roundtable: Re: Video Switches

roundtable: Re: Video Switches

Re: Video Switches

Michael Chui (mchui@cs.indiana.edu)
Wed, 09 Mar 1994 15:19:37 -0500 

Message-Id: <9403092019.AA14908@a.cni.org>
To: telecomreg@relay.adp.wisc.edu, roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re: Video Switches 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Mar 1994 10:03:52 CST."
             <Pine.3.85.9403091026.A20433-0100000@essential> 
Date: Wed, 09 Mar 1994 15:19:37 -0500
From: Michael Chui <mchui@cs.indiana.edu>

James Love <love@Essential.ORG> writes:
>In the current mark-up on HR 3636 the telephone companies are lobbying 
>hard for language on video dialtone which would set up a system where 
>different companies, including the telephone company, would more or less 
>own or control "channel" capacity for new broadband networks.

     What language are they suggesting?  HR 3636 (pre-markup)
prohibited common carriers from discriminating in favor of their
video programming affiliates, and required them to make available
"such capacity as is requested by unaffiliated video program
providers."  Do the RBOC's want this section removed, or is their
proposal compatible with this language?

     BTW, common carriers were not required to provide more than
75% of their capacity to unaffiliated content providers, and the
requirement to provide carriage to unaffiliated content providers
was to be expire in five years.  Both of these caveats don't fit with
the model of a video common carrier.  Common carriers should provide
carriage to unaffiliated content providers without regard to the
proportion of capacity they use.  Further, common carriers should 
not be permitted deny other content providers carriage, now, or in 
five years.

>We have been asking congress to place langauge in the bill that would 
>require the FCC to set some type of standards or review for the system 
>architecture, including the issue of the "switches" and user interfaces.

     I view user interfaces as being a content issue, and hence, I don't 
think they should be regulated.  In particular, they are typically 
implemented in software, and regulation mandating a particular type of 
user interface would stifle innovation in this field.  Would Internet 
users have wanted Gopher to be the interface standard for retrieving 
information, if they'd known Mosaic would never have been built? 
Furthermore, the presentation structure (i.e. the UI) of information 
greatly affects the information's usability - preventing the development 
of user interfaces which match content structure would be a mistake. 
Some of my current research is in the area of human-computer interaction, 
and we certainly haven't invented the perfect user interface yet.  :-)

     On the issue of switching, HR 3636 (pre-markup) only required
common carriers to make capacity available to unaffiliated programmers
"upon reasonable notice."  I'm certainly in favor of making that
"reasonable notice" as short as possible, which some kind of switching
would allow.

     However, I think it's interesting to note that potentially three 
regulatory regimes for similar switched services could be created: Plain 
Ol' Telephone Service (POTS), switched digital (Open Platform), and Video 
Dialtone.  Given that video dialtone service would probably be delivered 
digitally, and that it perpetuates content distinctions in carrier 
regulation (gee, what if I wanted to push audio, data, or even mixed 
multimedia bits down the video pipeline while no one was watching TV?), 
I'm inclined to push for more emphasis on Open Platform deployment. Open 
Platform is defined as providing subscribers with sufficient network 
capability to access multimedia information services.  If one of the 
media included in "multimedia" is video, then Open Platform buys you 
everything video dialtone does, and it really is more like a dialtone 
(everyone can call everyone else, and you can put any content, including 
video, into a call).

Michael Chui
mchui@cs.indiana.edu

P.S. Where can I find HR 3636 (as marked up) for FTP?

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