Webinar Wire

Your Web Conferencing Bits May Be Limited

Posted by Ken Molay April 7 2010 12:51 AM EDT

3 comments

Two years ago I wrote a piece on Webinar Wire that I titled "Will ISPs Kill Web Conferencing?" I referenced an article by Rich Baker of Glance Networks about the dangers of allowing broadband carriers to secretly and unilaterally set their own policies on how data gets transmitted over their networks. That practice has been challenged under the label of "net neutrality" - a concept that in its simplest form calls for all broadband data to be treated the same.

Things move slowly in this area, and we have waited two years for a federal court to hand down a decision on whether the Federal Communications Commission can regulate and oversee the carriers' data policies. The FCC was a proponent of net neutrality and wanted to make sure that the ISPs simply acted as a pipeline, letting all data flow equally.

The court's decision was announced today. And it's not good for the FCC or net neutrality proponents. The courts effectively said that the infrastructure is built, maintained, and owned by the carriers and they can do whatever they want with it. The FCC doesn't have regulatory control over Comcast's wires.

This means there is nothing stopping a carrier from arbitrarily deciding that a webcast carrying audio and video (necessarily a high bitrate application) should run at a slower speed to free up bandwidth for other carrier-approved applications. I can easily envisage a scenario where people are charged a premium service fee to transmit or to access high bandwidth applications such as webinars.

I can also foresee carriers developing preferred partner business relationships with specific web conference / webcast technology companies. What if Cisco WebEx ran fast on Comcast, while Adobe Connect Pro ran fast on Road Runner, while Citrix GoToWebinar ran fast on Verizon? Do you think that's a silly idea? Preferred provider arrangements are commonplace on cellphones and mobile devices. Why not web conferencing as well? This would drive a stake through the concept of broad public access to your events and would seriously harm smaller competitors in the market.

While I appreciate the carriers' position as owning the physical infrastructure and the investment in their networks, I can't help but feel that their interests are unlikely to coincide with the best interests of the mainstream user community. The fundamental "pipes" that let data flow from point to point need to be kept open for all.

If you are wondering where to get more information or if there is anything you can do to raise your voice in favor of net neutrality, you might start by visiting www.savetheinternet.com or http://civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet. In Canada, you can try http://saveournet.ca/