RE: Questions on the Draft

["tim clifford" <tjc@lacunanet.net>]

I suggest that generally the operators have been talking about charging for
access as well as some set of content and services; there is an almost
infamous cry to "not be a bit pipe." At least from some quarters the
emerging definition seems to fall along a few ideas
- charge for access
- but differentiate that access using some sort of qos scheme (the legacy
internet providers tend to perceive this as technologically doable, but
difficult from a business case perspective). so one might charge differently
for the access bit pipe based on speed, type of service, etc.
- there's also discussion around L4 through L7 services.  there is a fairly
successful set of initiatives in the current internet for "content delivery
services."  it doesn't appear to be useless to insert essentially a proxy to
redirect traffic to "best" server locations. i don't see any inherent reason
why an operator couldn't offer such a service (and they are today with wap
servers).  there's certainly questions of scale with these solutions but as
far as I can tell its not stopping commerce
- finally i understand that some operators will move toward actual delivery
of content.  In some sense this suggests that the operators will start to
compete with AOL (who outsources most of its network to providers like uunet
and genuity).  However another interpretation is found in the service
gateway initiatives, which seem to say "as the operator i have access to
services that you, the application/content community, do not."  My hopefully
favorable interpretation is that the operator could establish an location
management service and sell that information to partners.  this model could
be replicated for prepay, authentication, network capability, etc.

unfortunately i haven't seen operators talking about unbundling these types
of services rather there's been more discussion, as hinted in Lars' comment,
that the operators want to bundle all this stuff together into the access
charges. i suspect such as strategy will severely crimp evolution

regards

tim



Tim Clifford, President and CEO
Lacuna Network Technologies, Inc.
5257 River Road  #635
Bethesda, MD 20816
office: 703.812.8560  fax 703.812.8571
mobile: 301.674.0373 email: tjc@lacunanet.net
>
>
> One simple question/comment...
>
>
> > > JK: 4) pg. 8 Do you want to be able to charge on packet content?
> > > This could result in *very* slow performance in some cases, if
> > > you need to snoop through to L4 to determine the port number.
> >
> > AT: My personal opinion is that many or some operator will
> > prefer the idea of chaging on packet content
> > unless they find better charging method.
>
> Are we talking about charging for access or for content/service?
> It is important to separate these two even if operators so far
> with the limited possibilities of mobile devices (non-Internet
> connected) have controlled both. For content it is of course
> desirable to charge for what is delivered, which is not a problem
> when performed on the application layer. However, it is
> impossible (and completely use-less) to try to charge different
> for the access bit-pipe depending on content transmitted. The
> network can and should not know what the bits transmitted are.
> "Snooping" may give the network a clue about what the application
> data transmitted is, but it can never tell for sure. Further on,
> with end2end security this possibility is completely eliminated.
>
> Cheers,
> /Lars-Erik
>
>
> -----------------------------------
> Lars-Erik Jonsson, M.Sc
> Wireless IP Optimizations
> AWARE - Advanced Wireless Algorithm Research and Experiments
> Ericsson Research, Corporate Unit
> Ericsson Erisoft AB
> Box 920, S-971 28 Luleå, Sweden
> E-mail: lars-erik.jonsson@ericsson.com
> Phone: +46 920 20 21 07
> Fax: +46 920 20 20 99
> Home: +46 920 999 57
>
> My opinions are my personal opinions and should not be considered
> as the opinions of my employer, if not explicitly stated.
>
>