I read two articles yesterday that make arguments for service quality differentiation.
Om Malik writes about the latest study on VoIP quality. He quotes a study from Brix Networks that indicates almost 20 percent of Internet telephone test calls experienced unacceptable call quality over the last 18 months.
Brix CTO Kaynam Hedayat says:
The network is ready for VoIP. But now that there are more services running over the same pipe, carriers need to differentiate packets and prioritize service
Om says:
A lot of these problems are due to bandwidth constraints on the networks. Trying watching You Tube videos and talking over a VoIP phone and you experience the downshift in quality first hand.
And in Network World Canada, Mike Volpi, senior vice-president of Cisco’s service provider group and routing technology group, is interviewed on trends in the carrier market – an interview that took place at our 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit. When asked “Does Cisco have an official opinion on Net neutrality?” Mike replied:
We do. We have a strong opinion. Our view is that additional legislation is unnecessary. We totally agree with the notion there should be no blocking of lawful content. However, we don’t believe there should be legislation mandating that every packet on the network be treated equally. Our simple analogy is that it’s like creating legislation that every passenger on an airplane should be treated equally, whether they choose to pay more or not. My view is if I choose to pay more, I have the right to pay more and be treated better.
Brix is reporting that there are service quality problems with 20% of VoIP calls. This is caused by “late packet discards, lost packets, and round-trip voice latency.” In other words, voice has problems riding in a permissive environment over a ‘stupid’ network.
Maybe the time has come to recognize that not all applications are created equally – that some applications on some networks might benefit from a little intelligence that recognizes the real-time characteristics demanded by voice. Voice isn’t working well enough with a neutral network.
It takes a more neural approach – intelligently recognizing that voice should supersede other applications.
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Brix Networks, Om Malik, Cisco, Net Neutrality, Canadian Telecom Summit, YouTube, Mark Goldberg