McSlarrow: Google Needs Managed Networks

NCTA Chief Preps Testimony For ‘Future Of The Internet’ Hearing

By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 4/21/2008 1:35:00 PM

Washington—Cable companies need to manage their broadband networks to ensure that capacity-hogging peer-to-peer applications don’t undermine popular services offered by Google, Yahoo!, and VoIP providers like Vonage, National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Kyle McSlarrow plans to say in Senate testimony Tuesday.

“Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and service providers like Vonage could not carry on their businesses if bandwidth-consuming applications were allowed to block customers from accessing their Web sites or completing their transactions. Because of network management, such businesses can develop business models that hinge on the expectation that their service will not be crowded out by congestion caused by heavy bandwidth-using software,” McSlarrow says in testimony obtained by Multichannel News.

McSlarrow is scheduled to appear before the Senate Commerce Committee on hearing termed “The Future of the Internet.” Other witnesses include actress Justine Bateman, Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig and Michele Combs, Vice President of Communications Christian Coalition of America. Both Lessig and Combs support a federal law or regulation that would require equal treatment of all legal Internet content.

McSlarrow’s testimony comes as Comcast Corp. is coming under attack for allegedly blocking BitTorrent users. The company, which has about 13 million residential high-speed data subscribers, has acknowledged delaying P2P traffic to ensure that a minority of users don’t degrade service for the vast majority.

“In 2006, I testified before this Committee and stated that cable operators do not and would not block subscribers’ access to any lawful content, applications or services. That statement remains true today,” McSlarrow says.

But letting “P2P protocols…written specifically to commandeer as much bandwidth as is available” poses threats to Web-based providers of voice, video and data services and their consumers, justifying network management designed to optimize service for the most consumers, McSlarrow says.

"Far from inhibiting access, smart network techniques protect the ability of our customers to make the greatest and most flexible use of the Internet. They are a reasonable response to an identified congestion problem that has the benefit of allowing all other applications—particularly latency sensitive applications like VoIP and streaming video—to work better,” McSlarrow says.