that it is technically impossible to do this, because we have done it.”
The next day, Excite@Home, the Internet service controlled by AT&T;’s cable television arm, shot back with a briefing of its own. Excite@Home called the GTE/AOL claims a “gross simplification” of the technical adjustments that would be required. They also cast doubt on the trial’s results, noting that they were presented publicly not by trained technical staff, but by attorneys and policy executives.
“Usually when someone has an interesting engineering achievement, they publish it in a journal or present it at a conference,” said Milo Medin, Excite@Home co-founder and chief technology officer. “You don’t usually get a head lawyer having a press conference in Washington.”
AOL and others argue that cable Internet customers should be given a choice of Internet service provider, as they are when they use phone connections to the Internet. The cable companies counter that changing its one-ISP system would slow down the roll-out of high-speed Internet access--ultimately hurting consumers.
There are billions of dollars at stake in the open-access issue, especially for cable companies such as AT&T;, which will soon be the nation’s largest cable operator. AT&T; contends the value of its $120 billion in cable acquisitions would be sharply diminished if the company were forced to share its cable lines with AOL and other Internet service providers.
For AOL and other ISPs, the stakes are equally large. Most of AOL’s 17 million subscribers connect to the Internet through telephone lines; the service fears that the advent of “broadband,” or high-speed Internet service, may make these connections seem painfully slow and threaten its franchise.
Industry analysts predict the cable network’s speed will ultimately make cable-based broadband service the leading access choice, in part because local phone companies have been slow to roll out a competing high-speed technology known as digital subscriber lines, or DSL. If the cable networks remain closed to them, AOL and other Internet providers may be left dominating an obsolescent market.
Under the current system, most cable modem customers are offered one of two cable industry-owned Internet providers: Excite@Home or Road Runner, which is jointly owned by Time Warner Cable and MediaOne.
The battle over high-speed access has begun to move into the political arena.
In Los Angeles, for example, the mayor’s Information Technology Commission has been at odds with the City Council over whether to force cable operators to provide “open access”--that is, admit competing Internet services to their networks.
An agency study released Friday concludes that opening up the cable networks is “feasible but not warranted.” However, the study recommends reconsidering the issue under certain conditions.
Part of the debate in Los Angeles and elsewhere has focused on the technical issues.
Excite@Home’s Medin believes the GTE/AOL trial overlooked some issues that are critical in a shared-bandwidth network such as cable. Among them:
* How to share capacity among different ISPs and their customers. Medin says customers of one ISP could theoretically hog the cable systems’ finite capacity, degrading the service to their neighbors.
But GTE points out that all shared cable systems have faced similar problems and overcome them. In addition, some cable systems have already imposed usage limitations on their own customers in cases where capacity has become strained. They could easily incorporate such limitations in agreements with ISPs.
* The GTE/AOL system has not been tested on a large scale. GTE’s Florida system served only 50 to 75 users; large systems may encounter problems with customer support and network traffic flow, Medin said. GTE counters that those issues are not technical roadblocks but issues of management and cost that would be worked out through inter-company contracts, as they are when competitors share the same network in the telephone industry.
* Reconfiguring the networks would be costly and time-consuming. Excite@Home believes an open-access system would require software or hardware changes in the cable modems that bring Internet service into consumers’ homes. In turn, that would trigger a time-consuming process of altering the industry standard for cable modems.
GTE and AOL contended they adapted the Florida network, which is capable of serving 80,000 homes, in six weeks with only $60,000 in equipment. The companies said they will continue the trial with larger groups of subscribers.
Amid the bickering, one thing stands out for Jonathan Kramer, a Southern California-based consultant who has advised Portland and other governments on broadband technical and policy issues.
“These just aren’t technical issues; they are issues solved through network management and operating agreements,” he said. “No one has been able to identify a legitimate technical issue that defeats the open-access model.”
Times staff writer Elizabeth Douglass can be reached at elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com.
* DIGITAL NATION
Local control of telecommunications is an important right for citizens, Gary Chapman writes. C8
