Dueling Fools
June 23, 1999

Open Access:
AOL v. Excite@Home

The Bear Rebuttal
by Bill Barker ([email protected])

Kudos to Louis for explaining the complex issues involved in this Duel as well as he did. While I almost found myself being lured in by the patient execution of his tutorial, I'd like to pick a few nits with his argument.

Louis states, "The Open Access dispute comes down to something simple: When you finally get the opportunity to sign up for high-speed Internet access via a cable modem, do you want to have to pay an unnecessary toll to @Home?" Oh, excuse me -- I cheated. I don't think Louis put the word "finally" in bold and italics in his piece, but it kind of caught my eye so I just went ahead and did so myself, because "finally" is quite an important word here.

By pursuing a lobbying strategy designed to make any payoff that cable companies can secure from their investment in providing cable access more dubious, openNET is most assuredly helping to postpone the day when you can finally get a high speed hookup. Perhaps this increases the likelihood that, as Louis says, AOL will win either way, but perhaps not. After all, lobbying efforts work both ways, and if AOL gets saddled (fairly or unfairly) with the label of being the company that fought to keep Internet connections slow, some sort of consumer backlash is not out of the question.

I have to question Louis's assessment that "'connectivity' can be taken for granted. The 'pipes' are really something of a commodity." I guess that a lot of us probably wish that we could take connectivity for granted -- that wishing that the pipes were built would really make it so. However, the pipes can only be a commodity once they are completely installed, and there is interchangeable access to them or something functionally similar. This, however, is not the case. To paraphrase FCC Chairman Kennard, the pipes have to be built first before they can be taken for granted.

True, in AOL's perfect world the cable pipes might not be built at all, but the next best alternative is that they be built by someone else and AOL have full access to use them. You may or may not find that a reasonable stance to take, but compare it to Louis's position that the cable companies are not acting reasonably by arguing that it's technically difficult for multiple ISPs to provide Internet access over the same lines.

Louis cites a test done recently at GTE's cable system in Clearwater, Florida, showing that routers equipped with special software permit a cable system to handle multiple ISPs with no problems. What he fails to mention is that the test was conducted by AOL, and therefore doesn't exactly stand as definitive proof from an uninterested party. When asked about the technical assumptions that had been made in the test, "GTE executives stood by their trial, however. Problems directing traffic and fitting new customers on the cable networks could be solved with software and by upgrading cable networks, they said."

All the problems could be solved just by "upgrading cable networks"? Oh, is that all? And I suppose it would only be reasonable for the cable networks to pay for that, too?

I think if openNET has its way, we'll all be waiting a looooong time for quality cable access. And if that's the case, I imagine the pressure on the FCC to issue rulings making decisions like the Portland/Multhnomah one moot is likely to come sooner, rather than later.

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