The Story
As part of the American government’s $7.2 billion plan for broadband stimulus, the FCC has had an ongoing debate in defining broadband. The sort of weak initial definition is at least 768 kbps downstream, which isn’t great, but it’s enough. AT&T, however, is now saying that the FCC definition of broadband for the purposes of stimulus should not include gaming. According to AT&T,
The pressing concern is not the ability to engage in real-time, two-way gaming, but obtaining meaningful access to the Internet’s resources and to reliable email communications and other basic tools that most of the country has come to expect as a given.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has of course taken issue with this, saying that gaming and similar things “are no less important to the future of the Internet than email and web browsing were to the past and are today.”
How Low Can You Go?
First off, let’s establish and understanding of how badly AT&T wants to screw what is a very noble government initiative. The argument is that the specs the FCC wants are too high because it enables premium services like gaming. Well, World of Warcraft is the most popular game on yonder internets, and guess what? It works on dialup. And Hulu only requires 480 Kbps down. So whether or not AT&T’s lowbar definition of broadband would support this is anyone’s guess.
But what AT&T wants is far more sinister than just providing low speed connections and calling them broadband. No, based on AT&T’s statements, they want to throttle connections used for gaming. Fortunately, that’s not going to happen no matter how broadband is defined under the bill. The FCC are now the net neutrality police. Julius Genachowski, head of the FCC, is more likely to go swimming in a volcano than he is to let AT&T or anyone else selectively throttle traffic. And the terms that companies need to meet to get broadband stimulus money is even harsher than the standard FCC regulations. That means, lucky for the consumer, that what AT&T wants here is not going to happen.
Anyone who’s used an iPhone probably has a little insight into where AT&T’s argument stems from. They were tasked with millions of people who all are capable of sucking down lots of data, and they blew it. So now the company is hoping to get in on the broadband stimulus bill, and it doesn’t want another iPhone caper. You know why? Because that cuts profits. AT&T wants to apply for broadband stimulus money, but it wants to spend as little as possible rolling out infrastructure. The higher the FCC sets the bar for bandwidth, the less money AT&T gets to keep.
