It’s been a few days since Verizon and Google issued its joint policy initiative about net neutrality and AT&T is weighing in again.
The issue of net neutrality is a contentious one. Broadband providers argue that some form of traffic prioritization is needed in order to manage security, ensure a high quality of services for different types of content and to prepare for future services that we don’t see yet.
Content publishers and others argue that net neutrality is needed because a provider like Comcast could and, probably would, prioritize its NBC streaming video content over that of a rival. This could make the data provider the kingmaker, removing the meritocracy that has been on the Internet so far.
Google and Verizon said it wanted strict net neutrality rules on the “public Internet” but made some exceptions for the wireless one due to spectrum concerns. This is where AT&T plays in, as it said in a blog post:
Data traffic on wireless networks continues to explode. And this is not only being driven by the ever-increasing use of smartphones. The per unit sales of wirelessly enabled portable devices (think netbooks, E-books, E-tablets and navigation devices) is expected to grow from approximately 6M in 2008 to 86M in 2014. It’s not surprising that mobile broadband data traffic is on a similar trajectory. The 90,000 terabytes of traffic per month that was carried on wireless networks in 2009 will mushroom to 3,600,000 TBs/month by 2014.
Pitted against this insatiable demand are wireless networks of finite and shared resources. Wireless networks simply cannot provide the same amount of capacity as wireline networks (i.e., DSL and cable). Fiber is to a wireline network what spectrum is to a wireless network, and as a transmission medium, the two simply do not compare. The theoretical top speed of a LTE carrier is 100 Mbps. By contrast, theoretical transmission speeds on fiber can reach as high as 25,000,000 Mbps. The 5 extra zeros tell the story.
It’s easy to jump on wireless providers about net neutrality but it is a really nuanced issue that will take a long time to resolve.
[Via AT&T blog]